Silvia Causo: Foreign.
Joanne Lockwood: Welcome to Inclusion Bites, your sanctuary
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Joanne Lockwood: So adjust your earbuds and settle in. It's time to
Joanne Lockwood: ignite the spark of inclusion with Inclusion Bites.
Joanne Lockwood: And today is episode 201 with
Joanne Lockwood: the title Healing Through Human Connection.
Joanne Lockwood: And I have the absolute honour and privilege to welcome Silvia
Joanne Lockwood: Causo & Adrianne Arendse.
Joanne Lockwood: Sylvia and Adrianne are the co founders of Lead and Belong,
Joanne Lockwood: creating gentle yet powerful spaces for leaders and teams to
Joanne Lockwood: shift from mind centred approaches to truly human centred growth.
Joanne Lockwood: When I asked Sylvia and Adrianne to describe their superpower, they said this is
Joanne Lockwood: his piercing insight paired with calm,
Joanne Lockwood: steady energy needed to hold challenging, transformative
Joanne Lockwood: conversations. Hello, Sylvia. Hello, Adrianne. Welcome to the show.
Silvia Causo: Hello. Hello. Lovely to have you here. And I believe
Joanne Lockwood: that you got in touch having listened to an episode I recorded
Joanne Lockwood: with a show on Miller recently. So thank you for that. It was a beautiful
Silvia Causo: conversation and we were hooked and so we decided to come on the
Silvia Causo: show. Absolutely, absolutely. Thank you. And you have the honour
Joanne Lockwood: of being my second time having a
Joanne Lockwood: threesome on the podcast, actually, the first
Joanne Lockwood: time where I've had my two guests in
Joanne Lockwood: the same room together. Before I did it, they were in different rooms. You are
Joanne Lockwood: the first pair to be on the screen together,
Joanne Lockwood: so. Yeah, fantastic. And I just realised
Silvia Causo: that it's episode 201 which makes three
Silvia Causo: again. Yes. Back to the magic number.
Joanne Lockwood: Oh, the magic number, yeah. 2 and 1 and 3. Yeah. Wow. Yeah,
Joanne Lockwood: indeed. It's the 21st of November, so that doesn't count, does there's no threes in
Joanne Lockwood: there. Oh, no. 201. 201, yeah, 201. There we are. Yeah,
Joanne Lockwood: 201. 21. Wow. We've got the world
Joanne Lockwood: is now converging on us. So where. Where are you in the world? I never
Joanne Lockwood: know where my guests are these days. It could be from anywhere. We're in Port
Adrianne Arendse: Levin in Cornwall. Sounds idyllic. And Beautiful. Is that a fishing
Joanne Lockwood: village or. Yeah, it is. It's got a
Adrianne Arendse: harbour and so forth. And of course it's winter
Adrianne Arendse: now. Well, it's getting into winter, so it's about 7 degrees
Adrianne Arendse: outside. Sunny but cold, you know, a little bit cold. Blue sky.
Joanne Lockwood: I took the dog for a walk this morning. Part of the world. Oh, shivering.
Joanne Lockwood: It is. Is it near where the.
Joanne Lockwood: The Fisherman's Friends films were filmed? Around that area? Is that that kind of.
Adrianne Arendse: Yeah, yeah. But those, those were film up and down the coast? I think so,
Adrianne Arendse: yeah. I reckon they probably filmed some of it here. I mean, I say it's
Adrianne Arendse: 7 degrees, apparently it feels like minus 2, according to the
Adrianne Arendse: app on my phone. Does that mean we didn't go in the sea yesterday? No,
Adrianne Arendse: it doesn't. We did go in the sea. You went the. Oh, wow.
Joanne Lockwood: You're 23, 365 swimmers, are you?
Joanne Lockwood: Every day in the sea? I don't know about every day, but certainly.
Adrianne Arendse: And when I say going in the sea, I'm not talking about in a. Wetsuit,
Joanne Lockwood: you're talking about trunks. Yes. Yeah.
Silvia Causo: I mean yesterday we were looking out of the window and it looked so
Silvia Causo: stunning. Blue skies with in fact was three in the
Silvia Causo: afternoon, so the sun was coming down, the light was golden
Silvia Causo: and I said, looks like we are in the Caribbean and inside is fairly warm,
Silvia Causo: so just let's go and see what it's like. And it was
Silvia Causo: beautiful. Reinvigorating for sure. What she's leaving out is that as
Adrianne Arendse: soon as you step outside you realise it looks like the Caribbean. It
Silvia Causo: doesn't feel like it. Not at all. So is this a
Joanne Lockwood: swim swim? Is it a paddle, is it just a dunk and back or are
Joanne Lockwood: you hanging out there for an hour or so? Yesterday it was a dunkin back.
Adrianne Arendse: But normally you swim, I sink, so I don't actually
Adrianne Arendse: swim. But you swim? Yeah. And it was
Silvia Causo: head in as well yesterday I really needed to refresh
Silvia Causo: my mind because I had a very sleepless night and night before. So
Silvia Causo: it was good for me in that sense. It just kept me going through the
Silvia Causo: day. Well, I'm very impressed as, as I hinted to know I've got a
Joanne Lockwood: dog. Well, we've only had the dog about eight weeks, so we're still in this
Joanne Lockwood: new puppy territory and getting up at early
Joanne Lockwood: o' clock when, when she wants to go out for a. A wee and then
Joanne Lockwood: having to take for a walk at 7 o'. Clock. I've got myself a big
Joanne Lockwood: overcoat and, and snood and things now and it's makes it a bit
Joanne Lockwood: more pleasant. But yeah, I'm. I'm now, I'm now experiencing weather that I. Probably most
Joanne Lockwood: of my life I've avoided. But yeah, it's something to be said
Joanne Lockwood: about starting the day or clearing your head and going for a walk and having
Joanne Lockwood: some fresh air or getting in a massive plungeful.
Joanne Lockwood: Atlantic plungeful, I guess. Is it the Atlantic where you are? Yeah. Yeah.
Joanne Lockwood: Wow. Fascinating. We want to
Joanne Lockwood: talk about bias, trauma, human
Joanne Lockwood: connection. Specialise in creating spaces where people can explore
Joanne Lockwood: themselves deeply and honestly. So where did that come
Joanne Lockwood: from? What was the spark and inspiration? Well,
Adrianne Arendse: about, let's see, about six years ago I was working
Adrianne Arendse: at Falmouth University. I was teaching screenwriting and
Adrianne Arendse: then a few things happened over a fairly short period.
Adrianne Arendse: I realised that I'm very mixed race and I'm South African and
Adrianne Arendse: when I say very mixed race. Normally when you say mixed race people think a
Adrianne Arendse: white or Caucasian and you know, another race. But in
Adrianne Arendse: my case I say very mixed because my ethnicity is very mixed.
Adrianne Arendse: So I, I have a, I have a grandmother from Mozambique,
Adrianne Arendse: another one from somewhere in India, a
Adrianne Arendse: grandfather from Malaysia and another grandfather from, from
Adrianne Arendse: Holland. So it's, it's a real, a really deep mix. And
Adrianne Arendse: anyway, I realised in my situation, as always, sort of
Adrianne Arendse: delivering these, these lectures, there was a whole lot of information. The
Adrianne Arendse: students were not available. It wasn't available to them, or at least
Adrianne Arendse: it was available, but it wasn't showing up in the work. And if their work
Adrianne Arendse: is to create something in the same way that when you're working with an
Adrianne Arendse: AI or an LLM, garbage in, garbage out. So if you put
Adrianne Arendse: really decent information in, interesting things come out and when
Adrianne Arendse: you. When one of the things I realised is the students weren't exposed to other
Adrianne Arendse: perspectives outside of the Western one. And it just,
Adrianne Arendse: I realised that there was potential in them that wasn't being realised. Because of
Adrianne Arendse: that the experience of the world was, was getting smaller.
Adrianne Arendse: And I went on to co create a module called Belonging
Adrianne Arendse: that ran in the fashion department at first the Fashion Textiles
Adrianne Arendse: Institute and then I translated over to photography and
Adrianne Arendse: to television, those modules, those courses.
Adrianne Arendse: And necessarily because I don't think there's that it's not, you
Adrianne Arendse: know, it's not like I won wondering with some answers. You have to adapt to
Adrianne Arendse: the context and that's sort of a theme of, of what I do.
Adrianne Arendse: So that's sort of, that's some of how I got
Adrianne Arendse: to where we are and
Adrianne Arendse: I started doing some, some of that work with other universities.
Adrianne Arendse: So the. Obviously I'VE got skin in the game
Adrianne Arendse: because belonging is for me, it starts with me belonging to
Adrianne Arendse: myself and then how that ripples outwards
Adrianne Arendse: and it requires empathy obviously, because if I have a good sense of
Adrianne Arendse: my belonging myself I can then start to find the limits of my empathy.
Adrianne Arendse: And so. But before I become this becomes a TED Talk,
Adrianne Arendse: why don't we turn over. To me what was the question
Silvia Causo: now? Why are we doing this? Personally,
Silvia Causo: it's because life brought me here. Essentially my
Silvia Causo: background is the coaching but also
Silvia Causo: energetic work. And why I started to do this work is because
Silvia Causo: a family member was very mentally ill with an eating
Silvia Causo: disorder. So I was caught up in that, in, in
Silvia Causo: that experience and at some point I realised that actually I
Silvia Causo: was not helping anymore, I was injuring the recovery.
Silvia Causo: So I had to look at myself and says what's going on here? Why
Silvia Causo: we, you know, we're not making progress. So I started to look at my,
Silvia Causo: at my behaviours and I realised that I
Silvia Causo: was, was modelling what my mother did to me, which I never wanted to do
Silvia Causo: with other people in my family. And I started to
Silvia Causo: look at why I was doing that. I went into trauma and
Silvia Causo: then I went to, into. I had great self awareness and
Silvia Causo: insight. I could see how I was isolating myself from the rest of the world
Silvia Causo: because of this. And then, you know, to cut a
Silvia Causo: long shorty with a thought, I went into training, started to do this work
Silvia Causo: and realise how much we isolate
Silvia Causo: ourselves from the rest of the world because we need to protect ourselves, ourselves.
Silvia Causo: And then eventually while we're doing this together,
Silvia Causo: because essentially we met on a dating app and we
Silvia Causo: realised that, you know, in a conversation we had
Silvia Causo: a lot in common. And then as we got together it
Silvia Causo: felt like this is why we're here because I
Silvia Causo: have that kind of skill of helping people to create and
Silvia Causo: create a safe space for them to just look at the traumas and the blocks,
Silvia Causo: emotional blocks and you have this ability of creating space
Silvia Causo: and holding a conversation, very difficult conversations. And
Silvia Causo: the title is Healing through Belonging if I remember
Silvia Causo: well. And we are very much about collective
Silvia Causo: healing. This is a collective experience. We don't, we can't heal in
Silvia Causo: isolation. We'll heal as we co regulate with
Silvia Causo: each other. I've heard many people say that you
Joanne Lockwood: can't truly understand others until you understand yourself.
Joanne Lockwood: And I always think you have to like yourself, you have to be aware of
Joanne Lockwood: yourself before other people can like you. And well,
Joanne Lockwood: so I think finding self is really important and I think what you're saying there
Joanne Lockwood: Adrian, about having this huge
Joanne Lockwood: depth of your ethnicity and your, your. I would imagine that
Joanne Lockwood: you had to explore all of those different nuances mentioned.
Joanne Lockwood: Your grandmothers come from, and grandfathers come from different continents
Joanne Lockwood: and there's a whole range of people going back in time there and you must
Joanne Lockwood: have had to explore that to really try and understand where you are in
Joanne Lockwood: the world, is that right? Yeah. And not just as
Adrianne Arendse: a sort of cognitively and not just sort of
Adrianne Arendse: looking at the sort of factual history. There are things, artefacts
Adrianne Arendse: of that experience that are, that are squishy,
Adrianne Arendse: you know, that live in a recipe that somebody held onto
Adrianne Arendse: in a way of speaking in a. In, in various
Adrianne Arendse: phrases. I mean, my, my father occasionally if he talks about
Adrianne Arendse: going to the doctor, he'll say quacksalver, which sort of. That's his, his sort of
Adrianne Arendse: Dutch, his, his fierce father's Dutch heritage coming through. And, and
Adrianne Arendse: my mother passed away in April. She had her
Adrianne Arendse: sort of linguistic sort of idiosyncrasies as well and those were
Adrianne Arendse: carried from her mother and so on. And her father died when she was two,
Adrianne Arendse: so she didn't have a one to one
Adrianne Arendse: relationship with him really. There's, there's all of those things. And of
Adrianne Arendse: course, I don't know if you know anything about Cape Town, which is where I'm
Adrianne Arendse: from, but there's an area of Cape Town that's
Adrianne Arendse: quite, well, a storey from Cape Town about
Adrianne Arendse: people, people being evicted from a specific area called District
Adrianne Arendse: 6, which is. If you imagine the Table Mountain, the
Adrianne Arendse: classic view of Table Mountain, it would have sat sort of nicely in the middle
Adrianne Arendse: of the flat, not the flat bit, but in front of the flat. But because
Adrianne Arendse: nobody lives on top of the mountain. But. So my parents hadn't met at the
Adrianne Arendse: time, but they, their families were evicted from this very multicultural
Adrianne Arendse: area during apartheid. And I, I mean, I grew up
Adrianne Arendse: towards the bottom end of the apartheid regime and then on into the
Adrianne Arendse: new South Africa. So I left when I was 33. So I'd experienced some of
Adrianne Arendse: that. So yeah, there's a lot of
Adrianne Arendse: variation in flavour and a lot of spice
Adrianne Arendse: in my ethnicity. But also, as I say, it's not just the
Adrianne Arendse: fact, it's also a way of seeing the world and influences
Adrianne Arendse: my relationships with time and all sorts of things. And it
Adrianne Arendse: means, because I experienced that particular experience of being in
Adrianne Arendse: South Africa at that time, you know, the way that I respond to various things
Adrianne Arendse: is I could see how it was flavoured by that upbringing.
Adrianne Arendse: For instance, there are probably a handful of times in my life
Adrianne Arendse: that have walked up to a police officer because
Adrianne Arendse: they are unsafe. Certainly the way I grew up, the police was unsafe. And
Adrianne Arendse: so, yeah, there's a lot that's informed by my lived
Adrianne Arendse: experience. But I didn't stop there. I mean, I'm curious about my life, but I'm
Adrianne Arendse: also curious about the world. And, and I, I, I
Adrianne Arendse: to. To get back to sort of the belonging part. Belonging and love
Adrianne Arendse: are linked. So if you can find ways
Adrianne Arendse: to love yourself or discover ways of loving yourself, because I think that's sort of
Adrianne Arendse: endless. It becomes easier to love beyond
Adrianne Arendse: yourself. Just. Sylvia, talk about belonging. Need and belong
Joanne Lockwood: is the organisation. What is belonging
Joanne Lockwood: thinking? I was thinking, as you were asking a question to
Silvia Causo: Adrian, why we're doing. Going back to
Silvia Causo: why we're doing this work. Right. Because when we met, I always
Silvia Causo: consider myself a very inclusive person, very equal, very
Silvia Causo: diverse. Right. But was only when I was,
Silvia Causo: you know, I started a biracial relationship, I realised
Silvia Causo: that actually there were some emotions that were coming up for me. And of course,
Silvia Causo: with my background is trauma and unconscious, you know, beliefs,
Silvia Causo: everything started to bubble up. Oh, my God. I actually, mentally,
Silvia Causo: I know that I'm inclusion at the verse, but actually in my body I
Silvia Causo: hold some experiences that are not quite aligned
Silvia Causo: with the way I want to be. I want to show up. Yeah, I wasn't
Silvia Causo: fully inclusive. I was. But really
Silvia Causo: there was something that kind of needed to shift. And by the way, I'm
Silvia Causo: on this journey, I haven't finished, you know, like, processing all of
Silvia Causo: this. So in terms of belonging in our relationship, we cannot
Silvia Causo: belong fully to each other or we cannot belong fully to each other
Silvia Causo: unless. Until I move this. And also what showed me that
Silvia Causo: when I go in the world and I look at, you know, black and brown
Silvia Causo: people, different, you know, races, I
Silvia Causo: didn't see the trauma, the
Silvia Causo: conditioning from the trauma they have experienced. And now I
Silvia Causo: have a fuller understanding what it means to be, you know, someone
Silvia Causo: not fully. Actually a better understanding to have a sense
Silvia Causo: of what, what it's like for you, to be you. It's
Silvia Causo: not just you as an individual, but you also belonging to that culture. So
Silvia Causo: belonging is, to answer your question, is getting
Silvia Causo: to know your. Also getting to know
Silvia Causo: how others might experience you and
Silvia Causo: the world. It's really interesting what you're saying there about this
Joanne Lockwood: awareness you've developed since meeting Adrianne around
Joanne Lockwood: what racism is and feels like. Because I am a white person, my
Joanne Lockwood: heritage is white and British. I see the world through my
Joanne Lockwood: blinkers. I see the world through my lens. I don't know what it's like for
Joanne Lockwood: you either. As A couple or as an individual. And it's not until
Joanne Lockwood: sometimes you open those doors and actually listen to somebody who's going through
Joanne Lockwood: that you truly understand. And it's not the big racist
Joanne Lockwood: issues, it's the little. Just the way people look at you,
Joanne Lockwood: or I'm sure you find that people see you as a couple
Joanne Lockwood: and there's a reaction to that as well. And there's an assumption that
Joanne Lockwood: the other person's going to be the same ethnicity as you. Now
Joanne Lockwood: I get it. Where people assume the person who is with me
Joanne Lockwood: is going to be of a certain sex or gender or appearance. People are
Joanne Lockwood: judgmental without being cruel or mean about it. They're just making
Joanne Lockwood: assumptions, aren't they? Absolutely. I mean, again, as I said, it was only when
Silvia Causo: I actually, when we started a relationship, certainly things were coming up. But when
Silvia Causo: we went to South Africa, when I was outside my environment,
Silvia Causo: the white people were the minority in. In
Silvia Causo: their community. So I said, oh, my God, this is how it
Silvia Causo: feels not to be, you know, not to
Silvia Causo: be. Not to feel safe in, you know,
Silvia Causo: and feel that you truly belong in that space.
Silvia Causo: And we had white people looking at us
Silvia Causo: because biracial relationship, we had black and brown
Silvia Causo: people doing that as well. And it was like, wow, this is for the. Feels
Silvia Causo: like when you're not feeling welcome. Although I did have my little flavour. Not
Silvia Causo: feeling welcome with Brexit because I'm Italian, I've been in the UK for
Silvia Causo: 25 years, so I did have a little flavour, but still
Silvia Causo: there is. The whiteness makes
Silvia Causo: me belong in. In a diff. You know, at the
Silvia Causo: core I belong, even though I'm from. From another
Silvia Causo: country. So, yeah, you just really. When we
Silvia Causo: met, I'll tell you this, Storey, we met on
Silvia Causo: the app and the first opening line was, my question to Adrianne was,
Silvia Causo: what is the best piece of advice that you. Someone has given you?
Silvia Causo: And your reply was, it was, if. You want to learn something,
Adrianne Arendse: teach it. And my reply to Adrianne was, yes, I agree, but
Silvia Causo: I take it a little deeper. If you want to
Silvia Causo: learn something, experience it and then teach it. And that
Silvia Causo: is my mantra, right? Although, you know, journey is
Silvia Causo: ongoing as human beings. But
Silvia Causo: I teach the work that we do is because we experience it. We experience
Silvia Causo: it. What it feels like to be in the room with people and to
Silvia Causo: feel lonely that you don't belong because you don't belong to yourself in
Silvia Causo: the first place. And this is why we're passionate about taking this
Silvia Causo: stuff in the workplace, because how many people feel displaced in
Silvia Causo: the workplace in places where they've been 20, 30,
Silvia Causo: maybe 30 years working in that. And they just totally lost their soul
Silvia Causo: in that place. And it just becomes a mechanical
Silvia Causo: activities that you do every day to survive.
Joanne Lockwood: Pick up on something you just said there, and I'm a quiet
Joanne Lockwood: believer in this concept is that you said about
Joanne Lockwood: being lonely. I truly believe you can be. There's a being alone
Joanne Lockwood: and being lonely and you can be lonely in a room full of people
Joanne Lockwood: and you can. And you can be connected even when you're on your own. I
Joanne Lockwood: also think it's the same as being the difference between included and
Joanne Lockwood: belonging, or inclusion and belonging. You can be included but not
Joanne Lockwood: belong. And it's trying to. It's trying to
Joanne Lockwood: elevate yourself from being unwelcome to hell. Yeah, people accept
Joanne Lockwood: me, I'm part of this. I get an invite. But when you arrive, do
Joanne Lockwood: you belong? And that's. That's a different feeling as well, isn't it? How. It's almost
Joanne Lockwood: like an upgrade where you go, actually,
Joanne Lockwood: you've included me, but actually I'm part of this. This is
Joanne Lockwood: me, this is who I am. This is everything resonates, everything feels comfortable here.
Joanne Lockwood: And I think I always say lonely and alone, inclusion, belonging there.
Joanne Lockwood: They're different things we don't always think about. I feel
Adrianne Arendse: like belonging to. Is closer to a state of being
Adrianne Arendse: than it is, you know, it's something you. You become aware of
Adrianne Arendse: after it's happened or as it's happening. Not
Adrianne Arendse: something you have to sort of prepare your mind for. You belong. It's. It.
Adrianne Arendse: It becomes part of the fabric. It's the. It's the truth
Adrianne Arendse: that emerges, rather than something you. You sort of create. And you can't
Adrianne Arendse: perform it either, you know, in the same way you can't perform vulnerability.
Adrianne Arendse: You know, you either vulnerable or you are. Yeah,
Joanne Lockwood: it's a bit like virginity. You either are or you are.
Joanne Lockwood: You can't be a bit pregnant, can you? No.
Adrianne Arendse: There's a distinction I make between knowledge and
Adrianne Arendse: information and I use it to sort of, kind of situate
Adrianne Arendse: my empathy in a way in that if. If I. I call knowledge
Adrianne Arendse: information that I can contextualise in my lived experience. So
Adrianne Arendse: I can talk about, you know, using a screwdriver, but I
Adrianne Arendse: can't talk about having a child, you know, because I don't
Adrianne Arendse: have the mechanics to be able
Adrianne Arendse: to. Yeah. To be able to produce.
Adrianne Arendse: Use a child and so many other things.
Adrianne Arendse: And I normally do a much more visceral version of that
Adrianne Arendse: metaphor, literal metaphor, as part of some of the things I deliver.
Adrianne Arendse: Because it's sort of. I can sort of say, okay, well, that's
Adrianne Arendse: information. I can be in the proximity of its own experience, but it's not
Adrianne Arendse: my experience. You know, I can have space and time and care for
Adrianne Arendse: it, but it's not my experience. And I can recognise that. And I think it's
Adrianne Arendse: very important because it can inform belonging, it can
Adrianne Arendse: inform inclusion. You know, I have something to add about
Silvia Causo: that. And this is just literally insights coming through, as we have in this conversation.
Silvia Causo: This is the beauty, isn't it, really? Travelling deep conversations that
Silvia Causo: again, like you say, information. If I can't, if I don't
Silvia Causo: have the experience, I can. It's kind of all information. And at the same
Silvia Causo: time, one of the elements that we bring in the workplace is nervous
Silvia Causo: system education and education about the emotions
Silvia Causo: and becoming into, you know, get getting into coherence with
Silvia Causo: the people around you. Because really, and this is part of the work that
Silvia Causo: I do is energetic work, getting into coherence with
Silvia Causo: someone's energetic field. And essentially the nervous system, we can
Silvia Causo: really feel people, but we need to be present, fully present.
Silvia Causo: And again, going back to the beginning, you need to be fully present with yourself
Silvia Causo: before you can be fully present with others. And when you. And when you
Silvia Causo: practise and clear your blocks, emotional
Silvia Causo: blocks, then you can become even more attuned
Silvia Causo: with someone else's experience at a nervous system level,
Silvia Causo: at an energetic level. And there was something else that I wanted to add which
Silvia Causo: is just disappear from my mind, that links all
Silvia Causo: together. But anyway, I'll come back to it, go back to. I mean, both of
Joanne Lockwood: you can tackle this, you talk there about. So I can't understand your
Joanne Lockwood: exact experience. I can hear you, I can get information about it, but I don't.
Joanne Lockwood: So how can we build empathy through just having information?
Joanne Lockwood: That's what we're trying to do here, isn't it? I think so. One of the
Adrianne Arendse: things I do, for instance, is I
Adrianne Arendse: paint that information knowledge sort of line and
Adrianne Arendse: it's a wiggly sort of organic line rather than a dead straight one.
Adrianne Arendse: I find that helpful because it tells me that
Adrianne Arendse: it helps me not centre myself in that conversation of the
Adrianne Arendse: experience I don't have. And that sort of, kind
Adrianne Arendse: of ironically helps me be more empathetic. And in
Adrianne Arendse: a way I call it, also call it the line of the limits of some
Adrianne Arendse: of my empathy so that I can understand. And I don't mean a limit, it's
Adrianne Arendse: more like a milestone or a guide. It shows me this is where my
Adrianne Arendse: body stops experiencing something. And this is where
Adrianne Arendse: my mind and my heart can take me slightly further.
Adrianne Arendse: And knowing that is quite powerful for me because it
Adrianne Arendse: means that I can say, okay, my experience of not
Adrianne Arendse: belonging and your experience of not belonging are not going to be the same.
Adrianne Arendse: But there's a flavour of overlap because not belonging has.
Adrianne Arendse: There's some similarity. It's in the subjectivity that I always think of
Adrianne Arendse: belonging as being highly subjective. So in
Adrianne Arendse: terms of how we would deal with a client, for instance, I always think that
Adrianne Arendse: the missing element in any definition of belonging is the
Adrianne Arendse: client. It. Because I don't go. We don't go to them
Adrianne Arendse: with. Prescribe how to. Or any of this thing. We go to
Adrianne Arendse: discover what their context is and what it. And
Adrianne Arendse: how you know. And my assumption is always that people will come to you with
Adrianne Arendse: questions, have their own answers, and what we do is create space for them
Adrianne Arendse: to realise their answers. We don't necessarily know the
Adrianne Arendse: answers, but it's sort of let them emerge. But yes, I think
Adrianne Arendse: empathy, I mean, I guess it's helpful to sort of want to have a very
Adrianne Arendse: lovely, squishy, wavy, slightly
Adrianne Arendse: imprecise definition, not like a cold hard one of
Adrianne Arendse: what we mean by empathy in a given context. So
Adrianne Arendse: I mean, loosely speaking, I think, you know, we only have a sense that we
Adrianne Arendse: have the same feeling of a feeling of what somebody else's experience is.
Adrianne Arendse: And it's a feeling, not the feeling. And for me
Adrianne Arendse: the goal is important. Is it empathy so that I can
Adrianne Arendse: take the experience or is it empathy so that I can
Adrianne Arendse: support the experience of somebody else so the other person is in
Adrianne Arendse: the centre? I always think about that quite a lot. Sorry,
Silvia Causo: you're looking at me. I want to say something. Yeah. Before I forget,
Silvia Causo: I'm having a right day with my memory today. But what
Silvia Causo: I want you to say is. Oh,
Silvia Causo: oh, no, it's come. It's gonna come back to me. It's there. I can feel
Joanne Lockwood: it floating in the area. Just gotta grab it, go grab it. You just,
Silvia Causo: you just go, Joe, you know, Joe. And just carry on.
Joanne Lockwood: Again, pick up some things that Adrianne saying there was around the.
Joanne Lockwood: Again back to belonging. And you can't,
Joanne Lockwood: you can't dictate belonging. You can't give belonging. You can't
Joanne Lockwood: insist on it or even fix when it doesn't exist. It's, it's. It's that
Joanne Lockwood: feeling you have in inherently within you that you know.
Joanne Lockwood: And it, it's more than just one thing. It's more than just the colour of
Joanne Lockwood: the walls or the, the, the sofa you sit on. There's a whole
Joanne Lockwood: vibe going on here and it's, it's very, you know, I think we said earlier,
Joanne Lockwood: it's very binary. You either have it or you don't. And if you don't have
Joanne Lockwood: it, there's not often, not much you can do to
Joanne Lockwood: suddenly co. Create that. It. It has to evolve over time.
Joanne Lockwood: And I, I imagined where you've both migrated to the
Joanne Lockwood: uk, relocated from wherever you, you grew up, wherever you were
Joanne Lockwood: educated, to this lovely little place in Cornwall. And you had
Joanne Lockwood: to find that belongingness together as well. And in your
Joanne Lockwood: community and with your, your unique
Joanne Lockwood: characteristics that come together, that. That must have been a
Joanne Lockwood: huge, great learning exercise for both of you to find that. Wow. This
Joanne Lockwood: place now feels safe, comfortable, and I can relax here.
Joanne Lockwood: Mostly. I'm not saying absolutely, but mostly.
Silvia Causo: And what I want to say here is like, it's the same. You
Silvia Causo: described it beautifully. We belong. Every single day, every
Silvia Causo: single thing that we do is a choice. Almost like a choice.
Silvia Causo: I belong. It's a choice that we make. You know, we have decided that we
Silvia Causo: belong to this conversation. Right. And I
Silvia Causo: could sit, I could stay here and sit back and trying to be a bit
Silvia Causo: more like, you know, in close with myself and, and you could
Silvia Causo: belong to each other, but me not belonging. But we choose to all
Silvia Causo: belong to this conversation. And that's beautiful. And what came up from it, it's like
Silvia Causo: a, A choice that we do every day. It's a moving process because
Silvia Causo: sometimes we feel like we think, oh, I need to. When we talk about, you
Silvia Causo: need to belong to yourself before you belong to others. We feel like it's one
Silvia Causo: trip and when we get to the stop, we got there. No, it's actually a
Silvia Causo: constant choosing of belonging. Every single time
Silvia Causo: I need to choose that, you know, in this new relationship, there is another
Silvia Causo: kind of sense of belonging. Like I say, another extended family because I have children.
Silvia Causo: So it's again, we are a different group and we need to find our balance
Silvia Causo: and what the belonging means. And belonging in a group
Silvia Causo: means that I need to feel that I belong myself, but also I need to
Silvia Causo: give something. So either people can feel that belong as well. So it
Silvia Causo: was a very, very interesting process. But going back, I remember what
Silvia Causo: I wanted to say about empathy and how we develop empathy
Silvia Causo: because we can be, we can mentalize, we. I can understand that you have a
Silvia Causo: different opinion than mine, but that is different than feeling empathy.
Silvia Causo: And my belief is if you develop empathy,
Silvia Causo: if you work on your own traumas, because until
Silvia Causo: I hold my traumas and my Boundaries to protect
Silvia Causo: myself from what I perceive can be a danger. I
Silvia Causo: cannot actually open my heart to others and I
Silvia Causo: cannot immerse my. Immerse myself in their experience.
Silvia Causo: So this is why in leadership in a workplace, the very linear
Silvia Causo: thinking structures where everybody's compartment, you know, they're
Silvia Causo: their own role and they just do it. And if they go step out of
Silvia Causo: that role and uh, there might be, you know, they might lose the job,
Silvia Causo: they might be criticised, you know, all of this, there is fear
Silvia Causo: based, trauma based experiences, environments
Silvia Causo: and I cannot belong if I'm constantly feeling under
Silvia Causo: threat. So, yeah, empathy, again, it can be like you say,
Silvia Causo: Adrian, it can be a mental. It's got to be an experienced
Silvia Causo: experience. Yeah, A lot of our work is actually from the neck down
Adrianne Arendse: because a lot of speaking, the western sort of compulsion is
Adrianne Arendse: to do everything cognitively to, to experience your emotions as
Adrianne Arendse: a thought exercise, to not really
Adrianne Arendse: feel them in your body, to, to experience them and, and seat them
Adrianne Arendse: in your body. Your body becomes the unsafe place and you end up performing.
Adrianne Arendse: So in the workplace, one of the ways I describe it is that people sort
Adrianne Arendse: of park the identities at the door, you know, and
Adrianne Arendse: that, I'm not saying that's unhealthy, but it becomes
Adrianne Arendse: problematic because it's taking energy.
Adrianne Arendse: What happens? The question is always what happens if
Adrianne Arendse: you can have a choice about how much of yourself you bring to work
Adrianne Arendse: and offer to the work? What happens to the work? What happens to the context
Adrianne Arendse: in which you're working, the people you're working with? What happens to the organisation? I
Adrianne Arendse: mean, there can be a lot of positive things and new challenges,
Adrianne Arendse: but ultimately, I mean, one of the ways we put what we're doing
Adrianne Arendse: is for people who want this. We would like to
Adrianne Arendse: rehumanize the workplace and not let it be run so much by the
Adrianne Arendse: linear, the logical, the spreadsheet, the outcome.
Adrianne Arendse: But what happens if we treat it more like a garden that's being
Adrianne Arendse: tended, you know, where we tend ourselves as
Adrianne Arendse: well, where we offer things from who we
Adrianne Arendse: are, offer who we are and that's. And that's appreciated
Adrianne Arendse: in ways that remind us and make us feel like we belong as humans insofar
Adrianne Arendse: as we want to. And this is the whole choice is very important.
Silvia Causo: In our approach. We use different. We work at
Silvia Causo: several levels, right? We work on the mental
Silvia Causo: because that's what people access essentially an emotional, also
Silvia Causo: energetic level because they're all
Silvia Causo: interlinked. If we can get an, an example, you like
Silvia Causo: Usain, people leave themselves at the door when they step
Silvia Causo: into work. And that takes a lot of energy. It takes a lot of energy
Silvia Causo: to get yourself doing the things that you don't want to do even
Silvia Causo: before you start doing the thing. There is a lot of energy, there's lots of
Silvia Causo: resistance. But if you're aware and you say okay, I just. And also
Silvia Causo: what I wanted to bring in is a neuroscience type, you know,
Silvia Causo: you know, aspect of it. The brain wants to save
Silvia Causo: us, its job is to protect us, right?
Silvia Causo: So if I'm bringing myself into work and I don't want to be there, the
Silvia Causo: brain is not present with me because it's trying to make me
Silvia Causo: avoid the feelings of, you know, the
Silvia Causo: frustration and resentment. But if you have a choice, I'm gonna
Silvia Causo: just bring 50% of myself into work and I leave my other
Silvia Causo: 50%, you know, looked after, cared for
Silvia Causo: at home, emotionally, metaphorically. Then the brain.
Silvia Causo: Already you're giving a message to the brain that you're not
Silvia Causo: in danger, you're just doing something for the time being, for eight hours and
Silvia Causo: then off you go at home. So there is a lot
Silvia Causo: and, and you need to meet the people where are at.
Silvia Causo: Someone is very logical. You need to just enter through that door, through the logic
Silvia Causo: and then slowly bring them, like you say, from their head into the
Silvia Causo: body, down below the neck. And this is why, like you say,
Silvia Causo: Adrian, the missing experience and the miss. The missing ingredient
Silvia Causo: is the client is the person is their friend that is
Silvia Causo: talking to you. He's the neighbour. Whatever contact you're
Joanne Lockwood: in, pick up here is we're going
Joanne Lockwood: back to the feelings, you know, as you say, below the neck. And what we
Joanne Lockwood: often do in academia is we'll as you say, cerebral, it's above the
Joanne Lockwood: neck and belonging, inclusion, psychological
Joanne Lockwood: safety, trust, all of these kind of things are below the
Joanne Lockwood: neck. They're feelings. Do I feel safe? Do I feel belonging? Do I feel
Joanne Lockwood: respected? That is very subjective in the eyes,
Joanne Lockwood: ears and feelings of the person who has it or not. And you say that's
Joanne Lockwood: where the belonging kicks in. So you work with leaders.
Joanne Lockwood: How do you move the leader from a cerebral
Joanne Lockwood: logical solution here into an empathy thing?
Joanne Lockwood: Because sometimes people see empathy and feelings as
Joanne Lockwood: weakness. Especially when you're in certain academic or
Joanne Lockwood: leadership models. We will talk about the logic and we're learning
Joanne Lockwood: stuff. But it's not that say it's the trauma,
Joanne Lockwood: what's going on in people's lives, what they're feeling, their biases, the blind, everything that's
Joanne Lockwood: going on, they're unpacking this, their fight, flight, fear mechanism, their vagus
Joanne Lockwood: nerves going Crazy, pumping adrenaline, anxiety. All that stuff's going
Joanne Lockwood: on, isn't it? Well, one of the things that we, we made a
Adrianne Arendse: choice about clients didn't. We chose not
Adrianne Arendse: to try to convert somebody
Adrianne Arendse: to wanting to work with us. We chose
Adrianne Arendse: to focus on people who are looking to do,
Adrianne Arendse: to make this shift, whether they have the language for it or
Adrianne Arendse: not, put things out and sort of let them know that we exist so
Adrianne Arendse: that they'll look at what we're offering and something will
Adrianne Arendse: resonate with the direction they want to move in. So we're not trying to convert
Adrianne Arendse: people. One sort of operating in this way to move in this direction. We
Adrianne Arendse: were looking for people who already sort of are
Adrianne Arendse: curious and, and curiosity then needs to be met with
Adrianne Arendse: courage. As in they have to add courage to that and we have to be
Adrianne Arendse: courageous as well to be able to persist in that. Because what we're
Adrianne Arendse: doing is facilitation. It's not, it's not therapy, it's not,
Adrianne Arendse: it's not, it's definitely not giving people answers. It's,
Adrianne Arendse: it's, it's creating space for them to assemble their own compass
Adrianne Arendse: and then learn how to use their compass and to adjust it as they need
Adrianne Arendse: to. But yes, I, it, it's, it's definitely
Adrianne Arendse: their willingness, their employability,
Adrianne Arendse: so to speak to that process of shifting from the one way of
Adrianne Arendse: being to another that is, that's absolutely
Adrianne Arendse: necessary because if somebody doesn't really want to
Adrianne Arendse: do something, it's a, it's a battle
Adrianne Arendse: for them and would be a battle for us as well.
Silvia Causo: From a nervous system perspective like you can't
Silvia Causo: force anyone feel or do anything as, as a, as
Silvia Causo: a, as a therapeutic coach. It's not going to happen because there is a
Silvia Causo: protective mechanism that will kick into place. Especially with
Silvia Causo: logical people like leaders. They, they experience
Silvia Causo: numbness for a reason. That's why. Because they protect. It's a
Silvia Causo: protective mechanism. So if someone doesn't, is not
Silvia Causo: ready for, will not be triggered. There
Silvia Causo: are people that are very good, you know, like some
Silvia Causo: aspects, some branches of NLP that can be very good at kind
Silvia Causo: of pushing people towards a direction we definitely need not.
Silvia Causo: You know, I'm not even trained in NLP whatsoever because I don't
Silvia Causo: believe in that. I believe that safe space and awareness is
Silvia Causo: what people need to be able to come up with their own answers. So
Silvia Causo: if we are in the room because a leader might choose
Silvia Causo: to say okay, let's do this work in our organisation, but there might be in
Silvia Causo: someone else in the room who is not ready for it right,
Silvia Causo: what we do, we bring gentleness. We, we do this very
Silvia Causo: slowly, just like going to the gym. The first day you go to the gym,
Silvia Causo: you just look at the gym, you don't touch anything. The second day you
Silvia Causo: might be wearing, you know, the gym clothes. And
Silvia Causo: then the third day you start picking up things. This is a very gentle process
Silvia Causo: and this is why we call it a trauma informed approach.
Silvia Causo: Trauma informed is like belonging. It's not a mental thing, it's an attitude of
Silvia Causo: the practitioner. You are, Adrian, are very good at holding the
Silvia Causo: space in the group. I am very good at
Silvia Causo: noticing the slight changes in someone, someone else,
Silvia Causo: like even slight movement. When Adrianne
Silvia Causo: says something, I can see what is that person has been
Silvia Causo: triggered. And then, you know, not addressing
Silvia Causo: individuals but in the room, we can talk about that, we can pause and talk
Silvia Causo: about that because someone is experiencing it. Other people in the room
Silvia Causo: will be experiencing it. Because going back to the nervous system and the
Silvia Causo: energetic fields, we are all connected. It's like when you, you in a
Silvia Causo: room and someone enters the room and you feel, oh my God, I feel so
Silvia Causo: uncomfortable now. What, what is it? Someone else
Silvia Causo: come in with the nervous system dysregulated and every single one
Silvia Causo: and every other person in the room is picking it up. As you're both talking,
Joanne Lockwood: I'm thinking here that the word courage came in earlier. What's also bouncing around my
Joanne Lockwood: mind is that. But these are skills that not all of us
Joanne Lockwood: possess. You know, certainly leaders don't possess all these skills. And
Joanne Lockwood: radical empathy, even any empathy,
Joanne Lockwood: is often not present. And I know
Joanne Lockwood: leaders are. Leaders tend to be thinking about
Joanne Lockwood: business objectives, getting reports out, hitting targets and
Joanne Lockwood: numbers and feelings. And empathy can sometimes get in the way with that.
Joanne Lockwood: Almost like many HR departments I speak to, it's all around policy process,
Joanne Lockwood: managing this, managing that. Do we put enough
Joanne Lockwood: effort and training to develop leaders who are
Joanne Lockwood: able to have the skill to engage with people at
Joanne Lockwood: an emotional level, not just a logical level. You know, we think about,
Joanne Lockwood: we've got our amygdala and our trigger part of our brain. We've got our prefrontal
Joanne Lockwood: cortex. We need people to move into the prefrontal cortex, but
Joanne Lockwood: also recognise that the feelings are buried deep in the, in the,
Joanne Lockwood: in the back part of our brain, which is our reactive. Because sometimes as
Joanne Lockwood: a leader we think, I don't want to open that box in case they react
Joanne Lockwood: in a way that I can't handle. And that's what we talk about here. The
Joanne Lockwood: trauma related experiences. Getting into the hub of this.
Joanne Lockwood: We need to Be brave enough to get into the feelings where there's no right
Joanne Lockwood: answer. It's all. It's all nebulous shades of
Joanne Lockwood: grey. Well, there's certainly. Having worked
Adrianne Arendse: in policy contexts a few times, I've realised that
Adrianne Arendse: often policy is about protecting organisations, the
Adrianne Arendse: organisation as an. Sort of a legal organism from these
Adrianne Arendse: squishy spaces, these nebulous spaces. So you made for.
Adrianne Arendse: I was. I was made redundant a few years ago and there's
Adrianne Arendse: the process of the redundancy as. As I experienced it
Adrianne Arendse: is the organisation making sure they follow the law
Adrianne Arendse: rather than centering the person who is potentially being made
Adrianne Arendse: redundant because the performance is that your redundancy is a possibility,
Adrianne Arendse: but the reality is it's a certainty, you know, and
Adrianne Arendse: so I have to, certainly with my. My race, my
Adrianne Arendse: experience of lived experience of race. I am very practised in living
Adrianne Arendse: with paradoxes and contradictions because I have to. To survival
Adrianne Arendse: imperative. So to see that. I can see that. And also
Adrianne Arendse: my. I love Gabor Mate's definition of. Of trauma.
Adrianne Arendse: He talks about it as not the thing that happens to you, but what happens
Adrianne Arendse: to you as a result of the thing. So you disconnect from your body, your
Adrianne Arendse: emotions, et cetera. So it's the echo. Yeah, he says the echo is the
Adrianne Arendse: trauma, it's not the. The thing. And, and what I love about
Adrianne Arendse: that is because it. What that inspired in me is to be able to see
Adrianne Arendse: the trauma in the traumatizer. So, for instance,
Adrianne Arendse: if we look at redundancy, the organisation
Adrianne Arendse: cuts off its own humanity and the people
Adrianne Arendse: involved, because people have to talk to you in order to do this. The
Adrianne Arendse: organisation does not have a face, it's people who have to talk to you.
Adrianne Arendse: They have to sort of suppress some of their humanity in order
Adrianne Arendse: to have these conversations with you that they know a performance
Adrianne Arendse: and then show you where the door is at some point, you know, in a
Adrianne Arendse: way that somehow protects them, so that numbness
Adrianne Arendse: protects them to some degree and then they have to drive home, you know,
Adrianne Arendse: and it's really, really interesting. So I don't sort
Adrianne Arendse: of. I haven't used the word victim once because
Adrianne Arendse: I feel like that makes. That suggests that
Adrianne Arendse: the traumatizer isn't the victim as either, because they
Adrianne Arendse: certainly are. You know, there's quite a dynamic
Adrianne Arendse: there. But yes, I think. I think it's. It's
Adrianne Arendse: really important to situate. To have awareness, self
Adrianne Arendse: awareness, because then you can realise, you know, one of the
Adrianne Arendse: terms that's in various pieces of literature is metacognition and,
Adrianne Arendse: you know, the ability to be Able to see yourself thinking, to observe yourself
Adrianne Arendse: thinking. And I think you should also be able to observe yourself feeling
Adrianne Arendse: so that a feeling comes up and it's not completely running you
Adrianne Arendse: that you can see, oh this feeling is happening. And I can
Adrianne Arendse: observe the feeling, I can make choices about it, you know, and
Adrianne Arendse: that choice might be to let the feeling be but not let it get
Adrianne Arendse: out into the world as a, as an action or words or any of those
Adrianne Arendse: things. That's a great, that's a great word,
Joanne Lockwood: metacognition. I completely understand what you're saying here is this
Joanne Lockwood: be able to step out of your body and look down on you and analyse
Joanne Lockwood: what's going on in your mind, what's going on in your heart, your feelings. And
Joanne Lockwood: then almost a bit like, a bit like emotional intelligence where you're able to understand
Joanne Lockwood: and be self aware of what's going on and then you can
Joanne Lockwood: start to get into the self regulation, self management and adapt
Joanne Lockwood: based on what you know. But I suppose if you're, if you're right in trauma,
Joanne Lockwood: you're living it, you can't step back out of that. That's maybe some of the
Joanne Lockwood: problem you're talking about there. Yeah. And suddenly if you use
Adrianne Arendse: all this without judgement so to just see what.
Joanne Lockwood: Is, that's the hard bit, isn't it? We're judgmental people. We love to be right,
Joanne Lockwood: we love to have opinions, we love to tell people what we think, don't we?
Silvia Causo: And that is the primal biology role of the brain is
Silvia Causo: to judge is this safe, is it not? The problem is that we live,
Silvia Causo: you know, we talk about the risk problem, primal biology. And
Silvia Causo: there is us as human being evolving in this, you know,
Silvia Causo: in, in this world like our consciousness is evolving and there is like
Silvia Causo: a gap, you know, there is a contradiction between the two
Silvia Causo: and self awareness that metacognition be able to see what
Silvia Causo: you're thinking but also what you're feeling. We need to come up with a new
Silvia Causo: word for that is the process to,
Silvia Causo: to bridge that gap. But going back to the leaders, they're focused on
Silvia Causo: productivity and profitability and, and numbers and
Silvia Causo: stats. I mean the system is crumbling. That we like it or not,
Silvia Causo: something needs to shift come in and I think in,
Silvia Causo: in many, if you treat it properly, AI is in a way is a blessing
Silvia Causo: because as I said, as I said before
Silvia Causo: I will solve is a almost like a left brain
Silvia Causo: kind of, you know, tool helps you to solve,
Silvia Causo: plan and do everything. And what you left is space for
Silvia Causo: creativity is space for, you know, connect with People a space
Silvia Causo: to explore different opportunities. So this is
Silvia Causo: why the passion for us is actually to help people. How can
Silvia Causo: we help humans to actually capitalise on this
Silvia Causo: AI venture instead of feeling threatened by it? And we
Silvia Causo: talk about, you can create it from two different spaces, can create from a place
Silvia Causo: of fear, or you can create from a place of flow, of
Silvia Causo: connection, of safety. The results are very
Silvia Causo: different because if you can create from
Silvia Causo: flow, you can actually connect and belong to the team
Silvia Causo: because you feel safe. And actually you can say, you know, I've got a great
Silvia Causo: idea, but my idea combined with yours actually is going to be
Silvia Causo: even better. But when we are into, you know, trauma
Silvia Causo: responses and you know, this idea that, you know,
Silvia Causo: scarcity, we focus on creating solution for ourselves, for our
Silvia Causo: sake. So I think leaders will have to evolve. Some
Silvia Causo: leaders will not and eventually will fade out, but the
Silvia Causo: majority of us will need to embrace this. I mean, you know,
Silvia Causo: off sick, off sickness, quiet, quitting,
Silvia Causo: redundancy, burnout costs a lot of money anyway
Silvia Causo: and they affect. Leadership as well as, as well as, you know, leaders
Adrianne Arendse: burnout, leaders quit quietly. Well, leaders
Joanne Lockwood: are led by somebody else. You know, there's a hierarchy of leaders at some point.
Adrianne Arendse: Yeah, and, and, and so I think what's always
Adrianne Arendse: important is to remember that everybody's human.
Adrianne Arendse: You know, you talk about sort of creating from fear. What happens when
Adrianne Arendse: that happens is that you filter out things that won't get
Adrianne Arendse: you to feel safe. Now it doesn't mean that there, there's not
Adrianne Arendse: immense possibility in those things. And I specifically didn't use the
Adrianne Arendse: word value just then, those things are just not imperative to your
Adrianne Arendse: survival in the moment. And so you're throwing so many babies out
Adrianne Arendse: with bathwater and, and when you're
Adrianne Arendse: creating from flow, they all get to their time in the sun,
Adrianne Arendse: you know, and you can make choices that are better informed, that are deeper,
Adrianne Arendse: that are more connected and the choices become offerings
Adrianne Arendse: rather than imperatives. Also there's this, this
Adrianne Arendse: distinction between the fear based way of creating, of
Adrianne Arendse: being can be quite individualist focused, whereas the other is more
Adrianne Arendse: collective focused. Because what helps us, helps me and what
Adrianne Arendse: helps me, helps us. And it's not that we lose distinction, it's not, you
Adrianne Arendse: don't lose your identity, you need an identity in order to belong to
Adrianne Arendse: the. But the possibilities that happen when we connect, that we are just,
Adrianne Arendse: they're exponential as opposed to the individual just looking out for
Adrianne Arendse: themselves. I mean, I've been certainly in work context where people have stolen my
Adrianne Arendse: ideas for their own progress and I always
Adrianne Arendse: see those as Missed opportunities for the opposite to happen, for all of us
Adrianne Arendse: to move on. Is there a
Joanne Lockwood: demographic bias in some of these things?
Joanne Lockwood: So I'm thinking, are men more likely to
Joanne Lockwood: lack empathy than women or is it. If you've experienced marginalisation,
Joanne Lockwood: discrimination in the past, you're more likely to have more
Joanne Lockwood: empathy about another person's situation. Can we generalise
Joanne Lockwood: here at all what good leaders tend to
Joanne Lockwood: be? Women tend to be overcome. You know, a view
Joanne Lockwood: on that. I think it's both. You can generalise and yet you
Silvia Causo: cannot. I think it's one of the
Silvia Causo: paradoxes, you know, because again, goes down
Silvia Causo: to the individual experience for me to bring some woo woo
Silvia Causo: into the conversation. It's about, it's about
Silvia Causo: balancing your feminine and masculine energy that
Silvia Causo: we hold, you know, like generally can
Silvia Causo: generalise. The masculine is the, is the,
Silvia Causo: the provider, right? And the feminine is the protector. The
Silvia Causo: kind of the, you know, the energy that, you know, makes you feel safe and
Silvia Causo: nurtured. And then the masculine is like, I'm gonna go out hunt, come back and
Silvia Causo: put the meat on the, you know, next to the fire. And the, the feminine
Silvia Causo: will cook the, will cook the meat, you know, that kind of stuff. So it's
Silvia Causo: a balance between us in a Western society. We're
Silvia Causo: driven from a masculine, very patriarchal way
Silvia Causo: of doing things. Then you see even women, you know, doing that
Silvia Causo: in, you know, business. Women founders, they drive businesses like men
Silvia Causo: would do. Even if they come up and show up with
Silvia Causo: a lipstick on, they're still driving from a masculine, you know,
Silvia Causo: Western height orientation.
Silvia Causo: And, and what was the question,
Silvia Causo: what was my fight? And, and this is. There is
Silvia Causo: an imbalance. There is an imbalance. I question myself,
Silvia Causo: how do I want to run my business? Because I don't want to do
Silvia Causo: it like the way that everybody, everybody else does. There are many
Silvia Causo: people are shifting, actually. It's not, it's, you know, this big
Silvia Causo: authenticity and being authentic is a buzzword now, especially on LinkedIn. Showing
Silvia Causo: up and being vulnerable again and again. You can fake it, you know,
Silvia Causo: you can become. Come across vulnerable to a certain degree and then it will show
Silvia Causo: up anyway. But I think I lost my point. Someone saved me. I think what
Joanne Lockwood: you were trying to say there was the. It's about getting in touch with your
Joanne Lockwood: energy and recognising that you need different energy
Joanne Lockwood: sources. So as you say, the protector, the provider and whatever your
Joanne Lockwood: gender, your age, your demographic is recognising those different
Joanne Lockwood: energies and needs at different times and being able to
Joanne Lockwood: authentically move in and out of energies and modes and
Joanne Lockwood: Styles and communication and adapt
Joanne Lockwood: to interact with people in a way that resonates at the time, I think, is
Joanne Lockwood: what you're trying to say. So it's skill here is self awareness. And you
Joanne Lockwood: say that metacognition, to be able to put yourself in a place
Joanne Lockwood: where you are the most receptive communicator to listen
Joanne Lockwood: and to assist at the time. I think to paraphrase
Joanne Lockwood: what you're saying. Yes, thank you for bringing me back to the
Silvia Causo: centre. And it's about self awareness and also willingness.
Silvia Causo: Am I willing to just do this? Because, you know, to the point that Adrianne
Silvia Causo: said we want to work with people who want to maybe don't know the answer,
Silvia Causo: they don't know what they're looking for, but they feel like there is something different
Silvia Causo: that is needed in the business and organisation. And there is that sense
Silvia Causo: that, the willingness. Because when you open, when you open a
Silvia Causo: Pandora's box, there is also a purging process that people
Silvia Causo: need to go through. You know, and my clients, I said, yeah, we can do
Silvia Causo: this work, but remember when, after the session, the process continues. So you
Silvia Causo: need to start to look at, you know, at uncomfortable new beliefs that come
Silvia Causo: up. We might work on something, but something else will come up because it's a
Silvia Causo: constant renewal process. That's just the nature of nature.
Silvia Causo: And we are nature. We constantly renew, we grow our hair, we cut them to
Silvia Causo: grow skin nails. You know,
Silvia Causo: that is the thing. Fundamentally, we
Joanne Lockwood: have to care deeply about
Joanne Lockwood: the end result. If I'm having a conversation with you
Joanne Lockwood: and I don't really care how you feel when you leave the room,
Joanne Lockwood: that sets me up for an emotional failure, if you like, or a connection failure.
Joanne Lockwood: If I deeply care that I want you to walk out that room feeling
Joanne Lockwood: enhanced, feeling valued, even though this is a tough
Joanne Lockwood: conversation, even though I'm making you redundant, I can do it in a way where
Joanne Lockwood: there's empathy and compassion and I'm helping with that trauma process, sometimes I
Joanne Lockwood: can just go, well, here's the bit of paper. Sorry, you're out tomorrow. Bye. Same
Joanne Lockwood: conversation, just a different outcome planned, isn't that so? I think
Joanne Lockwood: caring enough about how you interact, it's gotta be the first
Joanne Lockwood: stage. And until we get that I care enough
Joanne Lockwood: feeling, we're never going to be able to take a helicopter view of the
Joanne Lockwood: conversation and think what the outcomes are. Yeah, it's funny
Adrianne Arendse: when. When this is a. An artefact of
Adrianne Arendse: race conversations and one of the things I've learned to do
Adrianne Arendse: and continue to learn to do is how to hold those Conversations in a
Adrianne Arendse: way that doesn't. That allows
Adrianne Arendse: everyone into the conversation insofar as they choose to be or
Adrianne Arendse: can be. And those are definitely two different things because you can really
Adrianne Arendse: want to be in that conversation and not be able to. And, and one of
Adrianne Arendse: the things that one of the artefacts in, in. In the. In the main
Adrianne Arendse: is that somebody's response
Adrianne Arendse: to something that's happened or somebody else's experience or somebody
Adrianne Arendse: else's storey becomes the centre of the
Adrianne Arendse: conversation rather than that experience. And
Adrianne Arendse: it's the low hanging fruit here is to say that the white person
Adrianne Arendse: cries and their tears become the conversation and
Adrianne Arendse: their experience becomes a conversation. But that's the low hanging fruit can happen to anybody
Adrianne Arendse: in that context because it then becomes about
Adrianne Arendse: the feeling rather than the experience
Adrianne Arendse: and whose feeling it is, you know, and it becomes about that
Adrianne Arendse: person's empathy rather than who's gaslighting who. Who's
Joanne Lockwood: more Right. It can be all those things.
Adrianne Arendse: And for me it's so important.
Adrianne Arendse: This awareness has come up quite a few times in this conversation.
Adrianne Arendse: That awareness, the things, you know, you go through a
Adrianne Arendse: transformation and I say transformation, I don't. I mean it in, in the sense that
Adrianne Arendse: you, you choose to be a different way.
Adrianne Arendse: Often that means letting go of things. And some things are very sticky. For instance,
Adrianne Arendse: some of our work is. Involves the inner child metaphor, dialogue. The
Adrianne Arendse: inner child's got very sticky fingers, you know, within that metaphor
Adrianne Arendse: there are parts of you that struggle because they want to be safe.
Adrianne Arendse: They struggle to let go of control. So letting go of that is not an
Adrianne Arendse: easy process. Eventually it is, but it is not an easy
Adrianne Arendse: process. So being able to be sort of courageous enough to make those choices, to
Adrianne Arendse: have the self awareness to see these things happening. It's a conversation with
Adrianne Arendse: yourself, you know, and being better at having that conversation with
Adrianne Arendse: yourself makes you a better everything,
Adrianne Arendse: better partner, better, better
Adrianne Arendse: listener. I mean I talk about deep listening as being able to hear yourself
Adrianne Arendse: as well as the other person. Because if you
Adrianne Arendse: can't do it in both directions, something's wrong. You're. Because you
Adrianne Arendse: can, you can over centre the other person's experience. You need to be able
Adrianne Arendse: to hear what's going on inside of you so that you can know which bits
Adrianne Arendse: to offer to withhold. So that deep listening is a
Adrianne Arendse: really, really important aspect of our work. And from sort of
Adrianne Arendse: creating context for that deep listening to happen is crucial.
Silvia Causo: I just want to go back to a question that you asked Joe
Silvia Causo: about. There are different some characteristics or some
Silvia Causo: experiences like people, black and brown people, do they Experience
Silvia Causo: more empathy because what they've gone through. And the answer was yes
Silvia Causo: and no in my case,
Silvia Causo: being criticised, overly criticised as a child
Silvia Causo: has given me and feeling. It has given
Silvia Causo: me the ability really to pick up on people
Silvia Causo: when they retrieve because they feel criticised.
Silvia Causo: Right. As a practitioner, as giving me. So, yes, your,
Silvia Causo: your childhood experience will shape the way
Silvia Causo: some of your gifts. And you talk about, you know, growing
Silvia Causo: up in South Africa, having to be able to, you know, you had to scan
Silvia Causo: the environment around you to. To feel safe. It's now your
Silvia Causo: gift of be able to hold this big space where all these people are and,
Silvia Causo: and make room for everybody, you know, everyone's emotion.
Silvia Causo: So, yes, experience will shape the way you show up. And at
Silvia Causo: the same time, someone who's been traumatised as a child,
Silvia Causo: and this does not mean violence can be really
Silvia Causo: emotional neglect is as traumatising as being,
Silvia Causo: you know, for some people as any. Anything else as a car
Silvia Causo: crash, they are hurt so much,
Silvia Causo: they isolate themselves. The inner child is just close
Silvia Causo: in. And some of these people will show up with
Silvia Causo: narcissistic traits. They got so far in through that,
Silvia Causo: on that path that cannot see other
Silvia Causo: people's point of view anymore. It's just about them.
Silvia Causo: It's just about them. And I've been dealt with narcissists in my life and
Silvia Causo: you see them, they just go back to like childhood
Silvia Causo: childlike behaviour and there is a block
Silvia Causo: and some of them, they wear suits and, you know, ties, you know,
Silvia Causo: some of these big children. Which unfortunately is quite prevalent in the
Silvia Causo: top leadership layers, really, it's quite
Silvia Causo: prevalent. A mantra that many professional speakers use
Joanne Lockwood: is you speak from the scar, not from the wound.
Joanne Lockwood: So if your wound is still open, it's still bleeding, it's still leaking,
Joanne Lockwood: you need to heal yourself first and then you can reflect back on that
Joanne Lockwood: trauma, that wound of past. So you have to work on yourself first.
Joanne Lockwood: And because if you're trying to heal from that point where you're still hurting,
Joanne Lockwood: you're going to bring that hurt into the conversation. So what you're saying there is.
Joanne Lockwood: It's really important that heal thyself first, I think, is the key
Joanne Lockwood: message. Understand thyself and not bring your trauma into
Joanne Lockwood: somebody else's trauma. You can't, you can't take
Silvia Causo: anyone. We're talking about in the context of my. Our practise. You
Silvia Causo: can't take a client any deeper than you have been, you know, and
Silvia Causo: the business actually, you know, if someone's running a business, you can't take it
Silvia Causo: as further than what you actually prepared to.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. And I think, you know, not
Adrianne Arendse: an over. In an implicit way, modelling is a big part of
Adrianne Arendse: what we do because we're navigating the territory we're trying
Adrianne Arendse: to bring other people to. And that territory is alive, so you can't sort of
Adrianne Arendse: wander through it and say, okay, well, I know what that is now because it's
Adrianne Arendse: shifting, it's. The terrain's alive and.
Adrianne Arendse: And also who you are. You know, I often like to start
Adrianne Arendse: a session with the understanding that the version of somebody that walks
Adrianne Arendse: into the room is the version I'm dealing with. Yes.
Adrianne Arendse: Rather than this person I know for 10 minutes or 20 years, whatever it is,
Adrianne Arendse: is who's coming into the room. It's the version of them. So if they're. If
Adrianne Arendse: they were running five minutes late and they're harried, or there's a thought in there
Adrianne Arendse: that's distracting him, or not, if they're happy, sad, all these things,
Adrianne Arendse: those. That's who you're dealing with. And being
Adrianne Arendse: able to sort of find people where they are. That's what I
Adrianne Arendse: talk about is. Is finding the version of them that's in the room. So I
Adrianne Arendse: don't bring my preconceptions of who. Who they are might
Adrianne Arendse: be into that conversation. I can put those preconceptions aside and say,
Adrianne Arendse: well, this is where they are. I could. I'm with you on that. And I
Joanne Lockwood: encourage leaders to that as well. Where you're meeting people, where they're at. And as
Joanne Lockwood: you say in that moment, if you're trying to correct behaviour, trying to figure out
Joanne Lockwood: actually what's going on in your life right now, what's happened?
Joanne Lockwood: Where are you? Are you feeling relaxed? Are you feeling happy, stressed, sad?
Joanne Lockwood: Because all of that is firing of your brain. Your emotional triggers
Joanne Lockwood: are going. And you can never go logical, you can never go to the prefrontal
Joanne Lockwood: cortex. If people are still living in trauma or still living in whatever baggage
Joanne Lockwood: they're carrying, as you say, into the room right now. And we're not
Adrianne Arendse: asking leaders to be therapists either. We're just asking them to
Adrianne Arendse: be. Just aware enough to be able to see
Adrianne Arendse: there's something here I don't recognise. And then to become curious
Adrianne Arendse: or offer curiosity to that, not just ask questions unnecessarily, because I'm not.
Adrianne Arendse: Again, we're not asking them to be therapists. I mean, we are not therapists. But
Adrianne Arendse: what we can do is facilitate space for exploration, for
Adrianne Arendse: navigation. And if. If somebody needs whatever they need, there are ways
Adrianne Arendse: for them to get it. But until they recognise that need and
Adrianne Arendse: accept that need, you know, you're nowhere. We
Silvia Causo: were talking to someone the other day about this conversation. Is a. Is a
Silvia Causo: CEO of business and he says, but I can't just.
Silvia Causo: It's already difficult to run a business. I can't look after. Think about
Silvia Causo: everybody else, what all my team members feel. And
Silvia Causo: the point is, you don't have to look after them, you need to provide them
Silvia Causo: space. And this is what we trying to bring to business space.
Silvia Causo: Opportunities for your own people to look at this stuff,
Silvia Causo: to look at themselves. Opportunities. Because we live two thirds of
Silvia Causo: our lives is work, work, you know, work needs to take a responsibility.
Silvia Causo: How much extracts from us. It's just a question of providing
Silvia Causo: opportunity, not just, oh, I'll provide you with extra
Silvia Causo: half an hour for a walk or, you know, I'll put a plant in the
Silvia Causo: office that does a little bit. But the, the
Silvia Causo: work is deep inside of us, really
Silvia Causo: rehumanizing the workplace, rehumanizing humans.
Joanne Lockwood: Sylvia, Adrian, we could talk all day and I mean, we've been chatting now for.
Joanne Lockwood: Wow, over. Over an hour and a half and a bit time in the green
Joanne Lockwood: room as well. It's been fascinating to get to know you both and I love
Joanne Lockwood: the conversation. I think we've got a lot of lost synergy in what we think
Joanne Lockwood: about and it's really powerful and I'm very envious about your.
Joanne Lockwood: Your cold water swimming and your idyllic Cornwall life. It sounds.
Joanne Lockwood: Sounds perfect. How could people get hold of you? Well, we have a website
Adrianne Arendse: that's leadandbelong.com and it's l E A D
Adrianne Arendse: A N D B O L O N G B A B l o
Adrianne Arendse: n g.com and there's an email address. It's
Adrianne Arendse: infoadandbelong.com Again, I n F O at
Adrianne Arendse: L E a d a N-B-E l o n
Adrianne Arendse: g.com and we've got profiles on LinkedIn individually and
Adrianne Arendse: we're. We're gently active there. I'll. I'll
Joanne Lockwood: put full details in the show notes rather than you have to spell
Joanne Lockwood: your names out, both of you. It's for native English
Joanne Lockwood: speakers. Read the show notes to get the spelling because
Joanne Lockwood: Adrianne is not spelled as you would imagine and Sylvia is
Joanne Lockwood: obviously, but Adrianne isn't. So, yeah, read. Read the notes, look at the
Joanne Lockwood: subtitles, the captions and please do contact
Joanne Lockwood: Adrianne and Sylvia because you'd love to hear from people. Yeah,
Joanne Lockwood: absolutely. Absolutely is. Yeah. I feel that it's. Work is
Silvia Causo: needed. Work is needed for sure. For sure. Definitely.
Joanne Lockwood: Definitely. Well, thank you so much. It's been an absolute
Joanne Lockwood: pleasure. Thank you. Thank you. As
Joanne Lockwood: we bring this conversation to a close, I want to express my
Joanne Lockwood: deepest gratitude to you, our listener, for lending your
Joanne Lockwood: ear to and heart to the cause of inclusion.
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