Hi there and a very warm welcome to Season 5 Episode 12 of People Soup – it’s Ross McIntosh here. 

In this episode you'll meet Gabriella Braun - and part one of our chat lands on an auspicious day - it's the day when Gabriella's book - ALL THAT WE ARE - lands in paperback form - 2 Feb 2023.

Gabriella Braun is the director of Working Well, a specialist consultancy firm that uses psychoanalytic and systemic thinking to help leaders and teams understand the hidden truths of their behaviour at work.

In part one of our chat, you'll get to know a bit more about Gabriella, her childhood, what happened when she entered the world of work, how she floundered in a more senior leadership role and how the seeds for her work and her extraordinary book were planted.

You'll also hear Gabriella's views on the key organizational and leadership themes that have emerged over the course of the pandemic, and of course, her song choice.

People Soup is an award winning podcast where we share evidence based behavioural science, in a way that’s practical, accessible and fun. We're all about sharing the ingredients for a better work life from behavioural science and beyond.

There is a transcript for each episode. There is a caveat - this transcript is largely generated by Artificial Intelligence, I have corrected many errors but I won't have captured them all! You can also find the shownotes by clicking on notes then keep scrolling for all the useful links.

• Follow Tabitha Pelly - freelance publicist on Twitter
• Connect with Gabriella on LinkedIn
• Follow Gabriella on Twitter
• Gabriella Braun's website

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ONE GABRIELLA

[00:00:00] Ross: Hi there, and a very warm welcome to Season five, episode 12 of People's Soup. It's Ross McIntosh.

[00:00:34] Gabriella: It is not good. And, and as you said, so much can go on in the workplace. We spent huge amounts of our lives in the workplace, so it really matters. And that, that was a huge motivation for me with the book.

[00:01:05] Ross: Gabriella Braun is the director of Working Well, a specialist consultancy firm that uses psychoanalytic and systemic thinking to help leaders and teams understand the hidden truths of their behavior at work. Gabriella has also written an amazing book called All That We Are Uncovering The Hidden Truths Behind Our Behavior at Work, and this episode just happens to go inside with the publication of the paperback of the book.

[00:01:48] Ross: In part one of our chat, you'll get to know a bit more about Gabriella, her childhood. What happened when she entered the world of work and then became a more senior leader feeling that she was absolutely [00:02:00] floundering and how the seeds for her work and her extraordinary book were plant.

[00:02:13] Ross: people. Supers an award-winning podcast where we share evidence-based behavioral science in a way that's practical, accessible, and fun to help you glow to work a bit more often. Let's just scoot over to the news desk. Reviews are in for part two of my chat with Andrea Watts. I had another email at people soup dot pod gmail.com from a listener who said it's heartening to hear about the real process behind writing a book.

[00:03:27] Ross: Gabriella Braun, welcome to People Soup.

[00:03:34] Ross: Oh, I'm absolutely delighted you're here. Now, as I've mentioned, Gabriella, I have this hotshot research department who don't always get everything right, but they have a bit of a delve around and find out some information about you. So I'd like to begin just by sharing what they found out and hopefully they've got this reasonably, correct.

[00:04:23] Ross: Gabriella holds a master's degree in consulting to organizations, psychoanalytic approaches from the Tavistock Clinic, and was a principal consultant in the Tavistock consultancy service. And not only all of that, but Gabriella is also an author. Of an amazing book called All That We Are Uncovering The Hidden Truths Behind Our Behavior at Work.

[00:04:55] Gabriella: Thank you. That's so lovely to hear. Thank you very much. Very good research department.

[00:05:42] Ross: I mean, if I had a hotline to Netflix, I'd get them online 10 right now, but I don't, but I just wondered, what do you think? Would you be up for some sort of,

[00:06:00] Ross: well, we never know who's listening. Gabriella, stranger Things have happened. So, hello. Um, Netflix, if you are listening, get in Touch or Gabriella's. Contact details will be in the show notes for this episode. So, Please do keep us posted if it does take off, because my goodness, I think so many of the conversations we have as adults are about the workplace

[00:06:23] Ross: who wouldn't be interested.

[00:06:32] Ross: oh, actually, I've just seen another note. I don't think I covered this bit. If I may just add another note from my department.

[00:06:56] Ross: insight Lancaster was university, but yes, we moved a lot. We moved around a lot when I was a child.

[00:07:16] Child of Immigrants

[00:07:55] Gabriella: So you introducing that made me think, actually that's where [00:08:00] I'll start because I think that is quite a large part of of how come I ended up writing this book and how come I do the work that I do. Because in a way, as the child of immigrants and as you picked up the geography moving around so much. . I grew very used to being on the boundary of places.

[00:08:49] Gabriella: So I had a, a strong Dian accent at one point. ? Yes,

[00:08:56] Ross: phenomenal.

[00:09:02] Ross: Can you still do it now?

[00:09:22] Gabriella: And I think part of standing slightly at, at the boundary of places means that I always had an eye looking in rather than just being in the center where you don't necessarily look in in the same way.

[00:09:48] Became a more senior leader

[00:09:54] No experience of leadership

[00:10:15] I really floundered

[00:10:40] Gabriella: And they didn't go. The really difficult people stuff. I could learn how you did some of the, I dunno, you know, the financial stuff. I'm not good at that at all, but you can learn some of that. It was the people stuff that I found incredibly difficult and the organization was very stressed because of relocating and restructuring. But I found that the dynamics became incomprehensible to me. All I knew was that I was really miserable, but I couldn't really understand what was going on. And I think that really set the seeds for why decades later. I ended up writing this book and it set the seeds for why, uh, fair.

[00:11:45] Gabriella: I wasn't going deep enough. So that's where all that seed setting came to be. And I did two things that were really pivotable. one was I started the masters at the Taper stock, and [00:12:00] that kind of gave me permission because the toughest Stock Masters encouraged you, highly recommended that you were in either psychoanalysis or psychoanalytic psychotherapy. So it sort of allowed me to go to an analyst saying, well, it's been recommended by the Tavistock. Um, And at that first assessment session, my analyst, the guy who became my analyst, said, is that the only reason you are here? And I said, no. And that was it. We all the pretense of, well, I'm here because the tab stopped.

[00:12:59] THINKING ABOUT ORGANISATIONAL LIFE

[00:13:06] Gabriella: There was a lot that needed to be dealt with. And going into psychoanalysis was, Absolutely pivotal for me, the masters at the Tavi, it didn't have the depth of impact that the analysis had, but it was also extremely pivotal because it introduced me to a whole other way of thinking about organizational life.

[00:13:44] Ross: I, I see you and it, and it sings from the book. this, this curiosity from you. it strikes me that I'm not sure whether this is right, but I'll, I'll give it a go that you are not content with just, oh, that's happened. You want to [00:14:00] dig deeper and explore why and get to some sort of rationale, both in your own life.

[00:14:13] Gabriella: That's very fair. you're right. I'm not prepared to just think, oh, that happened. I, I do want to try and understand it. I don't always understand it. This one chapter in the book where I and the team in the end agree that will never quite understand what happened to them, but we got them out of it.

[00:14:55] Gabriella: It's not that I keep that all to myself.

[00:15:03] Gabriella: Mm,

[00:15:08] Gabriella: Yes.

[00:15:18] Gabriella: Mm,

[00:15:22] Gabriella: yes.

[00:15:34] Ross: I noticed that, that organizations were coming to me. I mean, my focus is on psychological wellbeing in the workplace and I notice leaders feeling this weight of responsibility for their people

[00:15:47] Ross: and also saying to me, , my people are anxious. Can you make it go away?

[00:15:54] Ross: And my response was always, no, I can't make it go away.

[00:16:09] Workplace Themes

[00:16:38] Gabriella: It is not good. And, and as you said, so much can go on in the workplace. We spent huge amounts of our lives in the workplace, so it really matters. And that, that was a huge motivation for me with the book. And then I actually got my contract with my publisher on the 7th of February. Well, we agreed the deal on the 7th of February, 2020 cuz we had no idea what was about to hit.

[00:17:27] Leaders became more humane

[00:17:53] Gabriella: And three, although of course we weren't all in the same boat in Covid, we [00:18:00] were in that, uh, and not by a long stretch of imagination were we in the same boat, but the thing that we did have in common was this existential terrible fear that most of us had an experience. We saw huge numbers of people dying.

[00:18:43] Leaders prioritized the care of their staff

[00:19:35] Gabriella: They weren't showing it inappropriately, but showing vulnerability appropriately and uncertainty appropriately was very helpful. As of course, they had to during Covid, cuz nobody, you know, nobody could be certain of everything. There was massive vulnerability and massive uncertainty. So all of that I felt, was hopeful.

[00:20:08] The huge transformation of the workplace

[00:20:21] Gabriella: Of course, most people want to do a good job you don't have to hover over them and threaten them to make them do a good job. They'll work from home and they'll do the best they can, and there may be reasons why they're not that productive, but it's not because you can't trust them. Okay? There may be a very small minority, but generally I think that really showed employers something that they hadn't realized before, how much they could trust their staff and how much geography didn't matter in that.

[00:21:13] Gabriella: But at the same time, there are other types of work that you don't need to be in the office for. that of course was a massive theme. I think now what I'm seeing is, uh, it's a very mixed bag now.

[00:21:25] Gabriella: I think some leaders are still really trying to hold onto the positives that came from that. Others are completely desperate because of the financial crisis. Recess. cost of living crisis. So they're desperate about that. I think others are making rather knee jerk reactions about working from home and thinking, you know, they might see productivity go down and that's it.

[00:22:26] Ross: Lovely, lovely. Thank you. Because I think before the pandemic as leaders, as team members, we had strategies that worked when we, when we went to the office, how we. Hopefully disconnected from work and got time outside of work to recharge how we interact with each other. And they were all just

[00:22:48] Ross: apart by the pandemic and people were still trying to use those same strategies or techniques during the pandemic finding.

[00:23:30] Gabriella: I think so too, and I think we've yet to see all the psychological impact. You know, it's still coming out, the kind of trauma that we've been through and, and we are not, I mean, in one way it's understandable as a society we're kind of treating it like being there, done that, shut up about it. But the shut up about it means that we are not digesting it. No. Somebody said to me the other day, very interestingly, a client said to me after a wall, there's a memorial. [00:24:00] We've got the wall in London, haven't we?

[00:24:03] Gabriella: which is a memorial and that's wonderful, but we haven't set up any rituals to memorialize what we've been through. And maybe it's too soon, but it, it is interesting that that doesn't seem to be thought about

[00:24:17] Ross: There's, there's an incredible sort of, I'm not sure what the word is, compunction, just to Right, move on. Let's crack on with those business objectives.

[00:24:49] Gabriella: And then, you know, the, I think. , there's all sorts of things in the UK that still aren't properly owned up to like the ramifications of Brexit. So some of that goes under cover of Covid. Oh. You know, there may not be enough skilled staff around, it's cuz of Covid. Well actually a lot of that's cuz of Brexit.

[00:25:20] Ross: if a little old, me moving to Spain with my Spanish husband and gaining residency here is something that should be automatic,

[00:25:29] Ross: not automatic. So many inquiries and documents required, and it breaks my heart.

[00:26:01] Ross: Hmm. And, and perhaps we wouldn't have thought about moving without, without Brexit. And I get Spanish. People still ask him, you're like, why did he do this?

[00:26:24] Gabriella: And I think one of the fascinating things for me about the workplace is that the workplace absorbs it all. Everything that's going on in society gets brought into the workplace, and the workplace is like a microcosm of the society. All those issues are there.

[00:27:01] Gabriella: I, you are not the first one to ask me that. I think I would not want to go. I mean, it would be fascinating, but only from a kind of research point of view, not from a actually trying to do anything about it point of view. I think it would be rather horrible and grim.

[00:27:22] Gabriella: No,

[00:27:26] Gabriella: Yeah, I think it really would be, but that's maybe not very, brave or constructive on my part anyway. I don't think anyone's about to ask me , so I don't have to

[00:27:43] Gabriella: Thank you.

[00:27:52] Ross: Hmm.

[00:28:14] Gabriella: Oh, that's an interesting question. I don't specifically like, you know, put in my diary reflection time, but what I do do will be careful not to have, I don't do back to back things. So I do allow space and I am careful with how much I put in a week. So I suppose I am building in reflection time, although I'm not I'm not literally marking it in the diary.

[00:28:47] Gabriella: no, no, no.

[00:28:53] Ross: not overloaded.

[00:28:55] Gabriella: And if I'm doing one piece of work, I might, like last week I was interviewing people from the same organization, the same team, and I did have them close together, but it's all one piece of work. And that was it. I didn't do anything else after them, so I had time to reflect on.

[00:29:22] Gabriella: Yes.

[00:29:34] Gabriella: I agree. And I think that's maybe also why I wouldn't put it as a diary thing because it's percolating at all different times, isn't it? Like in the shower or going for a walk or you know, when you're on the tube, whatever. It's percolating

[00:29:50] Gabriella: Some of it still, I found when I was writing the book, I found, work with organizations I'd done years ago I discovered more about that work in [00:30:00] writing the book. So it was still percolating. All the percolation came back.

[00:30:11] Gabriella: exactly.

[00:30:24] Ross: easier or helped you do that?

[00:30:26] Gabriella: hadn't thought of that until, I don't think I'd thought of that until writing the book, but I realized that I think it helped prepare me to be a consultant, because as a consultant, you go into a lot of different organizations. You have to quickly. navigate the territory of that organization, the culture of that organization, their way of being, even their language.

[00:31:10] Ross: Mm. Isn't it interesting how different threads in our life and our experience can give us signals about where we might end up, I guess.

[00:31:27] Ross: No, and I think, I think it's really interesting, a lot of my guests, their careers have not been linear.

[00:31:33] Ross: They've experienced different things they've tried and then they've gone in a different direction or they've adjusted their trajectory. And I think it's just super interesting cuz I think as young people we can often be saying, well, what do you want to be

[00:31:47] Ross: to the children?

[00:31:53] Gabriella: Yes,

[00:32:00] Gabriella: yes. and maybe nowadays a better question would be, where do you think you want to start

[00:32:15] Ross: I, I think you're onto something because I think that could change the workplace expectation and experience for a lot of people,

[00:32:23] Ross: people of my generation, you've kind of got a job in the civil service and it was like, yes,

[00:32:28] Ross: you are set for life. You've got this golden pension,

[00:32:34] Ross: you've got this variety.

[00:32:55] Gabriella: Mm-hmm.

[00:33:15] Gabriella: That is such a lovely question. My answer's going to seem slightly bizarre. My answer is what's Love got to do with it by Tina Turner?

[00:33:26] Gabriella: It's a belter that is exactly the right term. It's a belt, so I love it because it's a belt and it would announce me with greater plum I feel in the room. It wouldn't be a quiet entrance with that song, would it?

[00:33:43] Ross: No, I think, I think I'd sit up and take notice.

[00:34:08] Gabriella: all of us have a constructive side and a destructive side, and our capacity for love is our constructive side. And I think that we are constantly tussling between these parts of ourselves and the workplace has a constant tussle. and actually leaders aren't taught anything about this, but I think a lot of a leader's role actually is to keep trying to pull their organization on the side of love, on the constructive side.

[00:34:46] Ross: That's it, pup's part one of my chat with Gabriella in the bag. Thanks so much to Gabriella For being a reflective, open, warm, and fun guest.

[00:35:22] Ross: If you like this episode of the podcast, please, could you do three things? Number one, share it with one other person. Number two, subscribe to the podcast and give us a five star review. Whatever platform you're on, and particularly if you're on Apple Podcasts, the Apple charts are really important in the podcast industry.

[00:35:58] Ross: And on Facebook we [00:36:00] are at People Soup Pod. thanks to Andy Klan for his Spoon Magic. And Alex Engelberg for his vocal. Most of all, dear listener, thanks to you. Look after yourselves. Peace supers and bye for now.

[00:36:16] Gabriella: you've got me really relaxed. I'm just really enjoying our conversation. It does feel. . It's a shame there's not a coffee there, but you know, it does feel exactly like that.

[00:36:28] Gabriella: How about you? Is it okay from your side?

[00:36:35] Gabriella: Oh my God,