Practical Bravery: TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADERSHIP!

[00:00:00] This podcast is brought to you by AlwaysPossible AlwaysPossible.co.uk Hi, how are you? When is the last time you questioned the definition of success? For many of the chase for traditional success can feel like a baited trap, pandering to the very worst of our ego and insecurity.

[00:00:28] Today's guest, in what is going to be the last episode of The Possibility Club for Sometime and I'll come on to that later. Offers a fresh perspective on leadership and career building, drawing on her unique experiences from frontline medicine to high level policy work

[00:00:42] and now coaching and consulting. My guest has delivered babies and war zones with medicine from frontier, shaped global health policies with the UN. But a big leap came in 2016 when she founded a coaching and consulting practice, working with some of the world's highest achievers and game changes,

[00:00:59] redefining their paths to fulfillment. So what can we learn from medical practice about resilience, purpose, communication that can support every line of work? If all professionals had an opportunity to reflect deeply on what actually matters to them before leaping into the next job,

[00:01:16] how much more likely would productivity, adaptability and success whatever that means. B. How can we challenge the conventional metrics of success and emphasising importance of aligning our careers with personal values and well-being and growth? These questions explore the power of adaptability and continuous learning,

[00:01:38] illustrating how professionals can thrive amidst uncertainty and change if they make their right decisions. In her book The Success Trap, my guest explores how society's narrow definition of success can lead to personal dissatisfaction and a loss of true purpose.

[00:01:56] She provides ideas on how professionals can break free from conventional career constraints and how her work highlights the critical lessons that front-line medicine can teach about leadership. And the importance of maintaining the sense of purpose in high stakes and environments in a volatile and complex world.

[00:02:14] She's an honorary associate professor and senior clinical lecturer at University College London. She continues to educate on health inequalities and global health. She's a doctor and author, a consultant. Her life's work reflects a powerful synthesis of medical expertise, psychosocial theory and mindful communication, which is unusually

[00:02:33] powerful with looked at through the lens of the careers we build. I'm Richard Freeman, this is the possibility club. My special guest in this last episode for a while is Dr. Amina H.C. Selmy.

[00:02:46] I was like to imagine people on the bus walking the dog in the gym or up mountain. I'm sure you're doing one of those things, but thank you for letting me your ears. As always, I am joined by an extraordinary guest and we're looking at themes of

[00:03:03] bravery and leadership impact and change. I've got a very informed experts to help me navigate that conversation. Dr. Amina H. Selmy, how are you this morning? I'm very well-thank you Richard. It's great to be here. So welcome to the post-biltic club. Thank you for joining me.

[00:03:21] I'll be let's start big. Let's start broad. Tell me a little bit about your story or journey where did your career begin and what was the early motivations for a young Amina showing up in the world? Let's start in Algeria, which is where I first started.

[00:03:38] I was born and part of you grew up. I grew up between Algeria and Yorkshire. I started thinking about what I wanted to do when I grew up and go to university. At the time it was engineering and electronics engineering, which I

[00:03:50] realized in hindsight, what was basically what is now, I guess coding and working on AI. I think we stayed in Algeria then might be some kind of coder or something like that. Who knows? A tech person perhaps.

[00:04:07] But when we moved back to the UK when I was in 2016, I developed an interest in working more with people. And I was told, well, that's medicine. If you'd like science and people, then you go and do the medicine. And I thought, okay fine, I'll do that.

[00:04:22] But in the second year I realized that I didn't want to do clinical medicine. I was interested in the big picture. So that was public health. That was the mockery that was epidemiologists, statistics were all these things that most people would find boring

[00:04:35] perhaps. But I found fascinating because it gave you this sense of an overview and then you could intervene at a population or societal level, not just a individual level.

[00:04:47] So once I discovered that, that was my track. I was like, that's what I'm doing and for four years or so at university that I was orienting that way. I was also advised that it was good to get clinical experience before going into something like policy or research.

[00:05:02] So people would give you sort of the respect and treat you as a proper doctor. So I did do four years or so of clinical medicine working in hospitals, getting experience of different specialties.

[00:05:14] I traveled, spent a year in Switzerland in the hospital there and also with Midsonson Ponte in South Sudan. Working in a humanitarian mission and from there I started then specialising in public health medicine

[00:05:28] and it must as an PhD just to top it off that brings in politics and brings in economics because these decisions aren't just scientific. Well what an extraordinary breadth of areas to delve into. I mean really exciting that you were able to kind of follow your nose and

[00:05:46] apply yourself there. To the outside, I it would feel like there's quite a big gap between the sort of policy public health, maybe slightly more academic modeling of how society works,

[00:06:01] compared to being on the ground, being an acrylic, making tools. Do you see the effect of join up, I guess, between policy and practice in all the different geographical places you've worked, will do you feel that they're still wasted energy?

[00:06:16] Well I think that's the puzzle of public health. It's always trying to link up between political decision making and making a difference to people in daily life.

[00:06:27] So that is the science and art of public health. That's what every leader is, though, and anybody who's trying to make an impact is trying to navigate

[00:06:37] to how to bridge ideas, the vision of what's possible with actually getting stuff done. What's my timeline? How much delay of pay off on my willing to tolerate?

[00:06:48] And by willing to work towards a vision that weren't happening within my lifetime, or do I need to see a pay off immediately? Do I need to go into working everyday and see people saying thank you to me?

[00:06:59] Thank you for saving their lives or something. I had a maybe more of a comfort with ambiguity and uncertainty than maybe other people. I guess it's just a personal preference.

[00:07:10] I'm what kind of historical timeline was this on when you were at the peak of your work in public health and how far was that before the COVID pandemic?

[00:07:21] Well, I wasn't working in public health by the time the pandemic happened anymore. So I can't speak from the inside. But from the outside, I was a member of the public who's sort of informed professionally on those matters.

[00:07:36] I was it just seemed like there's a better understanding and maybe a bit more respect for what public health is.

[00:07:43] But there is a bit of a nuance in that within public health there is a difference. There's a distinction between infectious disease public health and public health that deals with not infectious diseases. So chronic diseases like diabetes or heart disease.

[00:07:59] And then if you get even more sort of ambiguous when you start to put climate change in because climate change doesn't have an impact on health. But the causal chains are a bit longer perhaps.

[00:08:11] And so people don't always understand why public health is also involved in climate change. But it has to be and this I think lictis up with what organ the private sector pulls ESG environment, social and governance.

[00:08:26] To me, what the private sector is trying to tackle with ESG is what public health is doing when it's bringing health and climate change together.

[00:08:36] And yeah, for me, be wonderful if the links would be made more closely so that the silos between those sectors would be less sick. And people could get more clarity on what the big goals are or what the big vision is for a better society.

[00:08:56] Nobody wakes up in the morning saying, yeah, I want more climate change or I want more, you know, he waves.

[00:09:02] And it sounds like from that kind of policy perspective, you're saying we need to look at this holistically we need to understand the whole picture and where we sit within it.

[00:09:12] But do you feel that politics arbitrarily keeps things in those silos because it it feels the public aren't maybe smart enough to understand the sort of the link between health and environment.

[00:09:25] You know, it tries to package stuff up and separate it in a way that I mean from my perspective feels unhelpful. I think people ask smart it's not these sort of things are intuitive.

[00:09:37] It's more that it's maybe hidden or clouded or there's a lot of distractions with polarization and the I don't know if media are held with public understanding because they've got their own constraints and it's not that hard.

[00:09:54] I think to understand that CO2 emissions in one place, you know, getting to the ecosystem the atmosphere and that has an impact on what happens in another place.

[00:10:08] And that what happens in another place affects what happens here because it affects, you know, resources and supply chains and things like that.

[00:10:17] I don't think it's fundamentally that hard. I think it's just that there's so much stress and so much fear and anxiety that survival mechanisms that narrow attention and me adjust focus on what I'm doing right now and my stuff and my bills and my whatever takes over.

[00:10:35] I'm not sure that it's necessarily about understanding as much as it is about creating a sense of safety and society through you know, social safety nets through.

[00:10:47] You know, having the particular dialogues and particular political dialogue that's wise and sensible not political and inflammatory having media that's actually informed and help people think sensibly critically not in a polarized way. In a way it's more of a emotional or psychomotional than a purely intellectual issue.

[00:11:14] Was that a really conscious shift for you to be able to take some of that more macro level understanding and then kind of put it in individual people hands so that they feel more equipped or all of it and sort of less strategic than that.

[00:11:29] No, I'm so happy you you you understood my part it's such it's so nice when someone just gets it.

[00:11:35] I was always part strategic part trust you know how life unfolded because by my mid 30s I was sort of living the dream that I had when I was starting off and you are want to work on global health policy and have this impact.

[00:11:50] And through some serendipitous circumstances it worked out and it was very exciting.

[00:11:56] There was also something in parallel that started to happen which is like where is this going and I'm just going to live this sort of dream life flying around the world these conferences talking to people who basically we all are really living in this echo chamber.

[00:12:11] Yeah, even the idea of flying around while talking about climate change started to great as I just does not make sense.

[00:12:17] And of course you know it is that is the job but there was something in me that was shifting and I said you know there's just a need for to explore something deeper bigger different.

[00:12:29] And then I always loved coaching at medical school I wasn't interested in psychology or always been interested in spirituality and just how human being works. Let's just try that.

[00:12:41] Sometimes you wonder like how you suspend this belief and just do things and so that's how I ended up in 2016 basically not applying for the next step in the career ladder.

[00:12:52] And the coaching to take off so that's what I've been doing for eight years and it has satisfied or somehow brought together the full film and that comes from working directly with people.

[00:13:04] But also bringing in all that understanding of what's happening systematically and helping people to situate themselves and to have a lot more nuanced and complexity when they're making decisions about their career is or their teams or their impact.

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[00:14:38] What's changing? What's building an economics culture community and technology? Why are people telling me that they are in fight or flight mode? What is the significance of a council with an overall majority? How is artificial intelligence maybe changing the way people solve problems in the city?

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[00:15:45] You've written a really interesting book that's had quite a lot of attention around careers or jobs and how we may be find ourselves doing something that does not play to our real instincts for curiosity and freedom.

[00:16:00] So do you feel that the sort of agency and consciousness around careers and the choice around careers and how you build a career? That's doing something very different in the 2020s and people need to think about it differently than perhaps 30 years ago. Yes, absolutely.

[00:16:21] In fact, I think of careers as an opportunity for liberation. So the 21st century careers are a half-saliberation. What does that mean? Because the model is changing some of it is breaking apart and new models of careers or emerging.

[00:16:39] Yeah, that really feed into the system, the systemic changes. So what does it mean to work? What's enough? So to me, a career in flat-shampion or career crisis, if it's coming up that way, is an opportunity to dig deeper, to start to question,

[00:17:01] Oh, what's the model I follow so far? You know, I just do what my parents were telling me.

[00:17:06] I'm going to rebel against what my parents were telling. And now I get to question, like, what is truth for me now? What is really, how do I want to orient my life? What are my values?

[00:17:16] What kind of world do I want to live in? And what does that mean now? Today so that I can live in my life?

[00:17:24] But also feel like I'm contributing to something I really believe in. So yes, the career questions get answered but they also get so much more.

[00:17:32] And you talk about leadership a lot and I think it's sometimes harder for leadership behaviors to rise when there's so much noise out there.

[00:17:42] What do you think makes good leadership characteristics in the 21st century to deal with some of the big challenges and opportunities that we've got right now? Yeah, thanks for the question. And model I was playing with recently was crop, what's called it crop,

[00:18:02] Fully leadership. You were crop leader. Doesn't exactly fit but it's basically a cross paradigmatic revolutionary sense maker and change maker.

[00:18:14] Okay. And revolutionary with an R in brackets because I think it's both you'd have to be able to make the bold moves but you also have to be the consistent and also stabilizing.

[00:18:28] So we need both in the system. Yeah, and some of the characteristics. So self leadership. It starts with self leadership.

[00:18:36] A leader who doesn't have any self awareness, any empathy, any understanding of their own intentions and motivations and how they perceive reality and the impact of that to me is not fit to lead because they're just projecting their own ego and their own beliefs and biases with our any awareness and that's dangerous in my view.

[00:19:02] The next thing, what was the next? And the next thing was a moral compass. So as I commented on your website that being able to have an ethical sensibility of like basically what's right or wrong, like extracting from nature, extracting from people is not great.

[00:19:20] So I think like a basic like I draw a lot of inspiration from Buddhist philosophy and practice and just basic basic moral compass is important.

[00:19:32] And then the next thing is what we talked about earlier, I think the ambiguity tolerance. So being able to be okay and regulate emotionally when in the face of uncertainty and not fall into a stereotype of authoritarianism or just complete.

[00:19:50] And then sense making of complexities. So an ability to sort of be okay with lots of complex information, even if you don't understand it or you can find your path within it.

[00:20:04] And feel that there's now a good embedded culture of leadership development in the places that you see what you think actually on the whole we're not getting it yet and it still relies on sort of charismatic individuals to find their way through maybe despite the system they're working in.

[00:20:21] I think it depends on your reference point. So obviously compared to a century ago or something of course there's improvement and there's much more emphasis on well being there's much more emphasis on self-awareness and development and all sorts of great things I think so.

[00:20:36] Yeah, even if you go on a training website of an organization there's some great you know there's some amazing things on that people can learn from and use for their development. Now if you compare it to the ideal which is we need.

[00:20:52] We need more of these types of leaders and more leaders who are self-aware and it's not just the leaders because it's the whole ecosystem that needs to evolve all of us need to develop our own self-awareness and consciousness and courage.

[00:21:06] Then I think we're still got a bit to go. Yeah, and we still don't even have you know theoretically I come from science so usually there's a sense that oh we've figured quite a few things out scientifically but it takes a while for it to trickle through policy but.

[00:21:22] I'm not sure we even have a full understanding of what's needed you know in terms of leadership.

[00:21:29] I think there's something around hyper roles, what I call hyper roles and that's drawing on some other research that talks about things like that we're constantly stimulated by hypostimulating so you know me and social media.

[00:21:46] Fast food things like that the market tries to design hypostiminate just to give us a dopamine hit and spend our money. But kind of untraining us from what it takes to do hard work to get something to spend time reflecting on something and figure something out.

[00:22:05] And being autonomous in our decision making and it's just sort of things that we evolved to have this is a sense that we're being hijacked and that's not helpful in terms of our personal development and leadership development.

[00:22:19] Hyper objects things like climate change the massive concepts that spread over time and space it's just hard to grapple with. So combine that complexity and ambiguity with the need for speed and shortening attention spans and it's a bit of a recipe for disaster.

[00:22:37] So I am when I think about yeah leadership or roles like you know I'm a direct-time doctor I'm a parent I'm a dissimilar.

[00:22:45] These concepts are also massive now like if you think you know what a parent needs to do everything they need to pay attention to it's just massive the cognitive load is enormous.

[00:22:56] To emotionally regulate that to keep a sensible mind within that is an enormous task and that's what we're facing but I don't think we're really talking about this issue.

[00:23:06] I'm still talking about like you know even talk about well being it's too limited it's not well being it's the whole human self-concept is being challenged massively.

[00:23:16] And if we don't find a path within that that doesn't involve anxiety fear and war I don't think it's going to end very well.

[00:23:24] No, you know this yeah tremendous responsibility to understand so much and to be able to process it and to to be able to make the right decision to still also trying to navigate this.

[00:23:40] As you say this kind of shortening attention span the dopamine hits the instant gratification the fact that you know the entire history of recorded music is in my pocket and I can press a button and listen to any song that's ever been you know just all that capability that I didn't have 20 years ago.

[00:23:55] But I now do there it's a lot isn't it's a lot to try and process in order to make your world better and the world better in a way that is manageable.

[00:24:05] Are you finding any kind of emerging techniques for doing that or ways of framing it that's helpful so that people don't get completely either one under the spectrum overwhelmed because everything's too big or the other under the spectrum you are sitting in a corner doom scrolling on their phone.

[00:24:23] And they're well actually getting a lot smaller because then then they're not able to sort of go out and do anything are you helping people to regulate and balance that more. And what is and what's that starting to look like. Yeah I hope I'm helping.

[00:24:38] I think my clients think I'm helpful. So I draw a lot from Buddhist practice but also from liberalational psychology and you know sort of straight up coaching. How I summarize my method is three principles so presence power and possibility.

[00:24:55] Presence is the mindfulness it's meeting reality where it is not better not worse so that's developing a capacity for being in my experience as it is right now and knowing when my mind is sort of taking off and my emotions are taking off and having tools and techniques to regulate that.

[00:25:14] So there I never spend too much time lost in a transfer of anxiety or regret or fear or. Or even run your cities so that's presence and we practice these in the sessions because these are skills we need to develop I think as part of being a human.

[00:25:31] The next one is power so that's recovering a sense of autonomy and choice and agency not giving it over to advertising not giving it over to you know even your boss or anyone but. Knowing how to exercise autonomy.

[00:25:46] And that comes from questioning that's a bit more of the liberalational psychology of like what am I believing what I might what's been installed in my mind that actually isn't helpful and how is my autonomy being hijacked that I can. You know regain some power over.

[00:26:01] And then finally a possibility that's the sense of co-creating the impossible because what we want is actually see we'll see them possible you know whether you're talking about a career or you know.

[00:26:12] I think that exercise or you're talking about a new world that is less unequal and not as exploitative nature and people.

[00:26:21] It's going to seem impossible so we need to walk it step by step also the relationships coming here because we we're losing our ability to be with each other in a meaningful way because we're so overloaded and so rushing around.

[00:26:36] That needs to be recovered as a capacity as well and that's how we could create what's impossible. So there's sort of the three headlines and then there are six practices which I call those six us and that's to relax reflect release. We connect respond and receive.

[00:26:56] How do you know when it's working whether it's with your clients or you know it might be immediate it might be over time.

[00:27:04] What are the signs that people are developing that autonomy developing that sort of regulation finding some kind of peace and purpose in thinking about things a little bit differently what's the feedback loop that you need to know that it's working. Great question. It's the impact of coaching.

[00:27:27] So this inner indicators and educators and educators so when I start working with someone we agree on what it is that they want to work on you know what the success look like for them.

[00:27:35] So usually there's you know progress on on those measures but sometimes it can change because they realize actually they're not interested in a promotion they're interested in actually going down to three days a week and working on their book or something.

[00:27:49] Or building their own business or something like that. So those are sort of the outermarkers but otherwise there's this reduction there's this alleviation of existential dread and anxiety and constant stress so they feel more ease more peace more control.

[00:28:07] And where they don't feeling control they're able to let that go and realize it's not on them this is part of the hyper role illusion it's they're not here they need to save the world something they're just out of their control and it might be sad and difficult but that's okay.

[00:28:21] They've got the emotional skills to deal with that they're able to take action on the things that they want to do that they say that they want to do and that being maybe procrastinating or putting off so that life energy is reoriented to what was what they really want not towards what they were told they should want.

[00:28:40] So that you know again that could look like just doing the job differently applying for the thing they want or resigning a lot of people seem to resign when they work with me and she's doing a new direction.

[00:28:51] You know and apply for a new job or it's only the offer new job out of the blue because they're finally open to new opportunities that work for them better.

[00:28:59] Relationships improve so they're time with their family with their children they stop sort of passing on all this anxiety to their children and actually start really being with them and understanding them and it's just so much more meaningful.

[00:29:12] For them that's very satisfying I find and sometimes I want to maybe I should just focus on that for my go-to because it's so satisfying.

[00:29:20] And finally yeah there's their health and also they just have a better understanding there's less cognitive dissonance you know like in the Barbie movie where you know the energy says oh.

[00:29:30] All of this stress is because we don't understand that what we're told and what we feel and not the same and that's okay. It's not that there's something wrong with us it's just that the narratives are different and that creates more clarity over.

[00:29:45] Over life and what they want to contribute to change within this period of influence change make a change. From an organizational perspective then if somebody says oh I'm I'm starting to work with Dr. Abina as a coach I can see these big bosses going.

[00:30:00] Well on the one hand that we might have a really really high performing effectively that's really kind of feeling themselves in the world and on the other hand we're going to lose them because they got to be gone.

[00:30:11] Yeah I could see I could see that big and we could see that. Well thankfully I'm not that famous so. Well I feel that there feels a good and an upbeat point to to close what I'm absolutely fascinating.

[00:30:27] I'm a career you've had and and you know I really you know kind of love that sense of the big becoming the tangible and the small so that people can actually hold it but really informed by all that research and that that global understanding.

[00:30:46] I just will also put links to your book and and website and working in the notes to this you know just before we finish anything else you're excited about or.

[00:30:57] That's coming around the corner that you want to point people towards whether it's your work or or something else that you're aware of or you know or a final bit of kind of tip or resource that you think you'd like to share.

[00:31:16] Thank you so much and nothing immediately coming to mind this all information on my website if people interested in my work but I would say to. Yeah just for people to look after the mental health and well being because.

[00:31:31] If you don't have that it's really tough so whatever pressure you're facing just make sure that you have some space for you. Good advice.

[00:31:41] Brilliant thank you so much for your your time today really great to have you as a guest on that possibility club doctor I mean it. It's you so many. Thank you very much.

[00:31:54] Thank you Richard Freeman yes thank you for how I'm on the possibility club it's been absolutely wonderful thank you for your excellent questions.

[00:32:03] Hello me again thank you so much for downloading this episode of the possibility club I hoped you enjoyed it as much as I did and thanks so much to doctor Amina for being the last guest in this series.

[00:32:14] We're going to take a little hiatus with the possibility club for a while if it's good enough for radio ahead and girls allowed to good enough for us sometimes we need a little break.

[00:32:22] We've got hundreds of past episodes for you to dive into each with an extraordinary guest or series of guests please do go back right to the start 2017 to find some extraordinary stories of leadership impact and change.

[00:32:36] And please let the world know about your favorite episode with a quick written review it really really does help people to find us.

[00:32:42] I'm fear not produce a Chris and I and the always possible team I'm releasing series two of another big podcast the Brighton Paradox this summer a unique exploration of the economy culture community and storytelling in the UK's complex and creative city by the sea search the Brighton paradox in all usual podcast streams.

[00:33:02] And we have a very exciting new project launching soon all about big big change featuring some very special guests from politics music business literature science and more will update you with that very soon till then thanks so much take care goodbye.

[00:33:20] The possibility club is an always possible podcast the interview was Richard Freeman for always possible and the producer and editor was me Chris Thorpe Tracy for low-fi arts have a good week. Always possible.co.uk