Passion into purpose

Keywords

Resilience – Passion – Purpose – Female Entrepreneurs – Leadership – Values - Renewal

In this episode of Resilience Unravelled Julie Perkins. After a 20-year career with Specsavers which included opening up the business in the Netherlands and Northern Europe, Julie decided to use the experience and learning she’d gained to support female entrepreneurs as grow their businesses in a more seamless way.

Julie has witnessed the ins and outs of a business founded in a spare room and launched onto the world stage, to surviving cancer, to writing books (The Wyse Way) and hosting her own podcast, She is now sought after for her advice and guidance for decluttering the minds of female entrepreneurs, and translating experience and researched theories into a language that helps her clients to see the path to growth, whilst ensuring it remains an exciting adventure.

Main topics

• Why we need to step back and stop ‘doing more and more’

• Why we need to ask ourselves the right questions

• Creating space between yourself and the purpose of the organisation

• The importance of constantly renewing yourself

• Fostering purpose led growth

 Timestamps

1.     Introductions. 00.00 – 04.51
2.    The greatest learning. 04.51 – 08.31
3.    Growth and success. 08.34 – 11.21
4.    Questions that give perspective. 11.21 – 17.33
5.    Learning through failure. 17.33 – 20.49
6.    Passion into purpose. 20.49 – 26.55
7.    Contact details and action points. 28.02 – 30.33

 Action items

Find out more about Julie at http://www.wyseminds.com

You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information here. Our upcoming guest list is also available along with our previous blogs.
Find out more about our innovative Resilience and Burnout solutions.  

Gen Z. Do they have the skills to thrive in the workplace?

Ever since Gen Z entered the workforce, concerns have been raised as to whether this online generation possesses the soft skills necessary to thrive in the workplace. The underdevelopment of these skills is blamed on an overuse of technology and time spent online but research has shown that large numbers of Gen Z realise that these skills are missing and are keen to take on the training and development needed to enhance their career prospects.

With few in-person opportunities to observe how the workplace ‘works’ or to experience formal and informal in-person interactions during the pandemic, its little wonder that Gen Z are behind on the skills needed to thrive in the workplace. They have learned to work independently with little collaboration or interaction and, without regular practice, we all lose the ability to communicate  – to make a point clearly and confidently, contribute effectively in meetings, take part in discussions calmly and rationally and to be confident talking with peers.

Gen Z priorities have been shaped by vastly different experiences and upbringing. Their values and attitudes demonstrate that authenticity, empathy, inclusiveness, and flexibility are important to them but they also hold learning opportunities among their top priorities. This of course creates an opportunity for organisations to attract, cultivate, attract, and retain this new talent.

The World Economic Forum expects that by 2025 Gen Z will make up 27% of the workforce so it makes sense that organisations are seen as an attractive proposition to this new generation. Gen Z-ers are looking for companies that will support them through a continuous learning process that will help them reach their goals. Whether that’s through formal training, coaching or mentoring, Gen Z want to ensure their employer gives them the best chance of a stable, long-term career.

Moral injury. A new type of burnout?

Post-pandemic there have been huge changes in the workplace. This has resulted in a large number of resignations with burnout being thought of as one of the contributory factors. The classic signs of burnout - mental exhaustion, disengagement, negativity, cynicism and reduced productivity - are well established but now a new study from the University of Sheffield, Affinity Health and Softer highlights that moral injury and stress in the workplace can contribute to a new type of burnout.

The new study, which looked at the experiences of workers in a number of different industries including law, healthcare and HR, considers that moral injury can lead to a type of burnout that is more intense, more challenging to overcome and even lead to increasing the number of resignations.

Moral injury originates from research with the military and refers to the violation of deeply held beliefs. This might be as a witness of an event or as being a participant who has to obey orders in circumstances that were felt to be morally wrong, for example having to shell a school or hospital where civilians would be injured. There has also been work with health care workers and education providers. This cited external pressures and circumstances such as the pandemic or financial interventions as being morally injurious, leaving them unable to provide the service they were employed to give and powerless to intervene.

In other businesses moral injury can be linked to working in toxic environments where an employees values and beliefs are challenged.  This could be around bullying, sexism, racism, homophobia or another moral issue and may be directly experienced, witnessed or learned about such as a colleague’s transgression or betrayal, an unfair redundancy or disciplinary procedure, a failure to act on a whistleblowing complaint, or unfair use of managerial power. 

The study found that although people’s experience of moral stress was different in source, severity and length, many of the respondents felt that the impact on them was so great they had no option but to resign from their positions. This would appear to show that as well as the original problem, there was a lack of support from managers and colleagues that exacerbated the situation and led to feelings of disengagement and, in some cases, of being in a type of abusive relationship.

Many of the warning signs of moral injury are similar to the ones experienced with classic burnout but additionally there may be a sense of shame, embarrassment and hopelessness. The loss of deeply held values and beliefs may also result in feelings such as guilt, anger, grief, anxiety and disgust as well as disillusionment with figures of authority and organisations, social withdrawal and a loss of trust.

Moral injury is caused and experienced differently to burnout but the feelings experienced by someone in a morally injurious situation can contribute to the development of burnout. As moral injury impacts on an individuals trust and self-respect, the strategies and tools needed to mitigate it are different to those needed for burnout and organisations need to be careful not to conflate the two.

Linking values and identity

Sam LaCrosse lived in Cleveland, Ohio for the first eighteen years of his life before attending university at Ohio State for the next four years. He then took an entry-level job in Boston before moving to Austin Texas in summer 2021.  Since then Sam has written a book called Value Economics. The study of Identity.

The motivation for writing his book came in the summer of 2019 when he was doing an internship. He was talking to his mother about believes and what to put your energy into. At the time there were a lot of different things going on culturally but they started talking specifically about Sam’s generation, Gen Z. His mother said that she didn't feel they believed in anything. Sam thought this sounded a little harsh so he decided to look a little more deeply into what was going on in the world. His conclusion was that there was some merit in what she was saying - he wasn’t sure if she was correct or not but he thought the idea was worth exploring.

Sam thought about his time growing up and, more specifically, the household he grew up in. Both his parents were there and his grandparents lived very close by so it was a tight knit family unit. The one constant was the ethos of values and growing up Sam know they were important but he didn't really know what they really were. Later he started asking what are values and from this the relationship between value and sacrifice. He came to the conclusion that the more you value something the more you will sacrifice to get that something. The less you value something, the less you will sacrifice to get that something.

When Sam was at university he had to take a mandatory economics class. One day in class they were talking about supply and demand and he decided that he would use the model of supply and demand to navigate and map out the value of sacrifice to relationships. Sam’s definition of value is that it is something scarce, rare or hard to find. There has to be a finite resource element to it – there is only so much of something to go around. He links value in an economic sense rather than in the psychological sense of beliefs and values. He does feel though that he is talking about both belief systems and values as the central thing you hold close as a person. He wanted to have a rationale when explaining it to people and he gravitated towards economics for explanation because he saw a clear line between the two things.

Sam feels that a value is something that you hold close to yourself and that it can depend on your culture, family or place you grew up, how people value different things. If you want to look at it from an economic stance, these values are generalised in the market place. You can go and purchase or gravitate towards something in the market place but you have to find values that you find work for you. This can be based on experiences - how you like interacting with the world or other people, discipline, self-awareness or how much you care about these things. You have to take the values that most closely match up with those requirements and use them as the anchoring point of who you are as a person. The sacrifice comes in because these things are so important to you that you have to sacrifice so you can live them and let them work for you.

Many people are fascinated by the idea of identity and it’s become an abstracted question to answer in a lot of different ways. Recently, its been seen as the subject of group identity and classifying yourself with a group of people - black, white, male, female gay, straight. Sam feels there is merit to having that side of identity, the genetic and biological characteristics of a person, but that sense of looking at people is limited. Identity should be composed at the individual level and formed of individual values. The implementation of your values is what truly forms an individual’s personal identity in the most total sense that you can capture in a person.

Sam’s proposition is that you have to figure out what you value and then make choices based on actually living those values by getting rid of the things you don't value and living a life around the things you’ve decided are important to you. Self-help is warranted in some cases but if you don't know who you are and don’t know what you find important then what good is any help going to do you if you go in the wrong direction - if you help yourself for the wrong reasons its not helping at all.

Sam feels you can’t help yourself until you know who you are and knowing your values helps to understand who you are and your identity. We all make a series of choices at certain points in our lives and these choices can change – things we may decide when we are in our 20’s will be different to those at 40 and Sam thinks we need to test our values over time. They are things that are really important and self-identification really matters and should we should live our lives around them but need to be capable of change.

 You can find out more about Sam at LinkedIn, read his blogs on dontreadthisblog.com or listen to his podcast Don't Listen to This Podcast. His book is Value Economics: The Study of Identity.

You can listen to the podcast in full and find out further information here. Our upcoming guest list is also available along with our previous blogs.
Find out more about our innovative Resilience and Burnout solutions.