How to thrive during uncertainty

Announcer:
Hello and welcome to the CPA Australia Podcast, your weekly source for accounting, education, career and leadership discussion.

Mark:
Welcome to this podcast, brought to you by CPA Australia. My name is Mark Broadhead, and I am the Deputy Chair of the New South Wales non-for-profit discussion group.

Mark:
I'm really excited about this podcast today as we have an incredibly experienced and well-qualified guest to discuss our topic, which is thriving and not just surviving the current COVID pandemic. Our guest's name is Rich Hirst, and I'll introduce him in a moment, but first I just wanted to talk about why we're doing this podcast.

Mark:
When our non-for-profit discussion group met last month in July, we all agreed that it felt like we were in this bizarre game of snakes and ladders where we had the initial shock of the pandemic in March, we gradually adjusted to the new normal in April, and we started to see some light at the end of the tunnel in May and June, thinking that we're almost there, but then only to see some sad outbreaks in July, and we're now not sure how this is going to end.

Mark:
At the time of recording, it's the 6th of August, and New South Wales is on sort of a knife-edge, not knowing which way it will go, and Victoria has tragically got a number of cases there.

Mark:
So we discussed at this meeting, as a group, how we wanted to support our members and give them some tools to help manage themselves and their teams in this new unknown, not just to survive but to thrive. To talk about this issue, we are really fortunate to have Rich Hirst today to discuss this.

Mark:
So Rich is the CEO and founder of Tenfold Australia. Last month they launched the 21st century multinational leadership forum which has grown to over 300 multinational executives in the community, after just the month. Well, that's a very busy month. His company name reflects the purpose, to tenfold Australia's impact for a better world. Tenfold also supports the non-for-profit sector by inviting senior leadership teams of charities nominated by his clients, with access to a range of leadership and development experiences.

Mark:
Further to this, Tenfold Australia also helps companies and their people create high performance cultures, scale their leadership impact, and find growth from disruption by keynote speaking, workshops, individual and team coaching, designing and analysing bespoke culture and climate surveys, developing cultural transformation maps, and online leadership development.

Mark:
Rich's methodology is based on real-world experiences from his work with over 1,000 CEOs and 100 global thought leaders in the area of business leadership and transformation. As an organisational psychologist, his insights are tested against behavioural science, and refined from expertise developed as a change agent supporting organisations through transformation.

Mark:
Rich has five kids, three dogs, and one day hopes to go fishing again, and actually catch and release something for a change! Finally, I'd just like to add that Rich and I have known each other since the fourth grade at … Public School, and we worked out that we've actually known each other for 40 years. So I'll leave it to the listeners to work out our age!

Mark:
So welcome, Rich. How are you today?

Rich:
Really well, thanks, Mark. I've got to ask the question upfront: Are you still pretty quick? Because Mark, in fourth grade, was the fastest kid on the block, for sure.

Mark:
I'd say I've slowed down a bit, but I haven't tested myself lately. I've still got a bit of pace but probably a yard or two slower than before.

Rich:
That's not bad. You were quick in the day. Great to be here, Mark. Thanks so much for the opportunity.

Mark:
Yeah, that's great. So let's get on with the first topic I want to talk to you about and what I want to unpackage with you, is what have you seen working in this current COVID environment, and what could you recommend to the listeners about, okay, well, how do we grapple, how do we thrive in this new unknown of where we don't know where it's going to end, we don't know how it's affecting us, and all that uncertainty?

Rich:
Yeah, great question. I guess I'd like to answer your question with a question, which is often what psychologists tend to do. I'm curious. You were talking about uncertainty, you were talking about change here. Do you think that's really new? Obviously the COVID pandemic is new-ish. We've had ones before, just by different labels: SARS, et cetera. But this change thing, there's nothing new about it from my point of view. What's your perspective on that?

Mark:
Yeah, that's good. We've all had change to confront throughout our life, but the perspective from me is that it's affecting everyone. We're all in this together. Even the people who aren't significantly affected by COVID, there's still change about them. I think there's not one person who hasn't been touched by this and having to adjust in some respect, even if it's just going and seeing a family member interstate, or going to the shops to buy your favourite coffee.

Mark:
Then on the other scale of that, I know many people who are out of work, have been out of work for many months, businesses who've had to entirely pivot their focus to dealing with the pandemic. I know I'm in aged care and we're spending a lot of our time just watching the updates, continually training staff, making sure that everyone is on top of things because it's just confronted us so dramatically.

Mark:
Then there's the global event in that it's affected the whole world, every country. It's affected Australia significantly, but some countries far worse.

Mark:
So it's a good question, and I suppose we all have change events in our lives but this one just seems to be so deep and so broad in its impact.

Rich:
Yeah. It's a fair observation, absolutely. I like the expression, I can't remember where it came from, but the idea that we're all in the COVID storm but we're in different boats. It's affecting us all differently. Because I think people initially were saying things like, "Oh, we're all in the same boat," and it's actually not the case. Some of us are in like a super cruiser with Van Goghs on the wall and a three hat chef cooking dinner for us, and other people are in a leaking tinny that is sinking quickly. But the storm is affecting us all, but man, it's amazing how big a difference it is between some and others.

Rich:
It's a different type of change, but I would argue that it's actually just reflective of things that are more likely to come in the future, as well as we have experienced changes that have affected the whole world in the past, but often they've been positive. So you could say something like the internet is a global change that is reaching more and more people, but it was positive, so everyone kind of went, "Oh, we'll embrace that one."

Rich:
I guess I start there with not answering your question directly, and I'll get to it. Because I feel like part of the way to deal with this is the way that we see it, and I do think that the hype cycle on the news, depending on what you're focused on will determine how you experience this.

Rich:
So I think there's a point here for people around focus, and I like the idea that focus is really the new IQ. For people that are progressing well in this, one of the things that they seem to be doing differently is being very careful about where they are focusing their energy. So it sounds like are you being realistic about the pandemic by not focusing your energy on it? But there's only so much information you potentially need to stay safe and to make sure everyone else around you is safe. Focusing 100% of your energy on social media feeds around the numbers going up, and looking at the graphs and all the rest, isn't serving you. Now that's an obvious one but I do think it goes well beyond just not looking at the numbers.

Rich:
The other thing to do is, what are you going to focus on? A big piece of work that I do with my clients is around this concept of response-ability. Response-ability is a play on words, and it's not a concept I came up with, one of my mentors shared it with me many years ago. But it's this difference, it's this ability to focus on what you can respond to as opposed to react to. It's the ability to focus on what you can control, not what you can't.

Rich:
The way my mentor taught me it was by we're in a room together and he picked up a pen and dropped it. He said to everybody in the room, "So why did the pen drop?" Everybody kind of looked at him and go, "What's going on here? This seems like a pretty obvious silly question to ask." But a bunch of people said, "Oh, because you dropped it." He said, "That's true. Why else did the pen drop?" Then finally someone said, "Well, gravity. Gravity made the pen drop." He was like, "That's true as well." So two answers that are correct, but where do you focus your energy?

Rich:
If you focus on the gravity, that takes you down a certain pathway because there's nothing you can do about gravity: it exists and it is there all day every day and, in fact, there are some benefits to it, of course. But you can focus on the fact that you let go of the pen.

Rich:
I think in COVID, to bring it back to this topic, there's a lot of people focusing on what they can't control. From a psychological point of view, that is the quickest way to undermine your sense of agency, which is what psychologists call your sense of being able to make the best of a situation, your confidence you could call it. But to focus on what you can control is also the way that you restate, re-invigorate that ability to do something about the situation you're in.

Rich:
So where do you focus, gravity or the action that you took in that situation when the pen dropped? It's the same in COVID. What are you going to focus on? How do you take responsibility for your situation?

Mark:
That's really good, Rich. I really like that. I know in March when COVID was blowing up, I was looking at that info graphic on... I think it was … It's all the red dots and all the exploding red dots around the world map and how everything's just getting bigger and bigger and bigger. I just made the decision to actually turn off all my news feeds and social feeds, and then in terms of COVID, I would just rely on the health updates that we got through work. Because we would meet on a very regular basis with the managers and executive and say, "Well, this is the update and this is what we're going to do about it," and just focus on, "Okay, well, what can I do?"

Mark:
It's tragic what was happening in the U.S. and other countries, and Italy and China, and I'm not wanting to be trite about it, but what I found is just narrowing my focus, okay, what can I be responsible for for today? It actually helped me get through that.

Mark:
It reminds me actually of a story. I spent many years working in a war veterans' village, and I got to know a lot of people who served in the war because we served lunch to them every Friday, and then we'd sit down and chat to them. The war veterans, they were teenagers during the Great Depression, and it's kind of like for their 21st birthday they got to go to war, to World War II. Remarkable people.

Mark:
There's one gentleman who I got to know really well whose name was Col. He grew up in the Northern Beaches of Sydney, and as a teenager during the Great Depression... most teenagers, if they're living on the Northern Beaches, they'll be surfing on the weekend. What he did was, he got up at four in the morning with his brother and he ran up this road called Powderworks Road, which is a 10 kilometre hill, so he could be at the front of the queue at Elanora Golf Club to get the caddying jobs for the day so he could earn money so his family could eat. He would tell me about that and how he would run up in the dark, and he just constantly did it.

Mark:
One particular gentleman really liked having him as a caddy and said to him, "Col, if you're ever in town, give me a ring"... Sorry, no. "If you're ever in town, drop by and see me." So a number of years later, Col was in town, which back in those days was a big trip to got to the city for the day. He went to this gentleman's office and presented at the front desk and said, "Hi, my name's Col. I'm here to see such and such." They said, "Do you have an appointment?" He said, "No, but he said whenever I was in town I was to come and see him." The receptionist said, "No, sorry, you can't come in."

Mark:
Col spent half an hour arguing with her. Eventually she gave up and went and got the chief of staff who came out and said the same thing: "If you don't have an appointment, you can't come in." Col said, "Well, he told me that if I was ever in town I should come and see him." Then after half an hour, the chief of staff went back and asked the gentleman about this Col guy, and then Col tells this story about how the chief of staff came back just with the colour drained from his face and goes, "He'll see you."

Mark:
So Col walks into this big boardroom and there's all these people there. The gentleman was actually Sir Frank Packer, and he said... introduced him to his colleagues and said, "This is Col. He's such a great guy. He caddied for me for so many years," and he gave his Col his first job, and it actually was his first job which led to his whole career, a very successful career.

Mark:
I just take such inspiration from Col, who's since passed away, in that as a teenager, can you imagine growing up and there's no work and there's no food and, "What am I going to do?" He goes, "Well, what can I do?" He got up in the morning, and he actually doesn't look back on those times saying, "Oh, I missed my teenage years," or whatever. It's just he took responsibility, and look at the outcome from that.

Mark:
So I think that's a really important point you draw out, and it's really good. So, Rich

Rich:
I love the story. I guess a caveat to the whole responsibility thing. It's not something that you use against other people. I think a lot of people hear that term and feel like either maybe I'm being judgemental to say, "You need to take responsibility," and that's the way it comes across if you're saying it to others. This is something you apply to yourself.

Mark:
Yeah, that's right.

Rich:
It's the whole fix your own oxygen mask first before helping others. These concepts that I typically work with with my clients, it's all around apply them to yourself and see how they work.

Rich:
Talking personally, I went through a very challenging time a few years back after my dad died from a brain tumour. I got really stuck in a place where I was very angry, and I was very upset with other people and felt... it just became very critical of others and how they'd hurt me or how they'd done things that they shouldn't have, and really got stuck in this sort of victim way of thinking. I got counselling and I spoke to lots of people and had people support me, and the people that I thought had hurt me apologised, and whatever else.

Rich:
I did everything I could, but ultimately there was nothing anyone else could do that was going to really get me out of that place. I had to get myself unstuck. So the pathway out of that was a lot to do with this idea of responsibility, to focus on what I could do as opposed to waiting for the rest of the world to fix it for me.

Rich:
It's true. You look at most people throughout history that we would say are the world's greatest leaders and greatest influencers. They've all been in often terrible situations. You tell me, who are the first three people that come to mind for you that have changed the world?

Mark:
Well, you have Winston Churchill.

Rich:
Right.

Mark:
FDR.

Rich:
Yeah.

Mark:
And Abraham Lincoln. They're the first that come to mind.

Rich:
I'm not very good on my American history but certainly Churchill clearly, time of massive crisis, and this scenario where he had a choice around how to respond. Again, you look at often the names that come up, it's out of a time of crisis that these people step up. They look at what they can control, not what they can't, and in doing that they inspire others to do the same thing. Mandela's often one that's quoted, and Gandhi's another one. Mother Teresa. There's people that everybody knows that are icons of positive change and influence: all came from a place of enormous hardship.

Rich:
I feel like this crisis, there is some horrible things happening right now, and it's terribly, terribly sad stories that you're hearing, but I equally have confidence in the world to prosper ultimately from this as a collective. That might sound, again, like I'm belittling the stories, and I don't mean to for a second, but there's some really interesting work around this concept called anti-fragility, or it being anti-fragile. Antifragile is this notion that actually we grow more from the stresses that we face, the challenges that we face, than we do from the successes. Our system, our human system of humanity as much as individually, we're designed to prosper and grow from that.

Rich:
There's a huge area of research in psychology as well called post traumatic growth which again is all about the fact that we tend to actually... not always, definitely always, but there is a pathway through trauma and crises where we come out ahead of where we were when we went it.

Rich:
I love Andy Grove, the former global CEO of Intel. He talks about the fact bad companies are destroyed by crises, good companies survive them, and great companies are improved by them. So even in the corporate world I think there's just countless examples of companies that have gone into crises and come out much, much stronger as a result.

Rich:
We actually did some research. I used to work at Gartner, and Gartner did some great research during the previous GFC which, from a financial point of view, you could argue was our most recent big crisis. Going into the GFC, they sort of flatlined the Fortune 1000 companies. So they baselined them all to one on the scale, and then they looked at how all of those companies performed through the GFC. They found there were 42 of the Fortune 1000 that came out ahead of the GFC. They seemed to, what Gartner described as, they won in the turns, and winning in the turns is that sort of ice skating metaphor. You know when Steven Bradbury won the gold?

Mark:
Yeah, yeah.

Rich:
He won in the turns. In the turn is where there's the most complexity and risk, and he knew that as well. He knew everyone would be pushing themselves to go right to the edge of their ability, and as it turned out, they tripped each other over and he cruised across the line. So the same concept can apply in this crisis: How do you win in that turn?

Rich:
The really interesting thing about that Gartner research was that they didn't just come out of the GFC ahead: for the next decade, that gap between them and the rest increased. So it wasn't just around winning in the turns, it's setting you up for the next decade ahead potentially.

Rich:
So how do we use this current crisis... and, again, I say use not in a manipulative context, but how is it that potentially, as an individual, as a family, as a team, as a company, we can use this time to refine our approach, to focus a bit differently, to work out how can we be better as a result of this? We need to deal with the trauma, for sure, but we can grow as well, and that's what post traumatic growth is all about. That's what being anti-fragile is all about.

Mark:
That's fantastic. Just a couple of thoughts that spring to mind when you're espousing all that wisdom is that my current CEO, James … often he'll say, whenever we've got a challenging situation, he'll go, "Let's look for the gift in the situation. What is the gift?" It can almost sound a bit trite, but it's not because it's okay, our business has had to pivot. So I'm in aged care and we've had to pivot and really focus... we've always had an infection control focus because it's aged care, but it's just another level, and we've constant meetings, constant training, drills and everything like that. What's the gift in this, and he's always looking for that. It's a really good way of looking at it.

Mark:
I'd say immediately, the things that spring to mind is that it's become so apparent to me how tight the team is, how good we work together, how much they love the residents. Now I know aged care sometimes gets a bit of a bashing in the media for various reasons, and obviously there's been some inappropriate care in certain sectors, and I'm not excusing that, but overwhelmingly the people who work in aged care are just gold. They're lovely people. You know what? They love the residents.

Mark:
In this time, I've felt like there's been this... it's like a magnet bringing us even closer together, saying, "Okay, we're all about the residents. We're focusing on them." It makes decision-making a lot easier because you've got this set of goggles that is very clear and very defined, and you're making these decisions. I think that would have been the gift so far that has happened for us, is that we've really, in that adversarial environment, is that we've really brought together.

Mark:
It's one of those things that you don't like to go through hard times. No one likes to go through hard times. A few years ago I went through a very difficult time, and I was similar in that I felt very bitter about it, very angry, it's not fair, but then I sort of just came to this point to say, "Well, going through a bad time, it's not because I'm a bad person. It happens to everyone." There's valleys and there's mountains in everyone's life, and then you just keep walking, and now, I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm actually thankful for that time. I'm actually thankful for going through that hard time because it gives you this different perspective on things. It gives you more focus.

Mark:
I always joke about it. It's like I used to worry about losing my hair, and then after I went through this thing, I couldn't give a stuff. Honestly, I couldn't give a stuff. I've got this saying now my wife loves. I say, "If you're a man in your forties and your biggest worry is losing your hair, then your life's pretty good."

Rich:
Very true, very true. I love it, Mark. They're great points. Your original question was, who's thriving through this time? I think it is those that are taking responsibility, focusing on what they can control, not what they can't.

Rich:
The second part of that is being really, I guess, disciplined with yourself about where you allow your focus to go. The expression I love is, your energy flows where your focus goes. So if you're focusing on all the negative news, then your energy's going to head in that direction, and that's not a good energy. Whereas there is the opportunity to focus on and get your energy flowing in the direction of growth, and locking in these learnings.

Rich:
So I think these concepts are really key to getting through this crisis because this crisis is not over, but equally, crises in general are far from over, and we'll experience many more and potentially worse ones than this going forward. You think about the people in Beirut right now. They're not thinking about COVID for a second right now.

Rich:
There's potentially something worse around the corner, but we can be stronger and more prepared for it, and I think that's what the world's going through right now, is this reckoning of its own capability to respond to crisis and grow from it, and I hope that the world is in a better place to do that going forward because there's a good likelihood that there'll be something worse around the corner. That's not being negative, it's just kind of being realistic. We don't know what it looks like, but there will also be a lot of the more amazing things coming around the corner as well. That's kind of the tapestry of life, hey?

Mark:
Yeah.

Rich:
So that's a really important point.

Mark:
Yeah. I really love the idea of focus. I use the term your emotional diet. I've got three teenager daughters, and I'm amazed at the social media and the connectedness they have with each other and the friends. I think that's great. But during this time I've talked to them about... because I'm talking to myself about it really... is about, what is my spiritual guides? There was that famous movie a few years ago called Supersize Me about the bloke who went and ate Maccas three times a week for a month and then became drastically

Rich:
Yeah. Didn't work out well.

Mark:
... unhealthy. I wonder how much are we feeding our mind Maccas three times a day, and wondering why our mind's not as healthy as it perhaps could be. I know I really enjoy just hearing inspiring stories or reading journals. I'm reading a book about Shackleton at the moment.

Rich:
Incredible.

Mark:
It's those type of things that help me go, "Well, they went through some tough times and they got through, so I can as well." Back at the war veterans' village that I worked at for so many years, I'd get told stories about people who were 17 who forged their ID to go to war. I asked everyone who went, I'd say, "Well, why did you go?" The answer was invariably the same, it was, "It's just what you did." They had this innate sense of responsibility and, "I'm going to contribute. I can control, and I'm going to do my bit." So it's good.

Rich:
Absolutely.

Mark:
So just something else. We've talked about focus and things like that but what are some things that are not working or you said say, "Just don't go there. I wouldn't recommend that at all during this time"?

Rich:
I think judgment's a really interesting construct that people, myself included, can get caught up with, in judging something as good or bad, is what I'm talking about.

Mark:
Oh, yeah.

Rich:
Now clearly you'd see COVID-19 isn't good, but I think we can get caught up in just how terrible that is, or how terrible other people's behaviours are in this time. That whole cycle of judging things as good or bad can just catch us out because the reality is, there are some things that they're not good or they're bad or they're great, but often time changes our perception of these things anyway. So there's sort of a suspending judgement piece in here as well, and just acknowledging the situation for what it is, and then with that freedom you're not expending a whole lot of energy in the interpretation of something as good or bad, you're just responding and dealing with it and focusing on what you can do in the situation.

Rich:
This goes to this wonderful research that Susan David from Harvard's done around emotional agility. Again, I think for people that are prospering, they're emotionally agile. What does that mean? It means that they're in tune with how they're feeling, and it's as simple as that in some ways. It's around acknowledging and being aware of, "Well, what is it that I'm feeling right now?" It's rarely one thing, it's often a couple of different things, if not a few more. But it's becoming emotionally literate and being able to say, "You know what? I'm feeling anxious right now, and I'm scared," and being able to talk about that, and not beat yourself up about it. That's the judgement thing.

Rich:
Often we think about judging as judging others, but often we judge ourselves. Susan says we're the only species on the planet, as far as we're aware, that has emotions about our emotions. Then we get angry at ourselves for being scared, or we're anxious and then we get frustrated that we're anxious. It's like, oh my gosh, just move on. Again, we're expending so much energy, and our energy's limited. Our conscious energy is limited, it's a limited resource, and yet we're applying it and using it ways that are just not productive.

Rich:
So this emotional agility piece is all around understanding what we're feeling, acknowledging it, and then coming up with a plan to move forward, step out, as she talks about, step forward in alignment with your values. That's like a life skill that takes... I don't think anyone's ever cracked it, but, gosh, there's a pathway we can take where we can better at it, and when we're feeling things, just to go, "Okay, so there's something that I can learn from this as well. Why am I feeling scared? Why I am feeling anxious? Why am I feeling happy?" Happiness isn't always appropriate, it shouldn't always be a goal. If a bear's chasing you in a forest, don't feel happy. You should be scared because you'll bloody well then apply resources to get you out of that issue.

Rich:
So, again, we judge things as good or bad too quickly, and there's something in this journey just around going, "Okay. I'm feeling this and it's legitimate. I'm human. Every emotion's legitimate. Every emotion plays a role. Once I've acknowledged it, then I can make a conscious choice around how I move forward." That's a big life skill, but one worth working on.

Mark:
Yeah. I really like that. Because I know with my wife, Leanne, she works in healthcare as well, sometimes it can feel a bit overwhelming. Her and I, during this time, we've been quite open to say, "Feeling a bit stressed about this. Let's go walk the dog," or, "Let's have a cup of tea," or doing something like that. I think that's a really good balance. It's kind of like not just the stiff upper lip of take responsibility and soldier on-

Rich:
Yeah, exactly, no.

Mark:
I think there is an element of that but then there's also, "Okay, well, this is real and this is serious, and let's walk through this together and understand that we can."

Rich:
That's awesome. This goes back to the post traumatic growth research I touched on before. The guy that really came up with this concept, one of the key guys anyway, back in the '80s, he was working with victims from a ferry disaster on the English Channel. It was called the Herald ferry disaster, for those that maybe lived in the U.K. at the time, in 1987. 500 people on board, and 193 of them died. It was freezing water, the ferry capsized. You can imagine how horrible that situation would be.

Rich:
For the people that survived, many of them developed post traumatic stress. So he was working with these people, treating these people in the U.K. It was interesting because over many years he was able to work out, well, who coped the best? So almost going back to your original question and, to your second question, who didn't cope? Now the ones that didn't cope were the ones that were the least emotionally expressive, and secondly, they lacked social support.

Rich:
So this is exactly what we're talking about. That ability to express your emotions is so critical during this time, no matter whether they feel ugly or great or whatever it is, but just having the space to acknowledge what you're feeling is really, really critical. As a bloke, I know that half of the population isn't terribly good at that. Generalising grossly, but men don't often talk about their emotions, but man we need to. Come on, we need to get better at doing that.

Rich:
But the second point is this social support. They lacked social support, the people that didn't cope the best. So finding your partner, whoever it is, someone at work, someone at home, wherever it might be, that you can talk to is really, really important, and just to listen. Again, don't judge what you're hearing if you're the person listening. Just acknowledge it, and then to sort of work out, "Okay. So that's totally understandable. This is a challenging time. What can you do moving forward?" And sort of to finish the conversation with more of a stepping forward type of orientation is a good way to do, as opposed to just leaving the person expressing the emotion which can feel really, one, vulnerable, but two, can feel a little bit negative as well.

Mark:
Yeah. So it's a bit like identifying how you're feeling, owning that emotion, but not stopping there, going, "Okay, what can I do about that emotion? How can I perhaps process that and walk through it?" I love the ideas of social support and utilising your network around you to help you along the way.

Rich:
Yeah, massive.

Mark:
Just finally, we talked a bit in the preparation for this about the parallels of going from safety and security and growth and motivation, that they're parallel streams. I'd love you to un-package that a bit more for the listener because when you said that to me, I was just like, oh, well, that's just gold.

Rich:
Yeah. Thanks, Mark. I'll try and do it justice. But, again, it goes back to this post traumatic growth research where the professor was a world-leading expert in post traumatic stress, and he'd spent his entire career focused on how do I get you back from a negative place to just kind of an okay place? He realised through this research that there's specific strategies just to get you out of that traumatic space to an even keel, as such. There are different strategies though to help you to grow. So, again, they're parallel streams.

Rich:
We need to be supporting each other because there is a lot of stress and trauma around there, but there are different actions to help you to grow, and the two sort of work hand in hand. It's the example we just shared. It's being able to sit down with people and help them to express and acknowledge what they're feeling, and also focus on what they can control and how they can move forward. It's doing both things. If you just do one without the other, you're either left in a place of ruminating around what's not working, or you're feeling like you're not acknowledging where I'm at, like "Don't tell me what to do moving forward. I want to talk about how I'm feeling."

Rich:
So in the workplace or at home or wherever it is, it's around those parallel strategies, giving people the opportunity to express themselves, and then supporting them in working out how they move forward. The two things need to go hand in hand for progress to happen.

Mark:
That's fantastic. Hey, Rich, just recapping, there's so much great stuff, and really appreciate your wisdom and your experience in this. So just if I can sum up of the things that I've got from this conversation is about taking responsibility, about focusing on what I can control. Being pretty ruthless with your emotional diet, not focusing on the 24 / 7 news feed. Looking for the gift in a situation, even though it's difficult, and understanding that tough times happen to everyone and ultimately it will make us stronger. Just finally, owning your own emotions, not rejecting them. Being emotionally agile and owning your own emotions, accepting them, but then using your social support, your network, to move on and grow and grow together. Have I missed anything?

Rich:
That's an amazing summary. The only thing is just that judgement piece. It's just be kind to yourself. Be kind to those around you. There is a lot going on here and it does feel overwhelming on some days, and other days it may not feel it, but it will for others. So I think there's just that non-judgmental approach is really important now for us to use the energy we've got constructively and just to be available to those that need us, and help others to move forward, and ourselves to move forward for that matter too.

Mark:
Yeah, that's fantastic. So thanks so much, Rich. CPA Australia, myself and non-for-profit discussion group really appreciate your time and wish you all the best for Tenfold Australia. So I suppose you've got a website people can check out what you're doing, check you out on LinkedIn. Is that right?

Rich:
Sure, sure. I post regularly on LinkedIn Tenfold tips which are all focused on how you can tenfold your leadership impact and life, and drawing on research from psychology, behavioural economics and realworld insights from the leaders that we work with. So if you'd like to tap into that, then, yeah, I'd love you to connect with me on LinkedIn, and you'll start to receive those in your LinkedIn feed.

Mark:
Yeah, okay. Great. Well, thanks very much listeners. Thanks a lot, Rich. You all have a great day.

Rich:
All the best to everyone. Stay safe.

Announcer:
Thanks for listening to the CPA Australia Podcast. For more information on today's episode, please visit the show notes at www.cpaaustralia.com.au/podcast. Never miss an episode by subscribing to our podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Stitcher.