May 27, 2024

Leading Through Loss: Rebecca's Story of Grief and Growth

Painful, tender personal experiences can often feel overlooked, especially when you're leading through them.

In this week's episode of Unsaid at Work, Rebecca Mander shares her heart-wrenching journey through some of life's most challenging moments---the loss of her son Charlie, the death of her mother, and steering her organization through the 2008 economic downturn.

She shares how she's used this painful human experiences to help others find resilience through their hard times.

This is an episode for anyone looking to find strength in vulnerability and turning personal trials into transformative triumph.

Follow Rebecca on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/guruyoucoach/

Other episodes that address grief:

The human experience at work

https://www.podpage.com/unsaid-at-work/acknowledging-loss-honouring-the-human-experience-in-the-workplace-with-bryony-wildblood/

Grieving a 4-legged friend

https://www.podpage.com/unsaid-at-work/grieving-for-a-four-legged-friend-a-personal-story/

Weekly newsletter | Ask Catherine | Work with me | LinkedIn | Instagram

Big shout out to my podcast magician, Marc at iRonickMedia for making this real.

Thanks for listening!

Transcript
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And quite often we can be in that victim space in our career thinking, I'm never gonna get that promotion. No one ever listens to me in the workplace.

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I can't speak up in meetings.

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I'm too shy. I don't like networking. So all of those things, those mindset challenges, take away 80% of performance. We know that. And so you've got amazingly talented people who really getting in their own way. And we've all I've been there myself, I remember it was only when I decided as a coach to just get out of my own way. And to be brave, that that changed my career. And I want a huge client as a result of that decision.

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How do you keep showing up at work when you've got some really terrible personal tragedy that's you're living through? Hello, and welcome to unset at work, and my name is Katherine say, messy.

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I'm your host. I'm an executive team coach. And I'm interested in those conversations that we don't have at work and leading in a crisis, you know, finding your resilience is one of those conversations that we don't have. Rebecca Amanda shares her story today on this episode, and it's a heart wrenching journey through some of life's most challenging moments that she's had more than her fair share. It starts with the loss of her son, Charlie, then the death of her mother, all in the midst of her organization going through the 2008 economic downturn. So Rebecca really does understand resilience and much so that she's developed a method that's based around her experience to help people struggling with personal challenges in a leadership position, navigate their way through, and that's what we talk about, we talk about how do you lead in a crisis, Rebecca shares quite openly about how she managed to shop in work, whilst they were losing business in 2008 crisis, having just lost her mother and some time, the prior to that her son, this idea of moving beyond the victim mindset, how do you get through grieving in a way that's useful for you and then finding a way to get through it?

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And we asked about what do we mean by resilience and why resilience is more than sucking it up, which was a bit of what I was told, growing up, we often shy away from talking about our vulnerabilities and what we're going through and what we're struggling with, and especially especially at work. And so this is an episode for anyone who's looking to find strength and vulnerability, and turn their personal trials into something more than just the tribe they are. If you'd like more support in your journey as a boss and a leader than just check out how we can work together in the shownotes. Let's go listening to the conversation with Rebecca.

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Rebecca, welcome to answer work.

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It's nice to have you here. It's been a while since we've planned this. And here we are, is very exciting to be here.

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Thank you. Thank you.

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It's a lovely sunny day. And we're just having a little chat, which is really nice to be able to chat with you, Catherine.

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It's great to have you. So we're gonna start in in 2008. So go back and a little time machine and you were MD of a large organization, like what was life like for you? And that's a leadership position at the time.

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Well, it was really hectic, we were going through the economic crisis, and we had had a significant amount of tragedy. So I was a leader of a very large organization, whilst managing this mental strain, I suppose on our personal life.

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And I've been asked to come back from maternity leave and become the managing director. And I say no way, there's no way I can do that. I'm the Sales Director.

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Well, one of the tragedies that we'd lost my mum, who was our CEO. And so they really needed someone to come in. And we had such a lovely heart led organization that I just feared that if I left and left and someone else came in to do it, that that would change. And everybody deserves that, especially during that time with so much loss going on and the turmoil of the economy. So I decided to accept the position with the help of my amazing team, which included family members, my brother, my husband, my auntie, everyone had my back.

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And so I took on that role, and it was horrible, we lost. I remember going into my first accountancy, meeting with our shareholders and telling them we were making 146,000 pound loss.

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And they bought us for millions and millions of pounds a couple of years before. It was the beginning. I didn't know it. I didn't know how I was going to do it. But that 2008 year it was probably the toughest ever at the very bottom of a very tall mountain. And it was like someone who said here's some flip flops Rebecca off you go climb that mountain. So yeah, it was a tough time. I'm

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so lonely. I just I can't imagine what it's like to be going through the grief losing a parent and having to step up Yeah, into some divisible into her role? Yeah. And there's a familiar line of like, Can I can I know what she's done and the legacy that she's left me i Yeah, exactly. And

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she was due to be retiring anyway. But it was never plans that I would take over so soon. And without the training, she was going to mentor me into the role. And there was going to be someone else, also co managing the company with me. And they decided to leave at the same time, it was just a catalogue of who was a nightmare. And

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then the third who don't remember who weren't around 2008, I mean, that financial crisis that on top of that, just like the context in which you find yourself is just dire. I was in financial services, I thought I was going to be out of a job, we'd lost half our clients overnight, because the bank has disappeared in the house. And then Senator Joe certainty there you are taking over in a context of couldn't be harder. It

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was really tough. I don't envy you being in financial services. I think what was tough for us was that we lost a client. That was a very large percentage of our turnover. And I think that was the thing that really struck us.

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And so dealing with that, during economic crisis was loaded, really.

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Yeah.

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Also loaded is a great word is everything feels loaded for you as well. When my father died, I think I disappeared on a rabbit hole for three months, I had time off. I was working for an organization at the time when they gave me time off, what resources did you draw on yourself to get out of bed? And

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that's such a great question. And I'm sure we'll come on to the loss that we had before my mum said before my mum a year earlier, we'd had a significant loss, we'd lost one of our children. So I was Sales Director. At the time, I had had this humongous event a year before. And I remember when mum died, she died in a car accident thinking, Oh my God, the one person that was carrying me through this as well as my husband, of course. But when you're close to your mum, and I was really we were very close, we would do everything together.

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So I just couldn't imagine how I would possibly live without her.

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She carried us through this awful time, her empathy, her compassion, her. I just could not believe it. And I remember having to go into the offices telling people and someone said, Do you want me to tell them? And I was like, no, no, I'll do it.

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I was probably quite pragmatic, quite stoic in that moment, because I knew that because we had such a Heartland leadership style. And she was such a great leader. I knew that it was their grief was going to be huge. And what would this mean for the company and everything. So it was almost like a put myself on the back burner. I remember doing the same when Charlie's funeral think he just just put just don't worry about yourself yet. You can deal with yourself in a minute. But right now you've it's not about you. But then in the months that followed, I suppose being surrounded with so many people that absolutely loved her and respected her for the business woman that she was a pioneer in business. I can imagine people going into work today who lost a parent, nothing's changed for anybody else in the workplace.

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So you're walking around this huge cloud of grief, and no one else is sharing it, you're under it by yourself. Whereas I was sharing it. We were all under it. And so we're all doing what we could to make Penny proud. So I suppose being able to share that grief and that loss without having to talk about it all the time. It was just there it was just we will do this. We will make get her proud. We will support you Rebecca, how are you doing today? There was none of that me having to put on a brave face. But it was it was really challenging. Yeah, I can understand why you do take that time off Katherine for your for the loss of your father, it's you need it because you can't possibly work. That's the funny thing. People think some organizations might be misguided and think well, it'll do them good to get back into work. And for some people it might for my husband for example, he'd absolutely like to crack on and just get his head down and not worry not focus on the loss. But for many of us and literally you can't work you're Googling self help books rather than working on the books you worrying ridiculously so about the loss of a stapler, you just your resilience is so low, that time off is so important to be able to heal and rebuild and and look at what's going to make you resilient to the next few months. There's

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something special about the grieving and community that was possible because she was there a leader and just the core values of the organization. And when she showed up a week later, everyone knows the same story doesn't like oh, yeah, I remember her mother died. Oh, yeah, forgot about that. Yes. Have some slack. It's like no, no, we're all breathing with you. Yeah, that's how they were feeling.

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Yeah, absolute late. And I suppose similarly, when in the year prior when Charlie died, there was so much family in the business that you felt similarly held. Yes, in the grieving process. Yes,

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I do. Remember though, for that example, I couldn't go back into work. I think I went in after about three weeks. And my boss who was normally quite an emotional took me by surprise, by asking me how I was, and it sounded like he really was concerned about and that he really felt my pain. And that triggered me to just burst into tears on the phone to him.

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And he said, Rebecca, take another two weeks, I think it totally probably took six weeks off. I was really lucky that I could do that. There's a law that came into place around I think 2020, which is called Jack's law. And it now means that every bereaved parent is entitled to two weeks. But even you can see two weeks. I mean, in two weeks, you've barely organized the funeral, maybe not even attended it. Yeah, I was really lucky to get that six weeks and be held, as you say, by people who really cared who knew Charlie, his great aunt, his uncle was there, his dad was there. So yeah, I was really blessed

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in the in the time that comes after you survive the 2008 recession as an organization, but that's really informed a lot of your of your ideas and views about leadership. And actually the work you do tell us tell us what happened after in the years after the 2008 crisis,

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what I was doing, I think we lost Charlie in 2007.

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And I had two years of support from an amazing psychologist.

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And I learned about the world of psychology through her work with me. And I offered to support her in training other psychologists and being able to share my story of infant loss. So we did that together. And I found it so rewarding. I just find it so rewarding. I remember, we went to see a company called macro.

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Do you remember macro? They were like Costco. They were just like Costco. And they were just a nightmare. And I remember going in to see them and coming away thinking, honestly, this is so less inspiring than what I was doing yesterday, which was coaching the psychologists. And so I think that started the idea that I would do something different with what I'd learned.

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I was also helping a lot of other people who'd lost children or had gone through some kind of setback people come to me and they'd asked me, How do you do it? How all that and I remember, in my time when I needed it, there were lots of people who I really valued that helped me. So I thought, actually, maybe there's something I could do.

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Meanwhile, a friend of mine, asked me to come and speak or at university, and to be interviewed by a coach, I learnt about what coaching is, and I stopped cautious all the bits of my job that I love, and none of the bits that I hate. It's all about the people. It's about development. It's about robust conversations. It's about challenges and how we cope with that resilience in in work. And so I retrained or university and became a coach and now support other leaders primarily in the usual way, the usual way that a leader needs support. My specialism is supporting leaders through personal setback, of course, but thankfully, a lot of the work I do is the driving to be better leaders, rather than coping through setback, but setback is a huge part of leadership's role, whether it's personal professional, and when a leader is suffering, so to their team, so to the the figures, the clients suffer. So ignoring a leader who's going through personal setback is a pretty stupid thing to do, in my opinion,

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what sort of setbacks are we talking about other than grieving

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the loss? We know don't we, Catherine, that resilience, everybody's got a different level of resilience. And so the areas that we work with could be anything from loss to financial challenges, challenges in the workplace, not receiving the promotion that they'd really been hoping that they would get get into partnership level perhaps, when they'd been promised it. It could be going through a relationship breakdown. There could be problems as children codependence. We have a lot of clients who this what we call the sandwich generation, so they're dealing with their children, but they've also got their parents they're needing support. It can be that it's just so much for somebody to be dealing with that having that coach having an ear means that they can process a lot of the stuff that's going on rather than just carrying it around and hoping that it will all get better.

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I think being witnessed is one of the underrated Have a gift and coaching just to have another human here and receive your story without trying to guess you.

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I love that phrase to witness that, that's just lovely. I really love that scene that compassion and empathy from your coach, just just they're listening, they're not trying to fix as you say, they're not trying to bring in their ideas.

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It's almost as if they're not in the room sometimes. But when you need them in the room, they are there. Also, I think to normalize what people are going through. When we don't talk about things, we can often feel like we're the only person going through something. So to share something with a coach to find out actually, that you're not the only person going through this can be really helpful, really powerful. And whilst I don't, I never would, I don't want your listeners to think it's about my story. Because it's not when I say you're saying something is normal, it's it's like guess I see this in other clients, I see this in other workplaces, what you're going through is completely understandable. But on the other side of that, when someone's going through setback, if they're working with me, they do know my story. And they can see a human being that seems to be what's around or not. But seems to be firing on all cylinders, seems to have got stuck together. And so there's hope.

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Actually, I

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like that. I mean, that is often what people are looking for, as a degree of hope, perspective, they're suffering a setback and men trying to find is a friend of mine going through a difficult divorce and separation of business and relationships and children. Yeah, she keeps leaving me voice notes going, Is this ever going away in the night? I know it will, but for safe in the middle of it. And she just wants like, Well, is there a line somewhere? Yes, if I just keep going? Well, I find that and

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so for your friend having to be 100% Great Mom, 100%. Great employee 100% great employer, perhaps it's just not possible. 100 percents don't add up anyway. But having someone in her corner that's going to be unbiased is really helpful, really powerful. Because I know that when you're giving her counsel, it will be unbiased and it will

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not really threaten to go break a leg. So it's not yet up. Because that's the point right? Like the coach is the unbiased, yeah, compassionate listening, your friends, like, give me that amalgam, break their legs for you, because we're allowed to get angry and 100% on her side and 100% not on his side?

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Absolutely. And sometimes, well, all the time.

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If you can help the client see different perspective, it makes them less angry. Yeah. Because they can see that. There's there's other stuff at play.

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So what did you think of if I had called you up until 2004? And we'd had a conversation about resilience?

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How would you have related to the word back then?

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I think I would have thought it meant someone who's really strong, who keeps on going has a smile on their face, who's always cheerful, who can take on all the extra work, and can bounce back very quickly after challenge, it would have been a completely different view. Yeah, exactly. So I would have thought superhero doesn't really need to ask for help.

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Resilient for me would have been I've got a toolkit. I've got everything in it. A backpack if this journey, I've got everything in it. You can't knock me down.

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And did you consider yourself resilient at the time? Or was that for no evil?

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I don't think I even considered what the word resilience meant. No one ever said to me, you need to be more resilient. I know that I was resilient. I remember in my education being bullied. And I'd go back to school every day. And I would work through that. I remember going into being an au pair and having like hideous experience. And yet going back again for another placement just to get my degree. I remember not getting into university saying Can I please come in? If I go to a year in France? Will you let me then? So I can see that I was resilient. But I never, I never considered it was a thing. I just thought. Yeah, I don't know what I thought I didn't consider the word resilience actually, yeah,

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maybe come to the aid. Like it's not a word I would have used when I was younger. But if I look back on myself and the things that I've been through, I would call myself

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resilient. And I never patted myself on the back for being resilient. I wonder if using this to Katherine, that as we grow older, when we look back, we can see more examples of what resilience is not. And we see areas, especially in our children, where we think in certain privileged areas of society, we see a lack of resilience. And I think that that is a challenge as well. So resilience becomes a word that we talk about more because we see a lack of it sometimes, as a parent myself. I've tried to sweep things up for my children.

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I've tried to make things easy and My parents never had the pressure to be the best parent They didn't have to deal with social media run comparisons.

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And we do. So we try and do the best we can do to be the best parents. And that can mean that we see a less resilient person coming forth because they've had less challenges to deal with perhaps.

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I mean, they've got a bit of ancestor work recently caught up in the stories of my grandparents and stories of English, English and Scottish grandparents of traveling overseas, like one set of grandparents came to Africa in 1920, built a farm in the middle of nowhere. The other grandparents went to Jamaica, where his first wife doll and childbirth was rather too small children. He was a reverend, for the Protestant church. Like there's a stoicism and resilience that comes through my family line. I think I was hearing Dallas ism as resilience. Like if you just suck it up, life's hard, suck it up. Yes, there's my family motto. That was my form of resilience. So there was no vulnerability, there was no asking for help. There was no acknowledging your own pain or just suffering in the moment like you weren't allowed. Yes, that was intelligent. Quite

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often people think that that's still a form of resilience. Is it just sucking it up? Yeah. But the challenge that I see is that some of my clients and me if I had just done that, I don't think I'd be here today. I think it was the fact that I had, I had support that helps me get through it, to be able to process those feelings, and those emotions to be able to process those thoughts that you sink that actually are rubbish, but you believe them. And the more you think them, these negative thoughts, such as one might have been, for example, my first thought was, it's my fault that Charlie died because I'm a parent. So I should have had one job. And if I took that step further, I shouldn't have killed his bottle. If I hadn't have got the help that I had. Ie I went and spoke to the pathologist who confirmed there was nothing in his esophagus to indicate that he choked. If I hadn't done that, I'd still be a 50 year old woman, chastising myself for the fact that I gave my son his bottle in the cot. We were told, and I had grandparents that said, shouldn't Rebecca be okay, by now? It's been six months, thankfully, my mum, she said, What do you think? And I asked my psychologist and she said, No. But I don't think that would have got me very far. Asking for help is part of resilience I've learned. So asking for help.

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Getting the specialists involved delegating when you can't do something yourself. If it's not going to be the Gold Class result with you on your own, who is going to help make it Gold Class? What are you going to do?

00:22:40.380 --> 00:22:52.380
Who can help you? Because you can't do it on your own with like your friends, your lovely friend, she couldn't be doing this on her own without her voice notes. Other

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than asked you what your definition of resilience is now, but I think no, I think you're talking to it

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that it's sorry. Yeah, it's soft. Yeah, it is,

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I feel during my body as you talk, like, as if there's sort of pillows, I'm putting my hands behind my back like the pillars or people or hands behind my back in the resilience. And there's an

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authenticity isn't there. And I know there's different thoughts on authenticity, but appropriate authenticity. I think so important. If I go into a meeting, and I've just had some bad news out, some significantly bad news, Sheryl Sandberg talks about this in her book, option B. She said, she went into her meetings, and she would say, if I leave to have a cry, that's where I'm going to once you do that you feel more resilient, because you have the permission to do that. You don't need to have everybody seeing you moping around. And sobbing. No one ever saw me sobbing at my desk. But they would hear me say I had a tough night last night. So can you just keep my calls to minimum? And I'm not going to have that meeting with so and so today? Can you cancel that? So I think that resilience is about listening to your inner needs, what do you need to help you get through the day, and if that is that you need to have a day off.

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If that is that you need to have a quiet space work from home, then that's what you need to do.

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But resilience for me the key to my work is that we always always have a choice. So no matter what we're going through, no matter how hideous our life might be, we always have a choice. And that is the key to resilience.

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Knowing that you have a choice.

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You're not the victim. You can feel like the victim. And sometimes it's quite addictive to be the victim. Because when you're the victim, everyone feels sorry for you. They make you lasagna and they buy you flowers and they let you be snappy without telling you snapping back, but actually you're not gonna go anywhere in that victim space. The victor is the one that is getting out of their comfort zone asking for help finding new ways, looking at their strengths and recognizing how their strengths are going to support them, looking at ways they've struggled in the past and what they did to overcome that. That is key, I think, to resilience as well. And there's a beautiful book called The choice by Edith Eger. And I really recommend it to anybody who's feeling that there's no choice. They have no choice in the matter. Was she one of the Holocaust survivors?

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Yes, she was, she was a lot of her work was based on Viktor Frankl and it's just such an uplifting story. I read it at the beginning of lockdown what it was not for any reason other than to I don't know why, but it's actually fun. It was great to read because I was feel really sorry for myself. And then I read that I was like, wow, that's brilliant. We always have a choice.

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And that was voice because work as well, like between Yeah, between the stimulus. And the responses in that moment lies the choice.

00:25:50.009 --> 00:25:58.049
Exactly. Do you think that's maybe a controversial view? But do you think it's okay to be a victim for a period of time?

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Definitely. Oh, my goodness, definitely. Because I can

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catch myself being like, Oscar winning victim. Yeah, woe is me, my life has shed I'm so shut down that I'm like, and I can see, I can look down on myself going,

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Wow, that's quite a, quite a performance you're putting on that account. And

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my anomeric my responses, like I know, and I don't tear and carry on. And there's

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like, Okay, I'll

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give you another 24 hours, and then we're gonna, and I do come out of it.

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But if I was to get critical of myself being a victim, I don't think that helps.

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No, absolutely. And I say this, to all our clients, when we're doing the bounce forward program, there's always a space to be the victim, we always look at all the things you and I have been through, even your ancestors making those journeys, they wouldn't have constantly been charging forth with a great big smile on their face, we are allowed to, in fact, we must feel like the victim, sometimes, I think it's about recognizing whether it's working for you or not. And that becomes a point to when it is working for you. It's when you can shut the door. I don't want to speak to anybody. I'm going to cancel my girls night out with everybody. I'm going to just sit on the sofa and binge watch NetFlix. Yeah, I'm gonna soak because that is part of that shutting down, I need to shut down. And I don't want to celebrate. I'm feeling rubbish.

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And I think that part of that, if we look at mindfulness is about accepting the now and being in the now. And if the now is shit than the now is shit, you don't have to carry alkyl dust over No, you don't. And then that leads to even more pressure, which increases the risk of having mental health challenges. But being the victim, it's about thinking, actually, am I doing everything I could do to help myself? If you look at Stephen Covey circle of concern or controlling the controllables. And that's what I did. I was the victim. I remember standing there thinking my life's never going to be the same again, I'm never going to laugh again. And then I remembered two people who had had the same thing happened to me. And I just didn't want that.

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And I think I wanted to be the victim I wanted to get through.

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I didn't want to be the person who never left again. I didn't want Joshua to be a 14 year old boy, saying my life was never the same after the day my brother died. That

00:28:27.329 --> 00:28:31.680
was your choice. Right? That was yeah, that was your moment of choice.

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Yeah, that was my

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moment of choice. And the same in the workplace. I didn't want someone else to come in and take over and do a great job or do a bad job. I knew I had a choice. I think it's about just thinking, Okay, we need to move forwards, we need to bounce forward. And we're not going to do that. If we stay in that victim space.

00:28:50.279 --> 00:28:59.609
You talked about the bounce forward method, which is one of your methods, the idea of choice and perspective shift at the core of that. Yes, a bit more about that. Yes. So

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because of working in the environment I do with leaders and looking at setback, the bounce forward program was created as a way to help people through setbacks. So how to get from A to B, when you're going through your challenges, whether that be divorce, financial challenges, whatever. And it was, especially for people during COVID. We've adapted it since to help people in their careers and bounce forward in their careers. And quite often we can be in that victim space in our career thinking I'm never gonna get that promotion. No one ever listens to me in the workplace. I can't speak up in meetings. I'm too shy. I don't like networking. So all of those things, those mindset challenges, take away 80% of performance. We know that and so you've got amazingly talented people who really getting in their own way. And we've all I've been there myself. I remember it was only when I decided as a coach to just get out of my own way and to be brave that that changed my career and I won a huge client as a result of that decision. So the bounce forward program looks at over a period of six sessions looks at all the different areas such as strengths awareness, imposter phenomenon, goal setting, a victim or Victor, all of that sort of thing. We look at thrivers mindset to really help people come out of their comfort zone. And the results are just fabulous. Just just wonderful. We just recently won 12 this year already went to awards for it. So it's lovely to see Charlie's legacy, bringing so much to other people getting the emails that I get, I just bought my first house because it was at the top of my hog pyramid, or I just got a promotion, or I spoke up in a meeting, I would have never done that before the bounce for program. Those stories have all come from our challenges to our in the wake of Charlie's loss, they wouldn't have happened, that program wouldn't be here. I won the first award this year, the day after his birthday. And while he was just here, he would have been 18. And the day later, we win the award for best programs. It really is a privilege and an honor to be doing it. Some

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beautiful symmetry there. Isn't there about the guides to being the day. Yeah, the award really and magnificent story of what comes when we honor. We find the resilience in ourselves and bounce back. Yeah, bounce for as you wonderfully put it, if there was one piece of advice, other than choice, which I think is a good one, if somebody's listening to this and feeling in a dark hour in a funk, whatever version of that there is, what's the one piece of advice you would want to leave them with as they have you in their ears right

00:31:41.730 --> 00:33:07.049
now. That would be so one of the things we designed was Charlie's star. And that's five point coaching model to getting forward through setbacks. And I My favorite part is the final part. And that's the Enquirer. And the Inquirer, is who or what do you need to know in order to help you move forward? So it would be to think about somebody who may be slightly ahead of you on your journey. So if you're going through, you just had a cancer diagnosis, for example, thinking about where can I find someone who's also been through this who might be slightly further ahead than I am saying for bereavement? I remember I did the say, I had someone I spoke to, and it just made such a difference. So who or what do you need to know it might be research, there may be something you're telling yourself in your story that hasn't got 100% truth behind it. And so checking that and validating whether or not that's actually true, will be quite freeing, during that research, find or finding the person that you need to speak to, quite often in business, it's finding a mentor, someone who has got you in a position in a position or they've been there, you looked up to them, and you'd like to spend time with them to find out what what they're doing. And learn from them would be my advice. Yeah,

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I what I, what I love about that is the connection out of cell, like that forces you to either make a connection with another human being and inquire or even if it's just Google, like you're out of your own headspace. If it's a fact, can you take the fact of connections back into the world and community that that would be soothing? Because I know, in dark hours on my own, I can get very spirally down the rabbit hole all on your own?

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Yes. You don't have to do this alone.

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No, you don't. And even just taking a pen and paper and just writing down. Where do I need to go? What's the next step for me? I think just again, takes you out of yourself. I don't like lots of people like journaling. And I remember not being able to do that. I remember thinking I don't want this down. indelibly I don't want to put this down, because if I put it down, it's gonna make it sack. Yeah. So I never did do that. But a lot of people my sister in law loves that.

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She'll write reams and reams of stuff. So a lot of people find that healing. But for me, it's, as you say, is about going out of myself who or what can help me move forward.

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Rebecca, our time has come to an end. I just want to thank you for sharing great personal, very vulnerable stories for the benefit of all of us. Oh, you're so welcome. I'm kind of exploring this idea of resilience and how we can be in relationship with that word for ourselves. So thank you very much. Exactly.

00:34:31.949 --> 00:34:35.730
You're so welcome.

00:34:31.949 --> 00:34:38.400
Really welcome, be lovely to connect again and continue the conversation.

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I am so grateful for people like Rebecca come on to the show and share their personal stories is rooted deep maneuvering. The story is more than just a personal triumph. But I think it's just a reminder of to all of us of how important it is to create work environments where spoon growth can go hand in hand and that we don't have to park the grieving struggling part of ourselves at home when we come to the office.

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This isn't the show's first coverage of grief and loss I share my own experience of grief in an earlier episode where I completely misjudged my capacity in returning to work after breathing. In an even earlier episode, I talked to an investment Minister briny Wang that about the different types of endings that begin an organization, redundancies and organizational changes and the grief that we that we experience in just living corporate life.

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So check out the show notes you won't continue this exploration of loss and bouncing back. Thank you for listening. I appreciate a spending our time together and until next time, this is your woman signing off