Also available as a video with subtitles on YouTube.
Disconnecting from work can be a real struggle for many people working in healthcare – which can have a huge impact on our mental health.
In this episode Dr Paula Redmond speaks to work psychologist Ross McIntosh about about bringing contextual behavioural science and ACT to the workplace – particularly around disconnecting from work.
Ross guides Paula (and you) through a useful exercise (the ACT Matrix) to help you disconnect so you might want to find a quiet spot to listen. Click here for the accompanying handout.
There’s also a bonus episode today of an additional exercise so keep an eye out in your podcast app.
You can hear more of Ross on his podcast People Soup which can be heard through your podcast app or via his website www.rossmcintosh.co.uk
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Transcript
Paula Redmond: Hi, I’m Dr. Paula Redmond, a clinical psychologist, and you’re listening to the When Work Hurts podcast.
On this show, I want to explore the stories behind the statistics of the mental health crisis facing healthcare professionals today, and to provide hope for way out through compassion, connection, and creativity. Join me as I talk to inspiring clinicians and thought leaders in healthcare about their unique insights, and learn how we can support ourselves and each other when work hurts.
One of the issues that comes up a lot for me and the health professionals I speak to in the course of my work, is how hard it can be to disconnect from work. To explore this issue and helpful ways of responding to it, I was joined by Ross McIntosh. Ross is a work psychologist and host of the award-winning podcast, People Soup. Ross started off by telling me about the work he does.
Ross Mclntosh: To answer that, what I think I’ll do is go quite high level and say that in my work, what I’m trying to do is take a stand for the possibility of wellbeing, adaptability, and recovery for adults at work, and provide them with skills to support themselves and each other, and particularly in these turbulent times. I basically, I design and deliver evidence-based interventions, hopefully meeting people and organizations where they are, understanding what they’re facing and understanding the context of that organization.
You’re absolutely right, I’ve been working a lot with the NHS, both pre and during pandemic. I’ve had the good fortune to work a lot with the NHS. I also work quite a bit with teachers and civil servants. I have quite a public sector bias. I do do some work in the private sector. I know we’re not focusing on that today, but it’s just, I think it’s interesting to notice that they are also interested in these types of skills to support adults in the workplace.
Now delving into a bit, so typically I’d be going round pre-pandemic, I’d be going round to NHS trusts either delivering directly to people who work within the NHS, or running train the trainer sessions to enable people to either cultivate the skills directly themselves, or help others facilitate sessions in their own organizations. All of those training interventions are based upon something called acceptance and commitment therapy, which I know you know very well. We call it act. What I do, as part of my role, is at City University of London, where I work in partnership with Dr. Paul Flaksman, who is a globally recognized researcher in act, and has been for the last almost 20 years. We’ve got this neat little partnership where he is the academic and I am now more the practitioner side of things.
By drawing upon this partnership, we enable research to take place. We also can discuss adaptations and tweaks to a protocol we’ve developed. We’ve developed a protocol for act in the workplace which would typically be delivered over four sessions, and that’s what is a core foundation of all my work in the NHS.
Paula Redmond: Tell me about this protocol. What are the skills that you are supporting people to learn? What have you found has been most important for people?
Ross Mclntosh: What we are doing with act is we’re trying to distill it down into a manageable set of skills that can really enhance the experience of adults in the workplace. In my experience, these are skills I was never taught at school, at uni, in my professional life. These are skills that can be so useful, and can be applied in any area of life. It’s not just about saying, “Hey, we’re giving you these skills so we can get you to do the job of four people instead of three people that you’re currently doing.”
The beauty of this is these are skills for life. How would I describe them? The way we describe them in the training, perhaps that’s the best way to approach this, is we describe the skill of noticing, that skill of being able to strengthen our awareness. Do we always notice how we’re showing up in different scenarios in life? Do we notice the impact that’s having on us and those people around us? Do we notice what’s going on around us in life, those opportunities, perhaps there are threats as well or risks? Do we notice what our minds are producing? Our minds can be quite pesky being an adult human in the workplace, and they can produce all sorts of content that can get in the way, or stop as being the person we’d really like to be. That’s one skill, the skill of really enhancing our noticing skills.
Then we have a skill we call active, and this we describe as using our personal values as our guide. What do I mean by that? I mean really connecting with what has purpose and meaning for us in different areas of our life, and then working out how we can use those abstract words as guides for our behavior, like a beacon for our behavior, which can be particularly important in quite turbulent times.
Then the final skill, we call it open. The subtitle to that one, Paula, is we say relating more skillfully to the inner world. Now, that can sound a bit woo woo. What we mean there is, the inner world is our minds can produce loads of thoughts, emotions, memories, sensations, urges, which can influence our behavior. There are set of skills that we can share with adults that can help them relate to that in our world in a different way. It doesn’t have such a hold over them.
That’s how we present those skills in a hopefully, fingers crossed, Paula, in a compelling way that encourages people to invest their time in attending some training like this. We also know these skills basically cultivate psychological wellbeing and psychological flexibility in adults.
Paula Redmond: I’m taking lots of notes, Ross, because this is all useful, important stuff. I can really see how relevant it is to people working in the NHS and thinking about the people I work with. I think working in that context of the NHS where there’s often very little time or scope for just taking a pause to notice, we can get so caught up in process and systems that just that opportunity to pause and notice both what’s going on around us, but also what’s going on inside us. I think really valuable and important if we are going to be able to take action that’s in line with our values, because often you’re thinking about when work hurts, it’s often when they are real values, conflicts aren’t there in terms of, I guess things like really wanting to be very dedicated and committed to our work. Sometimes that can mean putting ourselves in harm’s way, if we’re overworking for example, and without being able to take a pause and notice those conflicts, we can really, I guess, be drawn into automatic ways of responding that are unhelpful.
Ross Mclntosh: Absolutely, Paula. I love the way you express that, because some themes that I’ve seen, I think overworking in the NHS during the pandemic, our exhaustion is probably the top one frustration. A sense that people are applying strategies that used to work in the pre-pandemic days that are no longer working, but they’re continuing to try and apply them because they haven’t taken that pause to reflect. That could mean strategy is about enabling a disconnect from work perhaps on a commute, perhaps some people aren’t traveling, or from traumatic events that have been witnessed and disconnecting from those. Those moments of pause are really important. I couldn’t agree more.
Self-care is another thing that’s come out for me, people realizing from training of this type that actually they have permission to look after themselves.
It’s interesting what you’re talking, values conflict, because I absolutely agree, and I think sometimes I’ve experienced people who’ve become disconnected from their personal values at the workplace. They’re like, well, what’s the chocking point? Why am I doing this? I’m not sure how to put this, but an inflexible application of personal values. I’m not sure whether I’m onto something here or not, but let me try and describe it because I think it says you’ve got a value of caring, and you’re just applying that at 100% throughout your working life, and perhaps outside of work too. That’s not a very flexible application. Do you get what I mean? It’s like, can people dial it down sometimes? Because I think they’ve forgotten about themselves, or perhaps their own personal wellbeing. Just keep slipping down there to do list in a very gentle familiar way. That way is not a healthy way to go for the individual, for the organization, for the patients, for the service users. It’s not sustainable, and it’s storing up all sorts of trouble.
Paula Redmond: I guess one of the problems with wellbeing programs, and I think one of the resistances, is that there’s a message that the problem is located in the person, and they need to go to some resilience course to sort themselves out, and a lack of acknowledgement of that broader context of how the work itself is managed.
Ross McIntosh: I couldn’t agree more. I think it damages the impact of training interventions like this, which can be really useful, and we know can really enhance psychological wellbeing. What it doesn’t do is fix a toxic environment. Ideally when I’m delivering training like this, I’d aim to get conversations with people who have more control over the environment. Even if it’s just to make them aware of how people are feeling, because quite often those people don’t have a voice. It can be a side issue to the training, but I think to ignore it and to say here’s some skills for you, does exactly what you’ve just described, it individualizes it and says there’s no real problem with the toxic nature of this organization. Ideally, and it doesn’t always work where it don’t always get access to the right people, but to talk about the culture or the the behaviors that aren’t contributing to a cooperative and collaborative workplace are really important too.
For me, that’s the beauty of this type of behavior of science, because it can be ramped up from the individual to the organizational level. I have done some work with some teams within trust to think, okay, here’s some skills for you as individuals with this team, as individuals within this team. Now let’s look about how you’d like to be as a team. What’s important to you as a team, and what could show up inside anyone within this team that would get in the way of bringing to life what’s important. That can unlock great conversations about the culture and about how we want this team to be, and make everyone feel as though they have a voice within that environment which they previously haven’t felt.
I think part of the beauty of this type of behavioral sciences that can be, what’s the word? Is it like ramped up, escalated to account for team behavior too.
Paula Redmond: Are you saying, and I guess I’m thinking about when you’re talking about applying these skills at a team level, that sense of as a team, how can we notice, how can we activate our values, how can we be more open, and how we relate to our team experience.
Ross McIntosh: There’s an approach called, from the contextual behavioral science stable, called pro-social which brings together evolutionary theory, contextual behavioral science, which is what we’re talking about today, and a set of core design principles that were shown, through great research by an economist, to be the qualities that effective and collaborative teams had.
Now, I’m going a bit off trajectory, but I think it’s fascinating to look at those design principles for effective teams, and these same as a diagnostic for your own team to say, do we have a say in how this team runs and makes decisions. For example, do we know what each other are doing in this team? Do we feel empowered to call out behavior that’s in line with how we want to be as a team, and also call out behavior that’s not in line with how we want to be as a team.
For me, using that combined with contextual behavioral science like act, could really unlock conversations and breakthroughs in a team that you probably wouldn’t have got to. I’ve taken this on a bit of a tangent there, Paula, apologies, but I just think I just wanted to illustrate that, yes, an act training course doesn’t solve a toxic environment, but it could be a pretty great foundation, that set of skills, to then apply to a team. I think the potential there is, for me, it’s a bit mind blowing.
Paula Redmond: I wonder if we could maybe unpack this theme around connection and disconnection a bit more in relation to work, and how these skills can help with that. Thinking about when we talk about disconnection from work, what comes to mind for me is people’s struggles with leaving work behind, going home and carrying really difficult stuff that they may have witnessed or been through during the working day. Some of the trauma and loss that people have been exposed to in huge volumes and in great intensity and over long extended periods of time, finding that really hard to disconnect from in order to focus on other aspects of their lives and other things that are important to people.
In what ways do you think that these act skills can help people struggling with that?
Ross McIntosh: What I do look at and combine with act, is research and literature on leisure time recovery. This idea that what we do in our leisure time could really help us recover and recharge our batteries. It doesn’t need to be enormous things like, oh, Hey, why don’t you learn a language, or write that book you’re always going to write in your leisure time, or learn how to make the perfect blumen sourdough. No, it’s more about what small steps can you take to have a bit more intention in your time outside of work that really brings to life some of your own personal values in that. I say this in a quite tentative way, Paula, because I am humbled and in awe of our NHS for the things they have experienced and seen and witnessed over the course of this pandemic.
I don’t want to appear trait, but I think the act can help support us generally as human beings in just being the person we’d like to be a bit more often. That can mean this weekend or this time up, this time I’ve got in the future where I’m going to have a few days off, just pausing to think how do I want to be in this time off, how could I use this time off and really disconnect from that work rather than sit and ruminate for that time off about everything that’s happened. I don’t know if that makes sense, Paula.
Paula Redmond: Yes, because what that brings to mind for me is, one of the things that’s been so hard about the pandemic is not having access to those things that we would normally call upon to help us with that. Not being able to go out with friends, or go anywhere or do anything for a lot of this time, or those things being tinged with anxiety and threat.
I guess I was then thinking that what can be so helpful about the distinction between, I guess values and maybe goals in what you said about how do I want to be in this time. Maybe we don’t have access to the activities that we may want to spend our time doing, but there’s something about a quality of being that we still may have access to. I guess I’m thinking about how do we find ways of being spontaneous and fun or creativity when we haven’t had access to going to the purple whatever.
Ross McIntosh: I think you’re so right to highlight that, because I think it takes some creativity and reflection to try and express those values in a different way. Perhaps the value of connection, yet maybe you can’t meet in person or go to a restaurant, but are there other ways you could connect as a group of friends, or with one friend, or going to a gym. Say the gyms were closed, how could you develop a different stretching regime in the confines of your own home? Or you love traveling, how could you research new places to go? Maybe watch particular YouTube videos or get inspiration. What are the qualities about that travel that really ignite you, and how could you try and find other ways to just get, and maybe not the full ignition, but just a little spark that would enable you to feed that value, express that value in a different way? It’s kind of unbundling them and thinking, “Are there different ways I could do this?” I guess.
Paula Redmond: Yes. I wonder, Ross, if we could maybe bring this to life a little bit in terms of what we’re talking about, and whether you would be willing to talk me through an exercise so that we can demonstrate what this looks like?
Ross Mclntosh: Yes. It’s just quite experimentalist in a pure audio format. First of all, I’m going to invite you to have a bit of paper in front of you, and a pen, please.
Paula Redmond: Okay.
Ross Mclntosh: On that piece of paper, blank paper, I’d like you to draw a line down the middle vertically, and a line across the page horizontally, again in the middle. What you should have there, if my instructions were any good, is four quadrants of around an equal size.
Paula Redmond: Yes.
Ross Mclntosh: Great. Right. On that vertical line, the one that goes up, at the top of that, if you draw an arrow heading right towards, follow that line down to the bottom of the page and draw it downward arrow and write the word away. Then on the horizontal line, over on the left hand side, if you could just write ‘Inner world’, and then over on the right hand side, write, ‘World of behavior.’ While we’re at it, just in this preparatory bit in the middle where those two lines intersect, just draw yourself quite a decent sized circle, and in that circle, write, “Noticing with kindness and curiosity.”
What we’ve just drawn is something called the act matrix, and this is the version we use in our protocol for listeners who use the act matrix or are familiar with it. We’ve rotated it to make the towards moves up and the away moves down, just in case there’s any confusion there. Otherwise, it follows the principles of this tool.
What this tool is, is it’s a framework to help us get perspective. It helps me sort out the jumble that’s inside my head when I’m trying to work out something in the future, you can also use it to look at the past, but today I’m going to be using it to look to the future. As I said earlier, it can help you be the person you’d like to be a bit more often, taking small steps to the best version of yourself. That’s a little introduction to the tool. This tool, we can use for any area of our life.
As we’ve been talking about disconnecting from work, I thought we might use it to explore a period of disconnection that’s coming up for you, Paula. It could be a longer break from work, or it could be just an evening or a weekend. What would you like to choose or focus on as a scenario?
Paula Redmond: I think school holidays.
Ross Mclntosh: Perfect. Thank you. Paula, what I’m going to invite you to do is join me in thinking about how you’d like to be during those school holidays, and disconnecting from work using this tool, this matrix that we’ve just drawn. Just let me just familiarize you a bit more with that. If you look at the tool, basically it encourages us to look at our human experience in two dimensions that we can move towards who we want to be, and we can move away from who we want to be in any area of life, and we’ll always do both. The purpose of this behavioral science in this tool, isn’t to turn you into to Saint Paula, who’s only ever moving towards who she wants to be. The purpose of this is to help you notice a bit more often.
Then the other dimension is represented by that horizontal line. In any scenario in life, there’s stuff going on in our inner world. Those thoughts, emotions, memory, sensations, sometimes they can be useful, and sometimes they can really get in the way and leave us feeling despondent, stuck in loops, almost trapped. That stuff happening in our inner world can really influence how we show up in life, and that what we call on this little diagram, the world of behavior. That’s the basics of the matrix, and perhaps the most important part is that bit in the center, that noticing with kindness and curiosity. We’re looking to cultivate this stance of being curious and kind to ourselves about what’s going on, because I can bet that, you, Paula, and all of your listeners are probably their own harshest critics in life.
It’s an unusual stance to cultivate and encourage, but it’s one that’s so valuable to us, particularly people who are so compassionate in everything they do when they’re working lives and with their family. Let’s turn that light of compassion onto ourselves a bit.
Setting the scene a bit. Now, let’s go back to your example of school holidays, and they’re going to take you around each of these quadrants, Paula, and they’re going to ask you a question, and you just have a go at responding to this. You don’t have to write it down, but if you’re having a go as a listener, you might just want to jot some notes down on a piece of paper.
Really just thinking about that context of school holidays and not being at work, Paula, describe to me how you’d like to be during that time.
Paula Redmond: I would like to be able to be really present with my family, to be really focused on rest and having fun. I guess a sense of being with my kids physically and psychologically, not worrying too much about work, not too distracted.
Ross Mclntosh: Love it. Thank you, Paula. That being present, that being focused, the opportunity to have rest and fun, and I love how you describe being with my kids physically and psychologically, not being hooked away by work stuff. Beautiful. That goes in that top left quadrant, and that’s in your inner world.
Now, at the same time as you think about these qualities of your behavior, these values you’d like to bring to your school holiday period, there most likely will be other stuff that shows up, that could get in the way. What stuff could show up inside of you that could get in the way, things like thoughts, emotions, memories, sensations, urges? Have a go with just playing with that question a bit, if you wouldn’t mind, Paula.
Paula Redmond: I find my work very exciting and very interesting. I often have an urge to do work stuff. It’s not really stress, but a real pull, a real draw to just check what’s going on here, or answer that email, or do little something. I think there is a background of anxiety around missing something, letting someone down, not being on top of everything all the time, it’s probably an anxiety there for me too.
Ross Mclntosh: Thank you so much.
Paula Redmond: I guess another thing that probably crops up is worrying about people, worrying about clients, particularly having taken a break, maybe feeling guilty about doing that if I’m not having sessions, for example, that week. Are people okay? Have I let them down? Does someone need me and I’m not there for them? Feeling a bit selfish or taking time out and people are struggling.
Ross Mclntosh: Thank you, Paula, for a real reflection there on all those different things that can pop up. Whether it’s that sense of anxiety about your clients, perhaps feeling a little bit adrift or disconnected. Your enthusiasm for your work and just that urge to check-in, all going on in your inner world. That stuff can really impact on how you show up during this school holiday time. I’m going to continue around this matrix. Now you’re going to go across to the bottom right, and say to you, if those things you’ve just described were really influencing your behavior in a practical way, how you show up in the world, what might we see you doing if there’s a camera following you around? What might we see you doing? Might we see you just sneaking off to go and check on things, or dropping– I’ll not put words in your mouth, you tell me, sorry.
Paula Redmond: Yes, I think it would see me, I’m quite an early waker because I have a dog, and it would see me probably being like, oh, everyone’s still asleep. I’ll just do a few hours of work in the morning, and then no one will notice, and I won’t have to feel bad. [laughs] Probably being on my phone, checking my phone, checking emails. Yes, that kind of thing.
Ross Mclntosh: I’m getting a sense of distraction, a stealth, early morning stealth to getting some hours of working.
Paula Redmond: Yes, and the thing of like, oh, the kids are quite happy watching TV, I’ll just do some emails now. They won’t mind, they won’t notice. [laughs] Then sooner or later, hours have crept by.
Ross Mclntosh: Beautiful, I love that last bit as well, sooner or later, hours have crept by. That’s taking you away from who you’d really like to be during this school holiday, and it’s so relatable and so human.
Let me take you up to the top right-hand quadrant. Here, I’d invite you to look back across at those. I asked you the question, how would you like to be in relation to the school holidays? You said, to be present, to be focused, to get rest and have fun, and to be with your kids physically, as well as psychologically.
Thinking about those qualities, if you are bringing them to life, what would small steps towards those qualities or values look like? What small things could you do?
Paula Redmond: I think it would be about resisting urges to check my phone, to work in the early mornings, and allow myself to put those things aside to focus on what else might be important in that time. Knowing that I can come back to that stuff, that stuff will still be there, and giving myself I think permission to rest. I think that’s a tricky part for me, just reminding myself that that is important too, that rest and connection to those other things is also an enabler for me to be good at my job. That if I don’t take time out to rest and recover, and resource myself, that can only be detrimental to my work.
Ross Mclntosh: Thank you. I love that. I think I love the thoughtful, and considered why you unpacked that, to thinking about your impact in the world as a professional, and you’ll be able to be more effective, and frankly, be a role model for us all, Paula, if we know you are disconnected and spending that time. As you go through that school holiday thinking about, how can I really bring these values to life today.
Because you’ll always get distracted and think, “Oh, is that my phone beeping? Should I just go and check that message?” Just to help you reconnect with what’s important, because if you have a look on your bit of paper now, what we’re trying to do in this type of behavioral science training is, can you do that stuff in the top right? Can you bring more of that to life in the real world? Even whilst that stuff in the bottom left is showing up.
Are you willing to experience that stuff in the bottom left whilst you’re moving towards what’s important? It’s not that the stuff in the top-right, if you look at your bit of paper, is good and pleasurable, and the stuff in the bottom right is nasty and horrible, that stuff in the bottom right can feel great. Just going and doing a couple of hours work, I can feel really satisfied and pleased with myself. It’s not who you really want to be in this time of school holidays.
Just to bring us back, the purpose of using this tool is to help us notice with that curiosity of what’s going on and what could get in the way, internally. What do you think? How was that as an experiment, Paula? How did you find that?
Paula Redmond: Well, I guess what just come to mind as you were talking, is that really helpful concepts of the both and of acting in important ways in line with who we want to be, and making room for the discomfort at the same time, because I know that I’m very guilty of, I’ll do that once I’ve got all this done. Once my inbox is cleared, then I can play with my kids. [laughs] Once the house is tidy, I can relax. There’s just endless, isn’t it?. I guess that is such an important concept idea to hold on to, that it can be both, and that we can do what matters and have the discomfort that might go along with that.
Ross Mclntosh: Yes, and it’s a constant reconnection with our values. During that school holidays, or during my weekend when I decided I really want to connect with my husband, be the partner I’d really like to be, and I find myself just checking my emails or social media. Just doing that can just help me notice actually, that’s not who I want to be right now. What could I do in the next moment that would really express what’s important to me in this relationship? I think it’s subtle, and I find this a tremendously useful tool in working on myself doing my own inner work, but also a useful tool that I find people in the workplace can find really helpful.
It’s important in that top right bit. We’re not thinking about, I think I mentioned earlier, learning a new language or writing your book. We’re thinking about small steps, and the smaller, the better, but we’re looking for something where you’ve got a bit of autonomy. Maybe if you’re thinking about, I don’t know, going on a day trip, or going to the gym twice that week or something, or going to meet friends twice that week. Put it in your calendar, give yourself that sense of autonomy, give yourself time to connect with others to belong, and give yourself something that perhaps where you can develop competence, develop skills or something in a very slow and measured way, but you can take small steps towards that. That combines act with basic psychological needs theory.
Paula Redmond: It’s a challenge to anyone who struggles with perfectionism, I think [laughs] which I do. That sense of a small imperfect step is the thing that if we spend our lives waiting till things are perfect or complete, in order to take action, we’re going to be very stuck, and that constant coming back to, really just gives us a sense of flexibility, doesn’t it? You can notice that you’re going down a road and come back, it’s okay. At whatever point you notice, to take that next step.
Ross Mclntosh: Beautiful. I love the way you describe that. I think it was also Kelly Wilson who described as a lifetime of gentle returns to our values. If something is this important to us, we can be compassionate with ourselves, and gently keep returning, knowing that we’re human, and that’s okay.
Paula Redmond: That thing of when I catch myself checking my emails, rather than say, Oh, no, you’ve ruined it. No, you’ve done it, failed. It’s that moment that I get to choose what I do with the next one.
Ross Mclntosh: Beautiful, you’re giving me goosebumps when you describe that.
Paula Redmond: Thank you all so much for that. I guess actually, thinking about the thoughts that come up for me in that imposter syndrome, I’m aware that you are the host and creator of a great podcast called People Soup. I wonder if you could just tell us a bit about that and your reasons for doing it.
Ross Mclntosh: Yes, it’s something I love doing. I love exploring and playing with audio, and the impact of audio and the impact it can have in making behavioral science more accessible, useful, and fun for adults in the workplace. That is my mission. I take a stand for what’s possible in the workplace in terms of our own wellbeing, our adaptability, and our recovery from work, and try to showcase skills that can support us in building that into our own working lives. It has a strong basis in act, and also demonstrates how act can combine with other psychological literature and research.
I love doing it. It’s a true labor of love. We were just talking earlier about editing and stuff like that. It has real purpose for me. It started off, blind me, it started off few years ago. I was doing a lecture at City University to the MSC in organizational psychology. I was getting frustrated with them. I was saying, “Get out there and bang a drum for psychology in the workplace, because workplaces are in turmoil.” This was before pandemic. “There are leadership crises, there are all things going on. You never see an org psych or an occupational psych interviewed. Why not? You people, get out there and bang your drum and make some noise.”
One of them said, “Well, what noise are you making?” I was like, “Oh God.” I was like, “Oh, cranky.” Fair point. That’s the point where I released, I think the first episode, I called it, I’m not sure whether this is a podcast or an audio blog. Then I thought, “Oh, this is quite fun.” This is a new way to reach more adults with skills that could be useful. As I say, skills were not exposed to in our upbringing, or I certainly wasn’t. I would say the workplace is an ideal place to reach more adults with these skills. It’s an arena where we’ve got people who might be interested in these skills. That’s the mission I’m on with People Soup.
Paula Redmond: You’ve created a really nice community of listeners, haven’t you?
Ross Mclntosh: Yes. Shout out to my P Soupers. Yes. We have fun and we get a bit of interaction, and I think it can be lonely being in the workplace. If I can maybe connect people or give people some skills that they might like to have a go at, I think, well, kind of job done.
Paula Redmond: We’ve got a short bonus episode this week, which is an extra exercise that Ross took me through called passengers on the bus, so do check that out.
Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this episode and you’d like to help support the podcast, please do share it with others, post about it on social media, or leave a rating and review. I’d love to connect with you, so do come and find me on LinkedIn or Twitter. You can also sign up to my mailing list to keep up to date with future episodes and get useful psychology advice and tips, straight to your inbox. All the links are in the show notes.
Thanks again. Until next time, take good care.
[00:44:10] [END OF AUDIO]
