A very warm welcome to Season 5 Episode 1 of People Soup. 

Our first guest is Dr Jutta Tobias Mortlock, a social psychologist from City, University of London who is the co-director of the Centre for Excellence in Mindfulness Research.

Jutta's research explores next generation mindfulness, which means using the science of mindfulness at a collaborative, team level. In this episode you'll hear a bit about Jutta's career history, the breadth of her mindfulness exploration and the motivation for her current research. It was such a fascinating chat that I've decided to spread the joy and split the conversation over three episodes. Mindfulness is often misunderstood and I felt it was important to give it a thorough airing for the P-Soupers to reflect and digest.

People Soup is an award winning podcast where we share evidence based behavioural science, in a way that’s practical, accessible and fun to help you glow to work a bit more often.

Another first for Season 5 is that I'm adding a transcript, wherever possible. 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 find Jutta on Twitter here.
• Here's a link to the Centre for Excellence in Mindfulness Research
• Dr Jutta Tobias Mortlock • City, University of London

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ONE Jutta Tobias Mortlock

[00:00:00]

[00:00:14] Jutta: So whilst many people understand mindfulness as a way of relieving stress and of feeling a little bit better, which is fab. Mindfulness can seep into entire organizations, but not just through one method, which is for individuals to sit in silent meditation, using the breath or other bodily sensations or the body scan as anchor.

[00:00:55] Ross: Our first guest is Dr. Uter Tobias Mor Block, a social psychologist from City University of London, who is also the co-director of the Center for Excellence in Mindfulness Research.

[00:01:25] Ross: It was such a fascinating chat that I've decided to spread the joy and split the conversation over three episodes. Yes. Another first for People's Soup.

[00:01:40] Ross: People Soup is 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 [00:02:00] work a bit more often.

[00:02:16] Ross: I've also taken the plunge and moved to a new platform Captivate, so I'll be getting used to that and all its brilliant features over the next few weeks. But for now, get a brew on and have a listen to part one of my chat with you, Jutta

[00:02:34] Ross: Dr. Jutta Tobias Mortlock. Welcome to people soup.

[00:02:47] Ross: oh, bless you. And right back at you, um, now UTA, you'll be familiar. I've got this research department to beaver away and look for information about my guests. So I'm gonna present to you what they found out about you. And I have to say they're not always a hundred percent accurate. So do, do kick your ears open because sometimes they get stuff wrong.

[00:04:01] Jutta: what a mouthful eh!.

[00:04:13] Ross: So UTA, serves as an advisor to UK think tank, the mindfulness initiative and the us based mindfulness in education. Non-profit called inner Explorer. Not only that, but she's won awards too. including the 2019 city university school of arts and social science learning and teaching award and people's prize and several Cranfield uni awards two,

[00:04:43] Ross: I think that is a tough gig to get a prize from students.

[00:05:10] Ross: Yeah. And by the way, I should have said at the beginning, me and uter both work me very much on the periphery, but uter at the core at city university of London, organizational psychology department, which is where we met and uter has been on the podcast before in name because she co-authored and supervised the research by Alexandra Lechner on creating psychological safety in virtual teams.

[00:05:42] Jutta: I'm so pleased to hear that. Mm.

[00:06:04] Ross: So she's been investigating and delivering innovative mindfulness interventions in the British army and the Royal Navy and currently conducts research on resilience in the Royal Marine Corps. There's more, there's more you to In partnership with another legend city, university of London, Dr.

[00:06:53] Ross: And in the 2015 TV documentary, the mindful revolution me, this is amazing. And your life before academia, let's just touch upon that. See, they did their

[00:07:08] Ross: you worked for nearly a decade as a consultant for several it consultants who, including Arthur and. Partnering with firms such as Goldman Sachs, Nomura, and McKinsey on it.

[00:08:02] Ross: subsequently you to learn the art and science of lobbying in the public interest as the post-doctoral James Marshall public policy fellow for the American psychological association and the society for the study of social issues during Washington DC's glory days when president Obama introduced the healthcare reform bell,

[00:08:23] Ross: Woohoo U Utah is a fellow of the RSA holds a psychotherapeutic counseling qualification from the university of Cambridge and has volunteered in us prisons for the alternatives to violence project, a volunteer run conflict transformation program. She lives in Suffolk with her family and a pushy poodle who Moonlight as a P a T, which is pets as therapy dog.

[00:08:53] Ross: Yeah, I'm a big fan virtually of, of Tilly. Now there was something else. It's, it's not something they uncovered that we were surprised by. It's an idea that we had when I was talking to my research department. Um, they were mighty impressed by your research, your energy and your influence. And we were having a chat where we started to play with a crazy idea, which I thought I'd like, just share with you to see what you think.

[00:09:46] Ross: environment.

[00:09:54] Jutta: Yes, make it about til and make me the support and check where, where Timmy [00:10:00] has fallen into the well

[00:10:16] Jutta: yes I do. I do though. And I think having a dog in your life is a incredibly wonderful thing to pull you back into the present and into what really matters This is how Tilly adds value to my life. The dog that forces me to be outside at least twice a.

[00:10:46] Jutta: Hmm. I think the, the, you and I have, again, before the, before we press record, talked about values and about what's important to us. And I'm fortunate in that I'm old and gray enough to know what happens when I don't look after myself. And I've had so many war wounds of overloading, my diary to show for that.

[00:11:49] Ross: Mm. And there was a lovely phrase that you talked about that I don't think translates to English, but it was, I think it was from your mom. What, what was that phrase?

[00:12:29] Jutta: And the saying goes, I am also somebody, not just everybody else. So I am also somebody who has needs. I'm also somebody who has the right to make space for myself, as well as making space for everybody else. So perhaps that's something for people to take away. Right? You are also somebody, you know,

[00:13:10] Ross: Very condensed. But I wonder if you just talk a bit more about how you arrived at where you are today and maybe some, pivotal moments in your, career.

[00:13:20] Jutta: I really didn't know, what I wanted to do apart from, I wanted to travel. I wanted to, be with people. I wanted to see the world. And so I moved away from Germany as soon as I had the chance. and I studied a bit of everything, business management, law languages, and got into it. Consulting

[00:13:40] Jutta: loved it and realized over the first 5, 6, 7 years of my it consultancy career, that the stuff that was most juicy and the stuff that was causing the most amount of harm and suffering in organizations, and these were high power, highly resourced organizations that I work with, but the problems were [00:14:00] not to do with money, finance or technology, even though we were always talking about technology, business processes and so on.

[00:14:37] Jutta: That's where also all the stuff happens when it hits the fan. And I wanted to go back into consultancy, but realized I really like science. I really like when stuff is valid and reliable, and that means it doesn't just work for blonde women. And it doesn't just work on a Tuesday. So I, I got a little bit hooked on science and I came back to the UK and started working for Cranfield university and in their business school, teaching leadership management, performance management to senior executives.

[00:15:33] Jutta: And so, uh, and I still to this day, think mindfulness has a lot to say in helping people judge and make better choices that I could for them in the long run. For example, reminding myself that I am also, somebody helps me be a little bit more mindful in making decisions. And that's one of the practices that I'm kind of exploring and investigating.

[00:16:17] Ross: perhaps doing it for the short term relief of not having that decision on your mind or, short term, get this off my desk.

[00:16:39] Jutta: run.

[00:16:53] Jutta: Well, I think the thing that makes me a bit different from mainstream and from, the largest group of mindfulness researchers and practitioners is that I read as much as I could on different schools of mindfulness. And then in fact, I'm writing up a paper right now on giving almost an historic perspective of how the mindfulness movement that steps beyond the popular and incredibly successful science based around Jon Kabat-Zinn's mindfulness as meditation, and almost the equation of meditation with mindfulness.

[00:17:30] Jutta: so the, the way I approached understanding mindfulness was read about different literatures, read about different incarnations of mindfulness, both for individuals, but lo and behold, there's a whole mindfulness literature that's highly scientific and highly, uh, valuable and reliable for organizations.

[00:18:18] Jutta: But there are other ways for us to become mindful, both as individuals or you and me, we could become a mindful team and that looks and sounds, and feels different from the practices that I might do myself to become mindful.

[00:19:08] Jutta: Even though Jon Kabat-Zinn designed MBSR 40 years ago, based on his understanding of, Buddhist contemplative practices, combining them with clinical science for hospital patients. So, and, but Cranfield, and where I was teaching mindfulness, 10 years ago was a very different context from a clinical or medical hospital where people had tried out lots of other things to relieve themselves from the stress associated with chronic pain or with complex medical, mental health conditions. And so I was questioning to what extent this one size fits all approach to becoming mindful which is based on using the breatho as an anchor, almost tapping into the monastic traditions of people, sitting in a cave for hours on end learning insights through silent contemplative [00:20:00] practice.

[00:20:00] Jutta: And I then started to experiment with different ways that help people make space between what's in front of them and how they decide. And that's how I, for example, got into different schools of mindfulness that are saying what, what's the question that we can ask to help us pause and perhaps see something that we don't see.

[00:20:48] Jutta: For example, in high stress, high pressure, uh, environments, using mindfulness to calm myself down and slow down might not be the best way for me to make a good decision in the moment. And so mindfulness as relaxation, might actually make me less motivated to do the difficult work that I have to do.

[00:21:31] Jutta: And that's what my latest publication is based on the next generation of mindfulness

[00:21:36] Ross: but that's so important and so exciting cos you and me have spoken before about ways that organizations introduce mindfulness to, to their people. And I always say when I'm training mindfulness in organizations, I think it's become damaged by its own

[00:22:17] Jutta: Even though, of course, we don't want people to judge badly or to prejudge or to be prejudiced. Of course we don't want that, but we want people to apply their experience or check whether the data that they have is actually the right data, rather than just being kind all the time, being nice all the time, being relaxed all the time. 'Cos mindfulness might look like I am angry, 'cos it's appropriate to be angry. I have a difficult conversation because it's right to have a difficult conversation. There's injustice in organizations and it needs to be addressed. And this is why I'm coming to social aspects, community collective aspects of mindfulness being so much more important than our current mindfulness training protocols . Our current mindfulness training programs assume that people are like monks sitting

[00:23:15] Jutta: And that in itself translates into their behavior in the, their context. But we know as social scientists that it's the social soup, and this is why I like your people soup podcast. It's the social soup that determines our choices much more than our individual motivation. Our individual choice.

[00:24:08] Jutta: And then you hope for the best that when you need those stress management skills in a hectic work environment, you can actually apply them. We've moved to a model where. Groups organizations became organizations that approach stress collectively when nobody's alone in managing stress by themselves, where nobody has to shoulder stress management as an additional to do list.

[00:24:58] Ross: Wow, my mind's going off like, uh, a pinball machine. It's so exciting to hear you talk because I'm work working with organizations at the moment. and I'm trying to position this skill of noticing We can do this through mindfulness and we can do it through other ways, but I haven't had the opportunity to take it to the sort of, how can we direct this to each other as well and create those conditions for collaboration and cooperation, that we can all experience this.

[00:25:29] Jutta: Yeah. And I'm just, let me just pick you up on the language that you use Ross, because we know that language shapes our reality. And so you

[00:25:48] Jutta: But what do you mean by mindfulness? when, what we typically talk about when we, when we mean mindfulness is sitting in silence using the breath as anchor to start changing the way we [00:26:00] process information from intellectual cognitive to perception based, you know, through our five senses, what can I perceive?

[00:26:37] Jutta: What is real, what we need to do is monitor and that you've said the word notice what is going on. So we need to use mindfulness to notice and to put like a break or pause into, hold on, am I on the right track? Or am I on the wrong track? And meditation is actually not just sitting in silence and feeling the sensations in my body.

[00:27:48] Jutta: So through language we can change our state of mindfulness. We do not have to see mindfulness as "HOLD ON!". Let's take a moment of mindfulness [00:28:00] now, . Because then, we're effectively separating mindfulness from what we're doing every day. And I'm absolutely certain that if we continue to see mindfulness as a formal activity, that we need to spend formal time to train, to learn, to process information through our five sensors and through, by perceiving reality, rather than by checking what we perceive against what we know intellectually, it will not become embedded as much money as we throw.

[00:29:11] Ross: If you like this episode or the podcast, please could you do three things? Number one, share it with one other person. Number two, Subscribe and give us a five star review with some wonderful words, whatever platform you're on. And number three, share the heck out of it on social media. This will help us reach more people with stuff that could be very useful for them. I love to hear from you, and you can get in touch at People's Soup top pod gmail.com.

[00:29:53] Ross: Look after yourselves pea supers and buy for. sort of a superhero with a [00:30:00] trustee sidekick dog. And what do you think,