E146 – Trauma, Change and Wisdom in Organisations (w Zena Me)

and James.

hello and welcome to this episode of a world of work podcast. I've got a really exciting conversation lined up today. It's something I'm really looking forward to talking about and to exploring. We've got a great guest. We're going to be speaking to Xena me today, and we're going to be looking a little bit at organizational change and trying to think about some some new ways to think about organizational change, and some new ways, I guess, maybe to think a little bit more about what our organizations are like. So before we get into that conversation, would you be able to introduce yourself to the audience and say a little bit about yourself and your background? Yes,

yes, of course. James, Hi, I'm Xena, and I've been in organizational development, now, the field of organizational development for about 30 years, and I actually started my career in the place so it was working with senior leaders in the place. And I do systemic constellation work. And I also do, I mean, very interested in forming arts

That's lovely. And I mean, you've done a lot of interesting things in your career and had one of these lovely non linear career paths that we've spoken about. I should say to the audience, we've had a couple of hours conversation in the past, which is really great. And I love the sort of insight and sort of that intersectionality that comes from people who've had non linear career paths and pursued interesting things. So that's really, really cool. One of the things that struck me in our earlier conversations was your approach to organizational change, and some of the work that you're doing at the moment in terms of trying to find some of the root causes of behaviors in organizations and some of the things that have led to organizations being and feeling as they do at the moment, and then perhaps looking to address some of those. Could you say a little bit more about that? And about that and the role of trauma and organizational history? Well, I mean, I started doing very large change projects,

and kind of the, I would have said, the late 90s and and then we were very much kind of around change management and doing kind of, you know, what models are we going to use for change management, you know, and following those models and so on and and to a degree, they were really powerful at the time. I remember a particular client that I was working with, a global client, and we, I was working with some Stanford

University materials, which were amazing materials. I mean, really leading edge materials. And people kind of lapped them up and thought they were fantastic. But I suppose, as life kind of goes on, you really, you kind of got, and you've got some scope to kind of look back on these things, you realize that, and I realized that they kind of, they were great in that moment, but in terms of the sustainability of it. And really, did, you know, there may have been some changes, but was there really any transformation? And I suppose the more you get into change that, then you hit transformation. And and that was kind of down the rabbit hole for me, into the transformation. Because why? Why was it that, you know, you used all these tools, and you know, they work to it up to a level, but they didn't necessarily get you where you wanted to be. And so that's where I, kind of my fascination started with this in terms of what, what? What stopping the the organizations, the leaders, whatever, the employers, what's stopping them from kind of taking that leap, if you like, into into the unknown. And as part of that, I started to look at my own relationship with change and kind of go, okay, yeah, I like change. Obviously, it was a field that I loved working in. But were they, you know, did I really understand it? Did I really understand kind of the inner world of the transitions that we go through and through kind of many different things that I started to explore I get through the actual performing arts world. Interestingly, I came across systemic constellation work, and it was mentioned to me first of all, and I was kind of oh yes, that sounds very interesting. And it sounded a little little bit weird, to be honest with you, James, it was a bit weird. You had at first was like, What's this stuff now? But I am a bit weird myself, so I was like, Okay, go on. I'll have a I'll have a look at this and see what this is. And this kind of came on the back of me doing a one woman show, which was about transformation. It was much more about personal transformation and so on. And actually, as part of that show, I started to look into my own ancestral history. It was kind of, you know, who are you? It was the work the the show was based on Augustus Boals Theater of the Oppressed. So it was, it was kind of taking the audience with you on the journey involving the audience. And it was through that process, really, that I ended up exploring, eventually, systemic constellations, originally with with the likes of kind of Bert Hellinger work, and then into all sorts of different areas, and another guy who, you know, I've heard a lot about, and I studied a lot of people who studied with him was Franz Rou pair as well. And that's when the, if you like, I was introduced to this idea of trauma. First of all, it was obviously personal trauma and ancestral trauma that kind of, you know, comes down generations, trans generational trauma. But what I also discovered was looking back over my organizational career, that in the organizations I was I'd worked in, I'd never, ever factored in this idea of the traumas, the previous traumas in the system, if you like, in the organizational system, that may have been unresolved. So I was very much kind of working in the moment, really, in the past, in terms of kind of, you know, the actual change now. So if you like, almost like, could been, could be the potential trauma, and, you know, even trying to get an organization to recognize that was was really difficult, that we need to do this well, that if people leave, they must leave. Well, you know, for everybody concerned, for both, for the people staying on, for the people going so that's kind of where I landed, really, it was like I couldn't even I couldn't even I couldn't. It was hard to get organizations to recognize in the moment that this could be if we get this wrong. And I personally have been involved in change that has been traumatic, that has triggered trauma in people and not fully understood it, you know, going back kind of 20 years. But once I realized I named it, you know, you could call it trauma, you can call it disruptive events in the system, I then started to work with it much more consciously and bring that to, I suppose, leaders in in organizations, so that they started to understand what trauma is. Because I think we really don't understand what it is from an organizational perspective.

Yeah, that's brilliant. And, you know, there's so much, so much really interesting stuff in there. And I love, as I said earlier, I love that sort of intersectional, interdisciplinary approach, and, and, and I think so many interesting ideas come from when we combine different disciplines and that sort of step between them, and I think the arts and other areas have a lot to offer in the world of change. So I think that's that's fascinating, as I said, you know, there's so much in there. One of the things that I think is a really interesting concept that underpins a lot of this is the idea that events in the past and the systems that we exist within, affect us and affect our behaviors and ways of doing and ways of feeling and my understanding and correct me if I'm wrong, is that these sort of intergenerational or cultural events that shape future generations can exist at a societal level? They can exist in a familial level. They can exist in an organizational level. Is that fair? And could you say a little bit about maybe, how some of those events bring themselves forward in time? You know, how does something that happened, say 60 years ago, make its way to the present and affect some of the ways that we think and act and believe and feel?

Well, how it sends it I mean, there are studies on this now, and there's lots of which is fantastic, because, you know, when we're working with it in the field, and we talk about it as the field, you know, because it's like the field of inquiry, the field of potential, and what's going on, you tend to kind of feel it through a felt sense. So, you know, I didn't understand it at the time, but I've always had the capacity to actually, when I walk into an organization, or I meet a team of people, or even if I meet an individual, I can actually pick it up through my felt sense. So it's a much deeper sense, the felt sense and. That's how, that's where we tend to hold a lot of our stuff. But now we've got lots of research in epigenetics and so on. So that kind of talks about how, how it kind of happens in transgenerational trauma. From my point of view, what, what I what my experience has been, is that when a trauma occurs, whatever that trauma may be, we go into a survival mode. And therefore, then we we create a, if you like, a different pattern, you know. So it's almost like we that the pattern is like slight the pattern of the way that we do things, our behavior, the way that we look at the world so on, suddenly shifts perspective. We shift perspective on it, and the pattern changes. And as a result, we if we're not careful, if we don't go at some point to revisit back that trauma to in order to integrate it fully in ourselves. What then happens is that pattern gets continued down the line, if you like, in terms of if that could be from mother to child, or it could even be from, if like, if you're in a chief executive role, if the chief exec before you had a traumatic incident that they had to deal with that wasn't integrated fully back into the system. And I'll explain a little bit. Explain a little bit about that. If you like whoever comes in after that person, it's already ingrained in the role itself. It's become part of its history, and it's become part of its story. So if you like that, we so these we then start to notice that. And this is why we need when we're working systemically, we're looking at the patterns and seeing if these patterns are patterns that are resourceful and healthy, or patterns that actually are limiting and and are based on unresolved, disruptive events that we perhaps need to go back and revisit. So you know, I think people can say, well, it's kind of in ourselves, and in a way it is. So they've proven, for instance, that if you if the mother has a trauma while she's carrying a child, that trauma gets passed to the child straight away. The child is in the trauma with the mother. And that's the sort of thing that we still in the public domain. We still don't fully understand that we I think we kind of it makes sense to us, but we don't truly kind of embrace and embody in terms of, what do we need to change? And that's the same for a place as well, you know? I mean, I've worked in, I've worked in in places as well,

where, you know, so for instance, in councils where there's been trauma in the in in the society, and and, and they'll think, well, you know, those people dead now, those people have gone. Now there isn't, you know, it's in the past, and it's like, actually, it isn't, because it's still living, if it's not, if it's unresolved trauma, as in, like, if the truth hasn't emerged, if the secret is still around it, you know, if the behavior has changed as a result of it, and it's not been put back to health and this. And so this is why it's so important that we understand trauma in a societies. We need to really understand it.

Yeah, that's really interesting. And I'm quite a sort of visual thinker myself, and the way I think about things is quite visual. And the way that you talked about traumatic events and their impacts on the patterns in my mind, it drew to life as sort of an image of, you know, a sort of a linear progression towards something that is almost like an expected outcome. And as something's progressing again in that direction, someone comes in and maybe hits it from the side, and that's the traumatic event. And it knocks it off that that sort of, you know, trajectory or direction that it's on, meaning that it it then needs to re compass itself. And whatever this system is, or individual or society or organization is sort of recompass itself, and it can kind of get back to where it was, or it can diverge into a different, different pattern. Is that a reasonable analogy

to Yeah, it is. And I think we, I think we talk about surviving in a really positive way. And of course, it is. It's a really positive part of being a human, in terms of being able to survive something, but, but what we forget is survival is, is a short term strategy. So it isn't, you know, we what we need to be thinking about is thriving. We need to think about health, and how do we thrive? Not just survive, because survival is literally just kind of treading water. We're not necessarily moving forward. We're just keeping our head above the water. If you think about it that way, we're not actually swimming to the other side and getting out of the water. And if you think, if you think about the pandemic, this is where kind of the situation we're in now, you know, we're all still in survival zone. Oh,

absolutely. And I. Also, it's exhausting, isn't it, right? See it everywhere. And that, if that's a great thing, and sorry, it's not a great thing, it's a great thing to be aware of, if we think then about, you know, these traumatic events that happen to us, it feels like we do get through them. And we get through them by going into a survival mode, as you're talking about, and that involves, I would posit changes to ourselves, changes to our behaviors, changes to our beliefs, changes to our interactions, presumably changes to our physiology. All these things change. You know, our chemical balance changes, all that stuff changes, and that serves us, presumably in that moment. And I guess the question is, then, how do we get back to where we should be to that thriving place, assuming we were thriving already. And I guess that journey of moving from that, you know, defensive state, protective state, back to that thriving state, must be a complex journey. Is that something that you experience?

Yeah, it can be, I think, I think that it often takes a lot of courage, because what we have to do is we, you know, we don't want to go back into the trauma, if you like, but we do want to kind of explore the experience outside the trauma. So we, so we've gone through that period of survival, you know, and now it's about okay, what do we need to learn from, from that? What, what was the experience and How's it changed us? Because sometimes what happens is we carry on regardless, and we change our beliefs, and then we forget, we forget where those beliefs have emerged from. And so it unconscious as well. We can stay in the victim space. You know, instead of actually putting ourselves back to feeling back in our power, because when we have experienced a trauma, it renders us powerless in that moment, and that's often where the survivor self kind of takes over. In order to be able to basically Carry on, carry on as normal. But that's that should only be a short term strategy until we get back to an equilibrium, you know, a good a good place. But often the work is never done. Because, you know, we kind of just carry on, and we carry on in that survival place. And if you think about kind of something that maybe that's happened in the past, you know. So there's lots of research, for instance, on PTSD and war and, you know, and that kind of, you know, men coming back from war and being severely affected by what they've seen and and either shutting it down or, or kind of, you know, seriously changing the way they view the world. But while we're in survival zone, we're not using our full resources. So, if you like, it renders you, you know, with a lack of resources, or certainly your full capacity, your full resources. And what they've just kind of discovered is that, because, if you like, the men came back, you know, with, with, beyond their capacity to deal with that, with some of the things that they saw, they then couldn't fully resource the family. So, you know, so therefore, you know, they weren't fully present and engaged in family life. They had to live this kind of slightly disassociated life, and then we've normalized, that we've normalized and that. So that goes to the next generation. And you think, Well, my father was like that, so my husband might be like that. Is like this, because passing down some generations as norming, well, that's the kind of normal behavior. And it's like, well, actually, it isn't, you know, that's as a result of trauma, yeah,

and you know, that whole norming process, I believe, is fascinating, and I think that, as a personal view, I think one of the great strengths of humanity, but also one of its downfalls, is its ability to normalize pretty much anything. I think we are, in so many ways, almost, you know, blank vessels we can just grow and expect and attenuate and acclimatized all kinds of different things. And that's wonderful, but, but we are these vessels that are filled up by our experiences through life, at least in my imagining of this, and I think that that ability to normalize it is probably really important when we look at the this intergeneration or, you know, passing through time in organizations of things like trauma. You know, in organizations, we will understand the rules that lead to success or understand the rules that lead to safety in an organization. And these, in my experience, many of these rules are unspoken. They're unacknowledged. They're underneath the surface, but we observe them, and we we, you know, we let them seep into us, and we change our behavior so that we fit into that context. So I guess, I guess one thing that's in my mind is when we talk about things like being a first mover, right? It's really hard to. Potentially become aware of all these invisible pressures on us, that sort of hegemony of over cultures that we're in, and to then choose to say, well, this isn't for me, or I want to acknowledge these things and be something else. So I think that sometimes we see individuals doing that as a way to try and break and change some of these things. And I think that's a hugely, hugely difficult thing to do. But another way that I think some of these changes occur that you've spoken about is going back to explore some of the trauma that takes place in organizations. I guess that's where I'd like to go and explore. Next of you is, what are some types of things that are moments of trauma in organizations. And then, you know, once we know what some of these are, if we identify them in the past in our organizations, how might we be able to to sort of tread back through that altered trajectory that we have and explore it and and navigate what's serving us well and what isn't and what really works in our context, and get back on that, that path of thriving that the organization hopefully was on at some point, or at least, you know, even if it starts off on a bad foot and go somewhere else. When organizations are created, I'm sure the majority of them are created with an intent of positivity, even if it goes wrong quickly. And

I mean, if you could look at this from the individual point of view, and if you're looking at it from an individual point of view, one a great place to start looking is looking at your painful endings. So, you know, when we look at, you know, I mean, I can think of times in my career when I've had painful endings and, you know, painful endings of contracts when I've been a consultant, or painful endings of of, you know, jobs, if you like, leaving, organizations where it's felt painful. I mean, one would expect some grief anyway, when, when there's a leaving, but when it's been painful, and when, if you like, when you revisit it. It's the you can still feel the resonance of that. You know, maybe you're still holding a grudge against an old manager, or you, you know, are an organization. So we've all kind of had those experiences, particularly when you get to a certain age. You've had a quite a few. So, so it's useful, actually, as an individual, to kind of look back over those places and actually, and, and to kind of, you know, what, one of the things that we can do in this work is to have a conversation with the organization, not literally, you know. So I'm not suggesting we all go back and we say, There's something I want to talk to you about, but, but, but what we can do is we can. We can kind of create a process where we can have a conversation with with that system, if you like, and find out what wisdom it's got to bring to us, what we have to learn from that, you know, and things that perhaps have been left unsaid at the time. Because, again, this is what happens in the moment. We don't always have our voice ready to say what needs to be said in order to leave. Well, maybe there's some confusion about the leaving. Maybe this, this, this, this, the feelings are too strong at the time, so we're too kind of caught in it. But, but as it's even to this day, is useful to kind of go back over those events and have that conversation with those organizations, kind of metaphorically, you know, to me, so, so it's so powerful, such a powerful thing to do, because you'll find that the organ, the system, has something to tell you as well, maybe you know. So typical examples might be things like, you know, you gave too much, or you stayed too long, you know, and though, so some of those kind of statements are really useful to know, because in within the system itself, we often forget where we're in relationship with a whole system. It's not just kind of the personalities of the people that we work with. It's the whole system we've been drawn into that we've taken the role in, that we've contributed to, and so on. So that's kind of, from an individual perspective, always useful to do from an organizational point of view, it's good. The types of trauma, certainly, that I've experienced in organizations, I mean, I've experienced it where people have died, but, but it's not been processed well as an organization in terms of how it's left, you know. And often, sometimes what you can find is after that people just leave, you know, because if it's not dealt with well, but it's still there, even though the people and the person who died and the people around that time may have left, that that energy is still in the system until it's actually found its way to being seen and and. Honored, if you like, within the system, to say this actually happened. This was an event as part of the system's history. So if you think about it that way, mergers and acquisitions are classic examples of trauma that we really don't recognize. You know, I've worked within so many mergers where you know the leaders of the people who were the acquirers, if you like, the acquiring organization, seem to believe that it's going to be better for the people who they've acquired. You know? Oh, well, it's better. They'll have more career opportunities. They'll have more more opportunities for money, the terms and conditions are better, and it's like, you are totally miss understanding what it's like for those people who have been part of a system that's now coming to an end. And we forget that. We think, well, no, no, we're going to keep the brand over the door. We're going to keep that. It's like, no, it's, it's coming to an end, you know, in terms of that period of time is coming to an end. And how do we transition people and and, you know, what happens in that transition? And it's deep, you know, I mean, if we really going deep into some of the mergers and acquisitions, you know, we still have a very colonial view of how we do that. You know, this is taking over, this overpowering and have, and don't realize what the experience is like for the individual. So that, I've dealt with a lot of those where, you know, and in terms of, I don't know whether you're asking this, James, but how do you do that? A lot of it is just literally doing a timeline and allowing people to walk through that timeline literally and feel what it felt like in that moment. So you do in order to be able to express what needed to be expressed at that time. So when I've done work with with kind of mergers and acquisitions, it's a lot of it is helping the the businesses, if you like, to tell their story of what happened, how it was founded, who the founder was, why it was founded, what's its story is those things are really important in terms of

helping people kind of embody the experience of those changes, potentially traumas. Because a lot of leaders will say, Oh, that's in the past. People really do need to move on. And it's like, that's dishonoring, and actually, it's arrogant as well, because there's this belief that there's a there's a sense of, Well, I'm here now, so it's going to be wonderful. And it's like, yeah, you're dismissing,

yeah, you know, I've seen, I've seen that exact situation played out with sort of semi colonial, militaristic language, and I've seen it 568, years down the line, where there are still factions existing within, you know, merged organizations and then, and you can see the divides, and you can feel that stuff in an organization, the resentment, the sense of control, of pressure, of all subjugation, to some extent, all that stuff exists in there. So if in a situation like that, where you had, you know, a merger, and then maybe different groups in there, we can tell the story at an organization level about the history of our organization and where it gets to if you were to bring, if you had these two sort of polarized groups in an organization that have been merged and and, you know, say you had two teams that were hammered together. What would the process be like if exploring that without when you would you get people in a room and tell the story of a merger? Would you get people together and tell a story of their careers? How would you, how would you create that permissibility for people to openly share and acknowledge what really happened and how they really felt? And how does that? How does that

play out? Well, I think the most important thing is creating a safe container, you know. And I mean, I use the word safe lightly, because it isn't safe, yes. So actually, kind of saying we're going to create this safe place in a way it doesn't exist. However, what we can do is create a container for it. So, so, one of the things that that, that I would, that I have done with, you know, there was, there's one particular merger I was involved in, and there was actually three. There was a company actually taking over two businesses, and those businesses had been in competition with each other as well. So, you know, you can imagine the kind of the energy that was, that was there. I. And, but they really struggle to integrate, really, to integrate the whole process and the cultures. They really struggled with it, which is why, why I kind of was asked to come in and, and, you know, first of all is it's, it's get it. It's getting them to trust me. So you as a consultant, you know they have to be able to trust you, you, you know you, you've got to understand that if you've been called in the system's called you in, not the not the leader the system has said, we need help here, because, you know, we're stuck. You know, we can't move forward, and we're struggling. So it's about honoring that first and foremost, that you're not working for the leader, you're working for the system. And that's often a big change for people in to think about for as a coach and as a consultant, that you're not, you're not you're working on behalf of the system, not not the individuals brought you in. So your loyalty is to the system, if you like, and and you know, respect to the fact that that, clearly, the a system will always try and work towards health. It always wants to get back to health. So it will constantly reach and and attract people to create that health. So, so the first thing is to get them to trust me. So it's about kind of, you know, allowing them to tell their story to me individually. So I on this particular one, I took the three senior teams, and, if you like, took them all individually and had a conversation with them. Basically, you know what happened? Tell me your story. And so they told me this their story initially, but what then happened was, was to actually set up something where they all felt by this stage, trusting me to put, to take them through a process as a collective. And one of the one of the things that we, that I did, was to, actually, I used objects. So I have, like, a huge tub of different objects, and asked them to tell the stuff to basically place themselves and their team and their organization and tell the story of the organization, tell, you know, and they did it as a team, and they did it as each team did it. And we did it in, say, three separate rooms, and then we walked each group walked into each different room that represented that organization and so and they are those people then told their story. This is us. This is who we are. This is where we came from, you know, this, these are our connections that you know. This is this is how we work. This is what our culture looks like. These are our values. This is what we care about, you know, so and, and literally, just to listen, yeah,

with that, what, you know, those activities are wonderful. I've never actually done that sort of, you know, prop supported creative activity, but, but I've done things with drawing, and I've seen benefits of some of this. When, when you're doing those exercises in these rooms, what do you think the balance is between the teams that are doing this processing and exploring for themselves? Is it? Is it like a is it? Is it a revealing Is it a discovery? What's What's that balance? And then what's the balance? Then with the storytelling? I mean, how does that? How does telling that lead to an unburdening or clarification in those individuals as well. It feels to me, I've been in articulate here. It feels to me that those two constituent elements are probably important here, one for processing the revealing and two for communicating and sharing with others. Do you think that feels that those? Yeah, I

think, Well, I think if you think about it, you know, if you we think about what happens in in a in death, and when we go to someone's funeral, we tell stories about that person. It's cat. It's part of the grieving process to tell the stories to, if you like, to tell talk about the person and what they meant to you. And it's, it's a real honoring of the pro of kind of the process. So it allowed those individuals, particularly individuals who were having to take on a new organization, you know, be part of something new. It's part, it's part of the process of of saying goodbye and putting the past behind them and saying, this is, this is now we're leaving this now. This is over. So, you know, so even kind of having had been able to tell their story, to show to the others what, what the deeper meaning of this organization and why they joined it. Because what we've got to remember is the. Didn't join. They didn't choose to join this acquiring organization. Yeah, they've been taken over. So, you know, it's about giving them space, um, to kind of kind of get their head around that and and therefore, kind of let it go and then just even the movement of walking out of the room and putting that behind them, and then go into this new place, it's that movement. So it's a very symbolic process that we that you know is quite and I would say it's sacred, and I don't think we use that word enough in organizations. There are things in organizations that are sacred, but we don't talk about them. They're not explicit. And so, you know, I think for me, this is sacred work, because what you're doing is you're helping, you're honoring that organization, and you're honoring the people who contributed to it as well, and not just the people who were there then, but all the people in the past who've contributed to make it the success that it is up to that moment. So it's both really, it's that, it's for the people who are telling the story and it and it's to be witness, to be seen and to be, you know, respected and honored as well.

That sort of ceremony and ritual is are words that we don't use in organizations either, but, but what you're describing here feels ceremonial. It feels a ritual. It feels those types of things, and those things do have power, even though we don't always think of them as having power. Um, I want to sort of broaden this out that was really helpful and insightful in terms of drawing out how this process works and then why it matters. I want to try and bring in something else that I know you're passionate about, and I want to try and weave it into this conversation. So one of the senses that I have, as I get older, myself, and as I, as I you know, work with, you know, more people who are older, and generally, you know, worked in a more experienced way. I wonder if, as people get older, they gain or they maintain more of their sort of organizational memory or cultural memory. And I wonder if they are less likely, to some extent, to be thrown off course by the impacts of trauma, or maybe they've seen things before. And I think potentially, you know, with that comes an ability to see, you know, back in time to past traumas and how we've overcome them, and to, you know, to go slowly and to do things in a good way. And I think a word that you sometimes use is, you know, sort of elders, or wisdom around elders. I wonder if you could expand on that a little bit and then talk about the importance of those sort of elder individuals and organizations in society, of the memories they hold of their experiences and of how that can be helpful in in keeping organization to society on the right path. I know this is a bit of a curveball, big question, but I just thought I'd check it out, because I'm curious about how those those topics. Well,

I mean, I I got into exploring eldership when I did quite a lot of work around the hero's journey a few years ago in leadership, and, you know, kind of and I accompany many leaders as a guide on a journey that they're on, you know. So for instance, if they are on a journey of transformation, whether it's a culture of transformation, or, you know, dealing with a trauma or a change in the organization. You know, there is this kind of sense of going into the unknown. And if you think about it, I mean, look what's happened now. You know, with the pandemic, we're in the we've stepped into the unknown. And of course, what that can happen is we can panic instead of kind of going, Okay, well, actually, life is all unknown. We step into the unknown every morning, but we don't consciously think, because we set life up to feel like it's the same from day to day to day, because that's what we like as human beings. But actually, you know, for me, leadership is having the capacity and the wisdom to be able to step into that unknown place and be okay with the unknown. But of course, in doing that, you have to be really tuned into your own if you like wisdom, and I'm not talking about a narcissistic wisdom here in terms of a wisdom, you know, through my expertise and knowledge and so on. I'm talking about a much more conscious wisdom that's, that's if you like, we, you know that if you like, we're part of but we did, we rarely acknowledge, you know, the fact that we've come from. 1000s of generations. You know, we we're part of many, many systems that have, that have survived so many different things. That's wisdom. It's taking that wisdom and being able to tune into that. And for me, when, when we're going into the unknown, that's what we're tuning into. You know, we're caught. We're calling out, if you like, to the to the to the bigger systems, to say, you know, I'm not bigger than you i but, you know, I'm part of this. And how can I contribute? And I think in organizations, you know, I was around kind of in the 90s when they got rid of lots of management layers and so on. And, you know, and lots of people took early retirement, and I think, I think that was tragic. Now looking back, you know, as a young person, I was like, yeah, that's not a bad thing. But now, now

I see the impact of that, James, I see the impact of that in organizations where that wisdom is missing, you know, it's desperately missing in organizations and organizations, you know, we've, we've, we've mentioned, we've touched on a little bit is, you know, they become very narcissistic. You know, they think that they can survive on their own, and that they don't need anybody else, and they're not part of anything else, and it's like, no, we're part of a much bigger we park part of so many systems in lots of ways, every system. So you know, it's that wisdom that I'm talking about, and that's really is missing in organizations. The you know, I don't, I don't know whether it's partly as a result of what we've experienced with with people leaving these organizations, but we've lost that, that ability to be able to step to feel grounded in the unknown, and to feel assured that, you know we, we trust the path. We know that the things will emerge when they're meant to emerge. If we, you know, if we're intuitive enough to listen to the signs that we are not arrogant enough to think that we're right, that we stay open to those things that we embrace difference of opinions, and because it's all information as part of that system. So for me, that's what, you know, that's, that's, I suppose, what I feel strongly that we need to bring back, because it's, it's so missing, and people are longing for it, really longing for the for wisdom. You know, we all have to, kind of see, kind of, you know, how, how the pandemic has been, managed to feel, you know, where are the leaders? Where are the elders? You know, where are those people who who have perhaps been through traumatic, difficult times and have gained deep wisdom as a result of it. And you know, when we're looking at elders, we are looking at people like Nelson Mandela, because, you know, his journey was such a hero's journey. He was imprisoned. He had to learn about the people who'd imprisoned him. You know, he had to take use that time wisely, so that when he came came out from prison, he could create, you know, a much more integrated society, you know. So it was like he had to somehow tune into that much, that bigger certain level of service than than himself. It's

fun that you said service. I wrote down service a couple of minutes ago. It feels like a lot of this work is service oriented work, and so I think it feels like it's probably really comfortable or comforting in a good way, to be around wisdom and around the sort of eldership. And if we can find these individuals, or grow these individuals in organization, it could lead to a better sense of health in organizations, a better sense of thriving, probably more stability, is my sort of sense. But it feels like it's probably really hard to create space and to grow. And as you were speaking, I had one of those, like, a visual image, you know, you say, like, you have a sock, and you've done it a few times, and then when does it stop being a sock? Right? Like, that's what a lot of our organizations are like. But when we've got long service and people who've been there and they've got that organizational memory, we might have replaced the sock with bits, but the bits are bigger, right? Like, somebody's been there a long time, they can see it. But when we, when we move to shorter and shorter, 10 years in organizations, and people are there, like, two or three years or, you know, it's sort of contracted like that, we've got a sock made up of, like a million little bits, and, like, people don't really know the the, you know, the breadth of the organization and history of organization, and that feels intuitively unstable and and potentially more. Self serving and all those types of things. So how can we create space in organizations for more wisdom? How can we create space for listening? How do we find the confidence or carve out the prioritization to do that in a world that feels increasingly pace driven, you know, competitive, in some ways, short termist. How do we, how do we find that in our organization?

I don't think it's for every organization, to be honest. I mean, I think, I think we live in a world where we don't believe that things are finite. And

will end, and it's probably it's right for them to come to an end. So I think that's the first thing I would say, you know, I think we, I think part of our difficulty when we're, we're in consultancy and coaching, is believing that we've got to rescue, we've got to say this organization, we know that we've got to make this right and so on. And actually, sometimes I think, well, not sometimes, I think all the time, we always need to hold lightly what is is to use the word you've just used, what's in service of the greater good. And is it time for this organization to come to an end? Is it? Is it time to come to an end? And we often don't think about the ending, that we think that we've put an awful lot of effort into the beginning of an organization and the growth of an organization. We never think about its end. I mean, we don't like death anyway, so, but we don't think about its end. And I think sometimes it's important to, first of all think about that, and certainly, as a coach, as a consultant, is to actually hold that lightly. Is this, you know, what am I doing here? Because the most important thing is you mustn't be helping or rescuing an organization. You know, you are there as a resource. And you know what, what resources are being it's being called are being called for. So I think, I think that's a really important thing to think about, but so it won't be for everyone and but, but I certainly think that a rethink about eldership is is really going to be important in terms of, where's the wisdom? Where's the person who's accessing the wisdom of the system? Where are those people, you know? Where are those people who, who kind of are connected into the roots of the system? You know, because to grow, to grow, if you think about a tree growing to grow higher, its roots grow down, you know. So it's like it doesn't, kind of the roots aren't stay the same, and then the tree grows. Because if that happens, the tree falls over. The roots have to go deeper. So we have to go deeper and deeper into the roots of the system. So who's there, who can do that? Who understands the importance of that, who holds those sacred things that have, that that are part of an organization, you know, who's connect, who really understands the founders driving vision, you know, not the, not necessarily the one that we like to put on the wall and say, Oh, that's our vision. I mean, the deeper you know we you know founders may create and birth an organization or a business for a purpose, for a much deeper purpose. What's that? And it it's always in service, in some shape or form to society, and we've forgotten that. We've really forgotten it. So it won't be for everybody this, it won't be for all organizations. And that's fine, because maybe, maybe now is this, you know, I think we certainly live in, in tight in a time of endings, um, I certainly think there's going to be a lot more collapsing of organizations and systems. But I think if you I mean, this is such a great opportunity. Isn't it, with this hybrid working and this, this, what an opportunity now to kind of go right, let's rethink, let's let's rethink and go back to purpose. What is it we're here to do? What was this organization founded on? What was the founder purpose? What was it that they were trying to achieve? And I think that's the place to go to so. And I think, I think at the moment, people are too busy trying to kind of survive the pandemic and not thinking about, how do we grow beyond this? You know, how do we get beyond that? This is such an opportunity in time to rethink organizations, to rethink the culture, rethink, you know, creating healthy environments. You know, I've got a bit of a bug bear about kind of all this well being stuff. And, you know, in in principle, I don't obviously, it's wonderful. And, you know, health is fun, is so important. But it's, for me, a lot of surface stuff is like, we need to go deeper and create healthy cultures and that. So it's what it'll be for those people, those leaders who have got some vision, if you like, for that health, for wanting that health.

Yeah, I've got shared views with you on on the surface approach to well being. I think that the picture you painted is just wonderful. One of the things that's been in my mind about the pandemic is that it feels like many people in many organizations are trying to go back to something. And I don't think there is a back to go to. I don't think there is a destination back there. I think that that we probably need to go forward to something else, or, you know, reimagine what we were about, what was serving us two years ago. I don't think is the destination we should be heading to now, in my personal view. And I think I think that's awfully scary, because I think having a destination is great, but it feels like there isn't one. And I feel like that's a societal thing. What do you think about that?

Well, I mean, what we're in is liminal space. So there is, there is such a thing between the gap between the past and the future, and that's the liminal space we're in. So, you know, I like to think of that as the doorway, and if you like, it's the space between two rooms. It's that doorway, and that's where we are right now. So everybody's, you know, maybe people trying to pull back to the old room or move forward into a new room, but actually we're on. We're in the doorway, and this is such a rich place to operate from. This is where we can be as human beings at our most creative and but, but most people are not, don't understand liminal space. Don't know what that feels like. They've never consciously experienced it. And it's a place where we we see what what may be emerging, and where the energy is, you know, to me, and so what's, what's, where's the energy in this? So it's very much kind of using our felt sense and and kind of getting a sense of a vision and maybe a future and maybe a path to follow, or, you know, kind of a spark of interest somewhere. It's how, and I think, for me, that's where we should be supporting leaders right now, is is supporting and holding that liminal space for them so that they can start to work out and just take time out to kind of reflect, deeply reflect on what's what, what at an intuitively, much intuitive, the deeper level is being called for right now. What's being called for, you know, because, if you like, you're right, going back, going forward. And as a society, it's the same thing, you know, we're all in survival, rather kind of thinking, you know, actually, there was some amazing things that happened in the pandemic. Wasn't there that gave us energy, this shared experience, this feeling that we're all in this together, blah, blah, blah. Those are things that kind of energized us. Sadly, fear has been brought into it, and now we've got division. So we're now back in survival, and we're being kept in survival, rather than Where's, where's the conversations around, around, kind of the future and where, you know, how, how are we using this liminal space? And most of the times we get stuck in that survival place. So that's Yeah, I think, you know, the more we understand how to work with liminal space, that's where our creativity comes off. That's where the new the new stuff, is bubbling away, and it is there. You can feel it sometimes, but yeah, for a lot of people, they're very much kind of stuck in the fear side of it. Yeah,

and it's difficult, and then there's so much interesting stuff in that space of emergence and space of limited and space of creativity. But I think we might leave that for another conversation. I think in the interest of time, I'm going to bring us to an end. I think that's been a great conversation just before conversation. Just before we wrap up, could you let people know how they could find out a little bit more about you? Should they wish to do? So

yes, you can. So you can look at my website, which is www, dot, Zina, me, which is our words, n, e, n, a, m, e.co.uk, so you can go and have a look at the website. Sign up for the newsletters if you're interested. And also kind of find me on LinkedIn, email, LinkedIn. So yeah, there's lots, lots of stuff on there as

well. Okay, brilliant. Well, thank you so much. A pleasure chatting to you and to you, Jane, thank you.