Workplace Wellness - Lizzie Benton, Liberty Mind UK

Lizzie Benton describes herself as a 'progressive culture coach'. 

Her business Liberty Mind helps its clients to adopt an alternative way of working that unleashes people to create their best work.

In this episode Lizzie shares her thoughts on the world of wellbeing in the workplace - or not 'wellbeing' perhaps.

For example:
- it's NOT a separate entity, a label which can come across as patronising or condescending
- it's NOT always something for which the HR department should have total responsibility
- it's NOT about covering every single eventuality (clue: it is about mutual trust)
- it's NOT a 'should do' exercise, it's key to future recruitment and talent retention

Lizzie also shares truly helpful insights for those, possibly larger, organisations where traditional blueprints may be harder to discard and start afresh.

And as is our habit, here's the books by Elizabeth Gilbert that Lizzie mentioned: Eat Pray Love and Big Magic - Creative Living Beyond Fear.

Questions?  Ping them our way! Simply message us through any of our social channels or email caroline@raisingthebaa.com and we'll ensure it is answered in a future episode or privately by one of our guest experts, whichever is most suitable.

Enjoy - and thank ewe for listening 😊🎧

FREE resources:

A wealth of in-depth blogs on all aspects of company culture
Lizzie's own podcast: Workplace Liberation - Make It Thrive

Sheep, Shepherd or Dog - which one are ewe? Take our personality quiz and find out.

Connect with the speakers via LinkedIn:
Lizzie Benton - Founder at Liberty Mind UK and Semco Style Pathfinder
Caroline Palmer - Top Dog and co-founder, Raising the Baa
Chris Farnsworth - Head Shepherd and co-founder, Raising the Baa & author of 'Sheep Shepherd Dog - Building a Magnificent Team Around You'

What are your main team challenges and desires? Maybe we can help?
Book in a 15-minute Exploratory Call now and let's see.

Chapters

• 0:00 Transcription!

Transcript

Lizzie (00:03):

Really, I would say that these organisations who are kind of stuck in their ways are starting to kind of look over their shoulder and think, oh gosh, I think we need to change a few things because the way we are operating is not only not going to attract future talent, but it's also going to really massively slow our business down.

Caroline (00:20):

Hello and thank you for tuning into Sheep Dip, the podcast from Raising the Baa global leaders in team building with sheep. So workplace wellness, what does it all mean? It's such a huge topic, which is why for this series of Sheep Dip we have invited a really wide variety of guests who are experts in their particular field. They're from the corporate side as well as consultancies and they'll be sharing their insights and giving you some truly practical tips on how you can improve your own workplace wellness. Feel free to join in the conversation on socials using the hashtag workplacewellness. But meanwhile, let's get on with the show with your hosts, Chris Farnsworth, who's our Head Shepherd, who co-founded the business with myself, Caroline Palmer. Enjoy the show.

Caroline (01:11):

Well, hello, and today we are joined by Lizzie, Lizzie Benton, who's a company culture coach, founder of Liberty Mind UK. Hello Lizzie, how are you doing?

Lizzie (01:22):

Hi. Very well, thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

Caroline (01:24):

It is our pleasure, really looking forward to hearing all about you and Liberty Mind and the whole subject really of company culture. So tell our listeners a little bit about yourself, your background, how Liberty Mind came about.

Lizzie (01:36):

So I stumbled into workplace culture really and I was at the time, many, many moons ago, in a marketing agency and I became Head of Operations. So my sole role there was to develop the team and the company culture and I just absolutely loved it and I was bringing a lot of personal development and coaching practises into the organisation because I'm a bit of a self-development junkie and everything that I was learning, I was bringing into the team and I absolutely loved it. And unfortunately I was made redundant. The company went through a messy buyout and I thought, you know, I really want to keep doing this work. So I founded Liberty Mind in 2018 and since then I've been supporting a range of organisations to help them develop their organisational culture and their team development as well. So really I kind of stumbled into it just because I really loved being able to bring in those coaching practises, those sort of self-development topics into the workplace really.

Caroline (02:35):

So as a child, what did you want to be? Did you have any driving ambitions then?

Lizzie (02:40):

I've never had any kind of driving ambition to do a particular role. I always admired those that did, that knew that they wanted to be police officers or nurses or archaeologists or something, but I never knew when I was growing up what I wanted to be. And I'm very blessed that my mum always just said to me, do something you love, just follow your passions and you'll find something you'll enjoy. And I'm really grateful that I got that advice so early on. So unfortunately, no, I never led a specific career. I mean, back when I was a teenager I even did a fashion diploma because I was fascinated in fashion and making clothes. I just kept following passions and I hope that that's always going to be my kind of career for the rest of my life. But who knows where it might take me. You know, when I'm 50 or 60, I'm hoping that I'll always follow my curiosity.

Chris (03:30):

I love that. I mean, for starters, I always had a passion for the outdoors. I always wanted to be around farming, animals, that sort of thing. And so, I get that point of actually, is this going to get me closer to what I want to do, which is farming and therefore I then became a contract shepherd. But I'd also like to pick up the other point, which is actually always in the green and growing stage. In farming there's four stages, four key stages. You know, you've got the seedling, you've got the green and growing stage, you've got the ripe stage and then you move on to the rotten stage. And really it's having that curiosity to stay in the green and growing stage at whatever time in life. You know, I don't think it's any different at the age of 60 or at the age of 30, you know, that is really being in that green and growing stage where you've got the challenges and you are wanting to accept it, then that's where fun happens, isn't it?

Lizzie (04:26):

Yeah, a hundred percent. I always say that I'm happy to always be a student in terms of that mindset and I'm always curious about things. So I kind of don't like the label of expert because it almost makes you sound like you've finished and that you have kind of completed the journey. And I don't ever think any of us have completed the journey. I'm still following, always learning, always dedicating myself to new theories and new practises that I can experiment with. And I'm really inclined to try and encourage others with that mindset because that's helped me kind of get to where I am today. And it helps my clients massively when they're in that more experimental phase rather than, oh we have to reach this end destination which doesn't actually exist.

Caroline (05:08):

That's right. That's so true. There's a chap, Richard Wilkins, who writes these lovely little tiny books, black and white books, the 'Yellow Books', they're great just full of quotes and he always used to say, but how will you know when you are there or what's there, you know? Yeah, fair comment. You know, when is there, what is there?

Chris (05:29):

And I really think that's about enjoying the journey and the people who live for the weekend rather than live for Monday morning. And that's a big difference, isn't it? I mean every day's a Monday to me, but in a good way. Yeah. Because I'm excited to go and start the week. I've always said, you shouldn't really wake up alarmed, you know, if you have to set an alarm clock to get up, you're in the wrong job. It was illustrated perfectly by my son who was terrible for getting out of bed. Absolutely nightmare. Except when we went on holiday at four o'clock in the morning and he was up before us with suitcase, ready to go. That's when you're excited to go wherever. That's excited. When you greet the day with that much energy and that enthusiasm, you're doing the right thing, aren't you?

Lizzie (06:22):

Yeah. Oh my gosh. A hundred percent. I love that. It's so true. I think there was something in a book I read called The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod and he sort of said that, to get up early, because it's all about that 5:00 am club, which I'm not a massive fan of the 5:00 am but he did say something in terms of, if you're trying to be a morning person, which generally I've never really been a morning person, it's just developed with age. And he said something around, actually having that mindset of what are you excited to get up for in the morning that helps you because you know, just like you explained there, like getting up for a holiday or getting up for Christmas, you know, the children are up at the crack of dawn because Santa's arrived. It's like if we have that same excitement for the next morning, we are more likely to actually get up and get on with things rather than kind of delaying or hitting the snooze button.

Caroline (07:07):

And imagining about work, I mean I know sometimes it's perhaps sort of concern about what's going on, gotta do this, gotta do that, it's a sort of excitedness, not necessarily in a negative way. I think it's just because you're conscious of things going on and I mean I generally look forward to each day, even if there is quite a lot to do, because, well, it's a good reason to get up. This series, we're all about bringing teams together, the corporate team together. So ultimately yes, it is about culture isn't it? Which fits in very well with what you do. And this series of Sheep Dip, as our listener will probably know, is that it's been focused on workplace wellness, which is one of those topics that's I guess has been trending if you like, since the pandemic particularly.

Caroline (07:49):

So a bit like you said you didn't really like the term expert, in a way as this series has gone on, I'm not a hundred percent happy with workplace wellness but there we are. It's what it is. Because I feel with all the people we've spoken to, it's been really interesting exploring different aspects of it. At the end of the day, to my mind anyway, it should fall out of culture if you like. If you're sort of going to chunk up culture is there, isn't it? And I know some probably don't even like the word culture probably, but there we are. So wellness and workplace wellbeing, all that can fall out from it. So I don't know what your thoughts are on that, whether you feel it's wrong to kind of almost carve it out and should it be the responsibility of HR or what? I'm really interested to know what your thoughts are on it.

Lizzie (08:30):

Well I totally agree, you know, wellbeing and wellness has really had a resurgence in the workplace and especially, you know, with mental health always being at the forefront of a lot of organisations now. For me personally, and it's a lot from my experience, I struggle with the idea that wellbeing and wellness should be sort of like a separate initiative or a separate programme because actually what I feel like we're doing is not really getting to the root cause of why people are stressed or unhealthy at work. And so really sometimes it feels a little bit like we are putting a plaster over the real problems of what's going on in the workplace. So things like burnout, overwork, frustrations with the system and really a lot of the ways that we work, how we are running our businesses, how we are doing things within our cultures is breaking people.

Lizzie (09:20):

And that's what we are not willing to face is that actually the way we work is breaking people. And what organisations a lot of the time would rather do is run a wellbeing or a wellness programme rather than really get to the root cause of the issue and actually to support people to work better in the workplace. So I'm likewise, I have a bit of a struggle with wellbeing and wellness and I can also find it incredibly patronising and condescending with a lot of organisations who roll out these incentives. I went to a workplace conference last year and you know, it was all around wellness and wellbeing in the workplace and I just found some of the programmes, incentives, benefits there really condescending because you know, for example it was like there were stands there about financial education for teams and individuals and I thought well that's incredibly patronising. Do you have pay transparency? Do you have pay equality? Are you paying people right in the first place? But you are telling people how to manage their money. So I had a real strong reaction shall we say, to some of those programmes or incentives that get rolled out.

Caroline (10:27):

If you were to Google workplace wellbeing, you do get, you're right, you get financial wellbeing now, don't you? And as you say, there is this interesting sort of juxtaposition. I'm not saying it's the wrong thing to do. I'm sure some companies are doing it incredibly well because they have got the transparency right etc. And it's just helping them. It seems to me again, certainly from all the people we've been talking with, in that I feel for the people who are in HR let's say, let's broadly put it under there because that's generally where it sits, isn't it? Because I think people have had to learn an awful lot of stuff that they did in theories and you know, practises that they had no idea about when they went into it, and sometimes it's been of their own desire to learn more about because perhaps they've had a situation where they've had to learn things for themselves and therefore they're happy to help others.

Caroline (11:11):

But it seems to sort of now, especially with the hybrid situation and more and more people working away remotely, whatever, seems to me like you've got to think about what's going on in their personal lives and it's hard isn't? I mean I know you shouldn't necessarily, because I always hate the expression work life balance, it's a lot of rubbish really, because I think if you love your work you can't help it. Whether it's your own business or your job, you can't help it being part of your life and that's fine actually for me as long as you know when to switch off. I just feel for the people, they've now got to learn a whole load more about a subject that perhaps isn't really what they wanted to be involved with. I mean did you see that with your clients, let's say?

Lizzie (11:51):

Yeah, a hundred percent. A lot of the individual HR or change makers as I call them internally, are constantly having to do initiatives or programmes things constantly. I mean you look at the, even the past few years since Covid, you've had to think about working from home policies and procedures and how does that look And you've had to look at, you know, diversity and inclusion because there was a huge spotlight on that in 2020 as well. So diversity, inclusion, you've then obviously got all the mental health things that went along with Covid, like the loneliness and isolation. So they're constantly almost fighting fires in terms of what's going on because everything that's happening outside of work comes into work eventually. I do really feel for them with the pains of it and it's almost like they have to take the ownership of this, but really, I do feel that it's the system that kind of ends up meaning that they're constantly almost like parenting people essentially and having to help them with these situations.

Lizzie (12:50):

Whereas in reality there needs to be that much more collaborative kind of co-creation of what can be provided within the workplace rather than HR basically rolling out all these different initiatives and programmes for everything under the sun that could possibly come up. Couldn't you really? I mean even in regards to basic things like, you know, maternity and paternity leave, then do you look at also what happens with baby loss? Do you have a policy for baby loss? Do you have a policy for IVF and fertility and it can just go on and on.

Caroline (13:21):

Think I saw one about pet loss.

Lizzie (13:22):

Yeah, exactly. So they're totally overwhelmed with all of these programmes and for many of them it's actually unnecessary. It's just purely recreating the culture and supporting people looking at the system that they're working within rather than having these layers and layers and layers of benefits and programmes that just go on forever.

Chris (13:42):

I think what you're describing is a shepherd because when we go out into the field, you know, we don't have all these fancy names, we name things very simply. It's lame or it's got a bit of mastitis about it. But even though we're looking after a large number of sheep, we treat all sheep as individuals. And I think it really comes down to being able to look and listen really at the individual sheep, even though there's a lot of them. And the more individual you can make your process, the better shepherd you are. And so the interesting part is when you said being present, it is not driving around the field and looking at the sheep. It is actually walking, being present, being totally focused. Its not going, oh actually I'm going to have a telephone call at the same time as walking around the field because no, you are not present. You have to look for the minutiae, which gives you the clue of what is wrong. Your first impression can be totally misled. And I think actually it's the time and the individual basis is what we need to do, and to really check in with people and it is not having a one size fits all, it's treating them as individuals and that's the skill. Scaling up is really hard because actually you get away from that individual skill, but it's about empowering the right action at the right time.

Lizzie (15:19):

Yeah. Oh a hundred percent. I love that analogy so much. Honestly, that is spot on because it's exactly that, you know, we kind of create these one size fits all policies and programmes and then if anyone dares to kind of like ever to slightly go out, it's kind of like, oh no, you can't do that. I mean, a perfect example is things like having the autonomy to take leave when you need to, just general complete flexibility and self-management, that is something I'm a massive ambassador for and yet we keep creating these policies and procedures that offer everyone. So, you get the typical, I think one example of this I've had that that really hits the nail on the head is someone saying, oh I'm going to have to take a week off because I'm giving a bone marrow transplant so I'm going to donate that, can I have a week off?

Lizzie (16:04):

And the HR person's like, well if I give you a week off, I'm gonna have to give everyone else another week off. And it's like, no. Or is everyone else going to go and give a bone marrow transplant for a week off? And it's that kind of lack of individuality and trust that's present that really ends up with us creating these policies and procedures that are just overly controlling people and not actually allowing them to thrive and actually be healthy. We're all adults in the workplace. We know when we work best, we know when we need to take time off, but we still have these kind of really outdated, archaic policies that people have to strictly follow in the workplace. And it's incredibly frustrating.

Chris (16:45):

So Lizzie, do you think that actually you should have all the time off you need as long as you do your job?

Lizzie (16:52):

Yeah, a hundred percent.

Chris (16:53):

Yeah. So you just, I mean like for myself, I'm a contract shepherd. I go and do the work I need to do and all the rest of the time is off.

Lizzie (17:02):

Yeah.

Chris (17:03):

And it's myself to discipline which goes, no actually I need to just go round the sheep today and make sure they're okay. But once that's all done, let's go down the beach. You know, why not?

Lizzie (17:13):

Yeah, exactly. Very true though. You know, we are entering an era where we can work smarter, not harder. I mean, the huge increase of technology and AI technology that's, we're all saying, oh, it's going to replace jobs, it's not going to completely replace jobs, but it's going to make us work smarter. But for some reason we're still working the industrial revolution nine to five. And it's crazy. You know, if we're able to work smarter and we are much more intelligent as individuals and we know our rhythm and our rhyme of how we work best, why are we still controlling people with these kind of outdated ways of working? So by all means it won't work for everyone. You know, it takes a lot of time. Like you say, I also obviously work for myself and I am very self-disciplined. I know when I need to push a bit harder. I know also that my business wouldn't run without me taking self-care time and ensuring that I'm working in a sustainable way. And that's what's kind of lacking sometimes is this sustainability, you know, we are really hyper productivity, but what about sustainability actually rather than people productivity, people sustainability. That's kind of where my head ends up going.

Chris (18:23):

And I see that many times with farmers, you know, we want sustainable farming, but equally we want farmers to be sustainable in themselves. No good absolutely hammering the youngsters to do as much work when they peter out at the age of 50 or 60 and they can't move and they're then frustrated and no good for anybody. So I'm with you on that. You know, actually it's about going for the long haul, always enjoying Monday morning and yeah, I think that's absolutely spot on. I'll take that one from you. That's for sure.

Caroline (19:00):

If you're enjoying listening to this show, we'd really appreciate your following and rating Sheep Dip wherever you tune into podcasts. And if you've got a burning question arising from this show or there's a topic that you'd like us to cover, simply email me caroline@raisingthebaa.com or send a message through any of our social channels.

Caroline (19:21):

I was just slightly backtracking in a way. The kind of clients you work with, we didn't really cover that. What kind of clients do you work with right now? And the reason I'm asking the question is because I'm thinking that people listening to this might be thinking, okay, so she works with this sort of company, I wonder what they've done to help improve their culture and perhaps that's outside of an impact onto workplace wellbeing. Is there something you could share about that?

Lizzie (19:44):

Absolutely. So I mean in terms of the clients that I work with, it really ranges because I think work in itself is broken for so many businesses. So in terms of sort of the clients that I work with, it's everything from charities and not for profits all the way to sort of tech, you know, really high-end future tech kind of companies who are going through rounds of investment in order to excel and accelerate their products. So it really varies. Relating it back to kind of wellness and wellbeing, a lot of the clients that I work with are very progressive in the way that they work. So you know, for example, one of the tech startups that I work with very regularly, they are very much leaning towards self-management. So you know, their teams decide their goals, their teams decide when and how they work.

Lizzie (20:29):

That isn't a top-down decision. This is a team collaborative decision that needs to be taken. And the reason this is so good and it really works for the team dynamic is because, well first of all they're completely remote as well. So you've got everyone from Scotland, Europe and India, Asia. So you've got a real mixture of teams. But also because those people also have different needs, so again going back to that individuality aspect, you know, you've got parents who are within this organisation, people want to be able to pick up their children from school, be able to have that human connection so that their children know their parents and they can check in on them when they've finished school. And I think it's all of these small things, you know, when we come down to the bare bones of wellbeing, it is human connection.

Lizzie (21:13):

Are we all connected as a team? Do we feel like we understand each other as individuals? So there's a real kind of high sense of connection and understanding people from an individual perspective. So one of the sessions that I did in the early stages with that tech startup was all about actually getting to know each other better but on a much deeper level than just work. So understanding what are your kind of aspirations in life, you know, when you know that about somebody, it's amazing how much you want to support them and help them and how you feel supported and helped along. So even that and recognising people's activations for stress. Like, you know, people sharing: actually, when I'm stressed, can you like just give me the day to like don't speak to me because like I'm not great when I'm, you know.

Lizzie (21:58):

So even at that level, understanding each other's stress triggers and talking about how you want to be approached. So again, coming down to that very human level of co-creating a workplace together. And so for me, working specifically on that client I would say I would never label it as wellness or wellbeing, but just from the way that they interact, the way that they check in with each other at the start of a meeting, you know, checking in, asking how everyone's doing. Also doing a bit of a stress gauge on the Friday session. Like how's this week been for you in terms of a stress gauge. All of those elements are making sure that these conversations are always happening and they're not something that's under the surface that people don't feel like they can talk about. That they're able to go, do you know what, this week it's been a high stress week. And everyone be like, yeah, okay, what can we do to help that? Having the conversations and creating that psychologically safe environment rather than just kind of going, oh you're stressed? oh well do you know what, you should go and do an hour's yoga at lunchtime.

Caroline (23:02):

Yeah. Do you feel that there's a, because I know that particular example there you're talking about is a startup and there's two questions in my head. One is, would you say it's easier if you're starting out because of course you can sort of shape it, mould it from the off, can't you, whereas a lot of our clients are huge companies, been going for years. So do you have any tips for those sort of companies that, you know, you're working in a big multinational company, so you can't just decide, right, we're going to change it all for this. What would be a tip for them to, you know, maybe at the team leader level, maybe listening to this, thinking well how on earth can I do that when actually the policies are there and I can't influence them because I'm just one little tiny cog in a wheel. Do you think they can, what would you suggest?

Lizzie (23:45):

So I would definitely say that going back to your first statement is that yes, as a small business or a startup, it is so much easier to throw away the traditional business blueprint and set out with much more intentioned ideas about what your workplace culture is going to be like and how you're going to work together. With the larger companies there is a lot of bureaucracy, there's a lot of red tape, there's a lot of internal politics that can start to take shape. So people do feel very, what should we say, disempowered to be able to do anything and a hundred percent you can still shape your team. So in terms of where I would start if I was a team leader within a corporate is understanding the team's frustrations. You know, having a conversation. If you first of all have a psychologically safe environment that's making sure that people are confident enough to speak up without feeling like they're going to be sort of shouted at.

Lizzie (24:38):

So first of all, ensure that you have a psychologically safe environment, but then also have a conversation as a team. What is your biggest tensions and frustrations that exist right now? You know, what's going on within the team dynamic that you can start addressing because that often is going to be the thing that actually shapes how you experiment and how you move forward. So rather than just saying, picking something out of the sky that's not going to feel relevant to your team, it's going, what's annoying everyone? What's kind of making everyone feel tense? And it could be like, I'm sick of having meetings before meetings or it could be, I want to use my lunch break, but we have a 12:00 PM meeting, what's that about? It's actually enabling people to voice their frustrations and their tensions and starting there and saying, right, how do we change this for the next eight weeks? What could we experiment with? So that's kind of, I suppose my words of advice to a team leader trying to shape shift.

Caroline (25:34):

When we have our teams that come together out and we take them away from their whole office environment, whatever that might look like these days and they get in the field with the sheep. They are a team and suddenly it levels them all, doesn't it? There's no hierarchy involved because they've no clue what they're doing. And that again, I guess, it's a bit like being a startup really, because there's no rule books there, they're just starting with a blank sheet. But nevertheless they've got to quickly get into, you know, listening and finding people's opinions. They have to learn all that quite quickly and it's quite telling, isn't it? Sometimes, you know, it's not necessarily just the the leader or the louder person's opinions you need to listen to. You need to really understand what the quiet people are saying and not saying if it's the case maybe. So it is checking in with them, isn't it? And I think that comes out in the field.

Chris (26:19):

I like the idea of the ewe always looking at the grass beyond, you know, the grass is always greener on the other side. And I'm just wondering if, like you've got this new startup they've gone to, you can have as many holidays as you want and you just do the work. Is there a part of the other organisations, whatever, looking over the shoulder and going, we're losing people to this sort of work style and you know, getting that envy factor of the sheep looking at the fence going, if only I was on that green grass. Would that be a case? Is that possibly why we sort of slowly shift from one side to the other?

Lizzie (27:02):

Yeah, absolutely. I think especially we are now seeing Gen Z coming into the workforce and they're a huge influence on our ways of working. So, you know, this is a generation who massively value freedom and autonomy and if we were to kind of stereotype previous generations, it's like previously we were able to kind of be coerced with crazy benefits and quirky office spaces and all of those kind of things and generation Z have kind of looked through all of that. They've gone, no, I've seen what that's done to everyone else. I've seen what that's done to my parents, my grandparents and I don't want to work in that way. And so they've been brought up in an environment where they value their freedom and autonomy and also they're incredibly hyper aware of diversity and inclusion. Far more than any generation before them.

Lizzie (27:57):

So they're not really willing to enter into these workplaces who are still being very overly hierarchical, playing power dynamics all the time when there's actually nothing behind that power except a title. So really I would say that these organisations who are kind of stuck in their ways are starting to look over their shoulder and think, oh gosh, I think we need to change a few things because the way we are operating is not only not going to attract future talent, but it's also going to really massively slow our business down because, you know, if we look at the disruption that's happened, we're going to keep going through cycles of disruption because we're in that volatile world. You know, we've seen Covid, we've seen a war in Ukraine, we've seen Brexit, we've seen food shortages and things like that. We've seen climate, massive climate change and that's only going to continue to grow as well.

Lizzie (28:45):

So if we are not in an adaptable, agile mindset to all of these things that are happening outside of our business and just kind of try and keep the status quo as it were, we're going to start seeing more organisations become obsolete. You know, it's going to be the whole like Netflix and Blockbuster situation again where you've got a really young disruptor coming through and saying, well this is how people want to do things now. And Blockbuster, you know, eventually went as it did. So I do think these more sort of traditional organisations are going to have to start to adapt.

Caroline (29:15):

That sounds like sheep herding as well. I'm sorry to say all these analogies, but we've always talked about change, but you just put it in a slightly different way there. But yeah, because you can imagine if you're trying to herd some sheep, they are quite fast and you have to be agile and think on your feet, it's not necessarily about being fast yourself, but being agile in your mind and reacting to that change which you possibly weren't expecting.

Chris (29:39):

I think the biggest point is actually having what you said earlier, which is having the safe place to challenge and to speak up and to be confident that you're not going to be shot down. The sheep run past me, what most people do is turn to me and go, well why did you let them pass? Instead of asking me, how can I empower you to be even stronger? And that's that subtle difference, which to get a team to change their point of view is incredibly difficult to do.

Caroline (30:10):

Is there anything that you would like to share with people either in words now or is there a downloadable something or other that you could perhaps share with the listener which might help them in their journey towards improving their own culture?

Lizzie (30:22):

Well I, I write a lot on my blog about all sorts of areas of progressive workplaces. So if you want to sign up to my newsletter, there's a blog post published every month so that you can get some taste of things. There's also a lot of, I've written a lot of eBooks and things as well, so there's always resources available because I'm really passionate in being able to share and educate as much as possible about what's coming out.

Caroline (30:44):

Well that's brilliant. Well we'll certainly be putting the link to Liberty Mind on the show notes, which is fantastic. So I had one other question for you before we have the final quick fire one, which is really your view on the whole hybrid working situation. Obviously we are all about bringing teams together. I mean, how important do you think that is to company culture and why would you say?

Lizzie (31:04):

I feel like it's hugely important and I've seen firsthand the benefits of getting together in person. So yes, hybrid and remote working does work for many companies, but there is so much value to be had in coming together as a team. You know, not only sharing in experiences like what you guys are doing, but also in actually having conversations that might be more complex than when you are asynchronous. So making sure that, I think most of all, that you're intentional with that time. You know, what is it that we want to get from this time together? What are the conversations that we need to have that we don't really want to have on Zoom or on teams or whatever. So being intentional about that time together is really important and a lot of the clients that I work are hybrid or remote and we'll do quarterly in-person sessions so that they've constantly got that human connection and building up the human relationships because yes, while things on Zoom is great and it's really quick and we can be anywhere and get work done, there's still something to be said for that human to human connection when we're together.

Caroline (32:08):

We've been going over 10 years now. We've always talked about the power of just getting together and away from your normal environment. Because I think that changes your thinking before you've done anything else. Just as you say going to just a different place. That's been brilliant. I've really enjoyed that conversation. Now as I did mention to you, we have a quick fire round and you have no idea what we're going to ask you. I've been inspired first of all by something in your background, but you've got some plants behind you up on the top shelf there. So I'm going to ask you what your favourite plant is.

Lizzie (32:34):

I love a fan because I find their little fronds really fascinating the way they grow like little alien antennas.

Caroline (32:42):

Love it.

Chris (32:43):

So if somebody gave you a large piece of ground, what would you do with it?

Lizzie (32:49):

I would do a huge wild flower field. I would probably have maybe horses.

Chris (32:57):

You'd graze it to get the wild flowers. Brilliant. Lovely.

Caroline (33:01):

Wow. Marvellous. And the other thing you've got in the background is a few books. So who's your favourite author and why?

Lizzie (33:07):

Oh gosh. I think my favourite author, which is really hard to decide because I am a big bookworm. But I think Elizabeth Gilbert is probably up there, the author that's written books that have phenomenally changed my mind on things. The classic one was Eat, Pray, Love, but then she released Big Magic, the Fear of Creative Living. I've probably paraphrased that completely wrong, but that one has been profound. I think for anyone working in the creative or or in just business in general, it really speaks to the imposter syndrome, the fear that we have about launching new ideas or trying something different. And I just think it's one of the most, yeah, profound bits about, you know, why we should release the treasures that we have within us.

Caroline (33:49):

There we go. It sounds like another link on the show notes that's coming up there. So, brilliant. Okay, Lizzie, thank you so much for your time. It's been really interesting to hear about your journey and your thoughts on company culture, workplace wellness. So thank you so much.

Lizzie (34:02):

Oh, thank you so much for having me. And I've absolutely loved the connection of all the shepherding analogies. I never knew there were so many, so thank you for enlightening me.

Chris (34:12):

Aaah, you're welcome. Great to talk to you. Bye for now.

Caroline (34:15):

Bye for now.

Caroline (34:19):

Thank you for listening today. What was your biggest takeaway or insight? Let us know on any of our social channels, we'd really love to know. Till next time, have a baa-rilliant week.