A Job Done Well - Making Work Better

Do You Need Therapy? – Part 1

• Jimmy Barber, James Lawther and Dawn Wray • Season 2 • Episode 13

Share episode

Send us a text

This week, we will see the first of two episodes with Gestalt Therapist Dawn Wray. 

We will explore how therapy can help improve performance and enjoyment at work. Dawn discusses its nature and shares how it can have a profound effect on your personal and professional life. She has helped people who have faced redundancy, been promoted, changed jobs, and many other situations. She shares some questions we can all consider that will help us deepen our understanding of ourselves and improve our relationships with the world around us.

We also learn that Jimmy has benefited from years of therapy and that James would benefit from therapy. 

Stay tuned for next week's continuation of this intriguing and transformative subject.

Hello, I'm James. Hi, I'm Jimmy and welcome to A Job Done Well, the podcast that helps you improve your performance enjoyment at work.

James:

something a little bit different today,

Jimmy:

Yes, certainly is.

James:

We've had a very interesting conversation with a lady called dawn ray. But we did ramble on a bit didn't we and so what we've decided to do is get halfway through the episode And we're going to leave you on a little bit of a cliffhanger And we'll publish two episodes.

Jimmy:

Another way of putting it, James, would be, we had such a rich conversation, we didn't want it to stop with Dawn. There was so much fascinating insights. So what we've done is we've spread it over two episodes, a

James:

much better, on with the episode Good afternoon, how are you doing?

Jimmy:

Doing well, James, how are you?

James:

I'm very good, thank you very much. What have you been up to?

Jimmy:

So, you'll be able to tell when we've recorded this, because at the moment I am living on a high with the fact that Nottingham Forest are third in the league, and their top strikers just one player a month, and their managers one player a month, so all is good in the world.

James:

Ah, what league are they in? Sages.

Jimmy:

It even outbalances the fact that the Americans elected Donald Trump for a second time.

James:

That's stunning, isn't it? We won't talk about that. Go on, ask me how I am.

Jimmy:

How are you, James?

James:

I'm very good, thank you very much. I have been on holiday for two weeks. I've been in Sicily for two weeks.

Jimmy:

Very sophisticated.

James:

Underneath this tank top, I look like a sun bronze god, I can tell you.

Jimmy:

I'll take your word for that. I don't, I need no proof. I'm just pleased that you went to Sicily for two weeks and never pissed anyone off so much that you were

James:

Well, I managed to get back. Yeah,

Jimmy:

and you didn't find a horse's head in your bed or something.

James:

Yeah, they didn't understand why I was telling them my Italian's not that good. Right, anyway, today we have with us a visitor. A visitor.

Jimmy:

Excellent.

James:

With us Dawn Wray. Hello Dawn. who is a Gestalt Therapist. So before I go on and start making stuff up, Dawn, could you introduce yourself and then tell us what you do?

Dawn:

Yeah, I'm Dawn. I am a Relational Gestalt Therapist. Um, I used to work, well with you guys.

Jimmy:

Yes, yeah. Not, not as a therapist.

Dawn:

Not as a therapist, as an operations director, who gets, that gets much kudos in my new therapy circles. I used to work in banking.

James:

I can imagine that goes down really well.

Dawn:

It does, like you see what? Yeah. Um, and now I have a private therapy practice.

James:

Of course, because we give it a plug.

Dawn:

It's just Dawn Ray Therapy. Uh, I run a small company called The Listening Collective, and we do therapy informed coaching for people, well, like you, or like we used to be, I guess, in business.

James:

So how'd you get into this thing?

Dawn:

so when I worked with you guys, I was always interested, more interested in the, what happened in between people as a primary lens to look through than I was interested in the stuff itself. Like the technology is easy, but the people are always the hardest part. So I was kind of always interested in kind of doing that. I looked into psychology degrees. I was going to do an organizational psychology degree. I had all the forms filled in and everything and I didn't do it. Okay. And I realized the reason I didn't do it was the, it was the ology part. I didn't want to study it. I didn't want to, I didn't want to study about people. Like, I like being with people. Yeah. I was having some therapy at the time too, Jimmy, and it was my therapist that said to me, do you realize that you're naturally a gestalt psychotherapist? Really? I have no idea what you're talking about, but I'll go and research it. And when I looked into it and realized that's kind of how I saw the world, it was how I experienced the world, I spent my retraining budget on starting a gestalt psychotherapy course. Very nice. That's how I ended up here.

Jimmy:

And that goes back to our discussion about changing careers, redundancy and stuff like that. All those places. Yeah. And how it often opens wonderful new doors for you.

Dawn:

Yeah.

Jimmy:

So, Explain to us what Gestalt relational therapy actually is. As somebody, you know, in, in the spirit of full disclosure.

James:

I don't know what you're talking about.

Jimmy:

Yeah, I don't understand what you're talking about, but more importantly, I was gonna say that I've been going to see a therapist for many years and always found it incredibly useful, but I guess the use I've always found it has been, life stuff and more relationships outside of work.

Dawn:

Yeah. Of course. So you two will both be familiar with systems thinking. Yes. So it's kind of similar to that. So Gestalt literally has no English translation. It's a German word that means roughly kind of silhouette or whole or, um, like how we see things as a whole, even though they're made up of part. And it's based in Gestalt psychology in the kind of 50s and 60s and is phenomenological. In that it's about subjective, it is a big word.

Jimmy:

James actually sat up for that word. He was like, I almost wrote it down. I'm going to use that word at some point.

James:

Go on. Phenomenal. I can. Yeah, you can't say it. Phenomenological.

Dawn:

You can put music in if you want. Yeah, go on. Phenomenological, which means kind of roughly.

James:

Do, do, do, do, do, do.

Dawn:

Exactly. Um, how we, like a subjective experience. So all experience is subjective. Yeah. And how we make meaning. There is not. nor objective reality or they are subjective meaning and all the philosophy that goes with that. It's based on field theory, which is a bit like systems thinking. So everything is connected in some way and that we're not, and we're not isolated individuals. We're connected with each other. We're connected with the world where we live in and as part of an environment. We're not just, it's not just about you.

Jimmy:

Systems thinking is about the whole thinking about work and work ecosystems as a whole environment. And the whole system, and how people think within the whole system, and how you try and improve things as part of that entire system.

Dawn:

Yeah, so if you expand that out to you being part of a bigger system, whether that system is your family, your team, your work, the planet. It's the same principle, that we would work with you as an individual, but not from an individualistic point of view.

Jimmy:

Yeah. How do you work with people to actually help them improve? How's it, how's it work?

Dawn:

Their awareness would be the word I'd use. Their awareness of that system and their part in it. So on the premise that you are being affected and at the same time are affecting the environment around you. So it's about raising awareness of the relationship between individual and environment.

Jimmy:

And then when you've got that awareness, what, what do you do with it?

Dawn:

Helping change the choices you might have. Yeah. Like, do you want to behave differently? Do you want to change something? Do you want to choose to do nothing? Often it's about raising awareness because then you have different choices.

James:

I remember somebody once talking to me about NLP, Neuro Linguistic Programming. And one of the things they said was that on the whole people do the best thing available to them at any given time, given how they see the world and what they believe. But actually what you're doing is you're giving people a greater understanding of what's going on So they've got more choices because they can see what's going on better

Dawn:

Yeah, and that might also include from a therapeutic perspective What has gone on in their past? so you might see the world in a certain way because of Blueprints laid down when you were, you know much younger But actually that plays through in the work environment.

Jimmy:

Yeah. Yeah You So I, I've learned a lot of the things that how I was treated as a child, how they do impact my behavior 50 years later. By understanding that I can choose how I behave in the future in situations that I come across. What's the difference between coaching and therapy?

Dawn:

It is a highly contested debate, so I was asked when I set the Listening Collective up, is this coaching or therapy? You have to choose. I don't believe you do. Right. Um, I think most coaching models and qualifications have their roots in psychology and psychotherapy anyway. I believe that by having trained therapists doing the coaching that we do, It means that people know they're safe. It's like, if you wanted to explore why, you know, something that happened to you that, when you were at university or as a kid, and actually you have an awareness that that is affecting how you are at work, but that's private, then if you're working with us, you would know that you would be safe to go there. We are trained to go there.

Jimmy:

Back to your point about the roots of some of your behaviours and attitudes and relationships, um, are based in things that have happened to you in the past. When you're being coached, it would tend, in my experience, to operate at a more superficial level. Yeah. It wouldn't get to that understanding of why, why can you not ask for help? As an, as an example, it, it will deal with the superficial behavior.

Dawn:

Oh yeah, ask for help.

Jimmy:

Yeah. So that's one of the things I know I'm not very good at. I struggle to ask for help. Somebody will coach me on asking for help. I can't do it. Not because their coaching's not any good, but because the roots it has are way back in the past. And until you understand that and disentangle that, I can't ask for help for stuff.

Dawn:

Yeah, that is absolutely spot on. Because the behaviours at work and the things that ostensibly you see on the surface are playing out and are happening. But the roots of how you are in the world, they're harder to get to. But that's where you'd find the answer somewhere.

Jimmy:

Yeah, and so The, the difference between coaching and therapy, you're saying it's hotly contested, but it's, uh,

James:

well, I mean, so it's an artificial concept, semantics,

Jimmy:

however, there is huge power and opportunity in really. Getting a deeper understanding of what's driving your behavior at work. Yeah. We tend to observe the behavior at a superficial level and then work out, well, how do you do something around that as opposed to why are they doing that? Yeah.

James:

Yeah, but then, I mean, so two cases. Your point, you're not very good at asking for help. Yeah. Yeah, whereas I am dreadful at selling the stuff we do. Yeah, we said the other day, we have to talk to Dawn about this on Friday, because James has a complete blind spot. Yeah, well not blind spot, blockage, I just won't do it. You can coach me all you like in how to get out and sell stuff, it's not gonna happen because I don't really understand why I don't like doing it.

Dawn:

There's some blueprint you have deep down that says that I shouldn't do that, this is wrong, something bad is gonna happen.

Jimmy:

And it wasn't even, so. Even draw the slight nuance. It wasn't even selling stuff. It was just go and talk to people. So James will talk to people that he doesn't know, happy to do that, but he won't reach out to people that he's known previously. And saying, just go and do it, go and do it, you're not going to get it. Because there is something in his blueprint, as you say, that is completely stopping that.

Dawn:

Yeah. And so we, we've It's about how you get yourself unstuck, like where you're stuck in that. For God's sake, I'm having the moment here!

Jimmy:

I'm like Gooseberry in your therapy session, and all I'm doing is like choking.

James:

So go on, we were getting deep and meaningful.

Jimmy:

Now I've got rid of that blockage, you carry on.

Dawn:

Oh, I see what you did there. Yeah. Where you're stuck and you're, finding it hard to get settled, to kind of get yourself out there, makes me really curious. And if you're curious about where you're stuck and what it is that goes on for you, no amount of telling you to do it is going to make you do it, is it?

James:

No, not at all. So until I understand why, yeah.

Dawn:

Because it's not the same for you as it is for another person.

James:

Yeah, and for me it is about, what's it about? I think it's something to do with the emotional bank account for me. So you know the whole thing about you put stuff into the emotional bank account, yeah? But I just, I hate the idea of taking something out of the emotional bank account.

Jimmy:

It keeps saving up, you won't withdraw. Hmm. Got a lot of credits in the bank with a lot of people, but he never wants to withdraw them.

James:

But rather than going into that in depth now, really what we're saying is, it's about understanding what your blockages are and helping people alleviate them.

Dawn:

And the relational part is important in that. Like how I feel in relation to you not feeling comfortable asking me to do something for you. Because that might be helpful for you to know how I feel about that, what my relational response to you is.

Jimmy:

Our builder, Wayne, was doing some work for us and I was going down to London, I had to go on the train. And so I was walking down to the station, it's a 15 minute walk, and it was starting to rain. And Wayne said, I'll give you a lift. I was like, no, no, no, it's all right. And genuinely didn't want to put him out. And when I was talking to my therapist about it as an example of me not being a task except help, he was like, how do you think Wayne feels? He's putting himself out there to say, I will help you. He is going to get, he's going to get something out of that. You know, he feels good. He's helped me, saved me from getting wet. And I've just rebuffed him. So I'm thinking, to your point, I don't want to take any credits out my, my bank either way and actually what I'm doing is destroying some of the value that he and I have because I've taken away the opportunity from him to, for him to help me.

Dawn:

Yeah, and this is a lovely example of The subjective experience the phenomenology that be different for everybody like what goes on for people in asking for help and What they tell themselves and what they imagine is happening for the other person is very individual. Yeah and having the space To actually explore some of that stuff with somebody confidentially at work without your boss ever knowing about it. I Think it's brilliant.

Jimmy:

Yeah, because your your boss can't always coach you on some of those things.

James:

Your boss is the last person you want to do it because you feel threatened by opening up in front of your boss. Whereas if it's somebody independent, yeah, very different story.

Dawn:

Your boss wants to see you ask for the business or do the thing, you know, whatever the thing is. What's getting you stuck from doing the thing your boss wants you to do might be deeply personal.

The show you're listening to right now. Brings you insights to help you improve performance and enjoyment of work. It takes a long time to produce, but we think it's well worth it. It's all in the name of helping you get your job done well. All we ask in return is that you share the link to the show with someone that you think would benefit from it. And if you haven't already, click on follow the show wherever you're listening to this podcast right now. Anyway, let's get back to the show.

James:

When we were discussing this earlier on, you talked about whole intelligence. So what, what is that? Can you explain that a wee bit?

Dawn:

Yeah, so whole intelligence is a Movement, I suppose you'd call it, set up by a Gestalt Psychotherapist called Malcolm Parlett. Malcolm saw the transformation in People coming into therapy training and leaving therapy training. How did they learn to be different in the world? Yeah, and he summarized it As being these five things. Right. They got better at understanding themselves. Yeah. And what was going on for them, which is kind of what we've just been talking about. They got better at having more meaningful conversations with other people and interrelating with other people. They got better at responding to situations, not just reacting. Yeah. They could take in a bigger picture when they responded to stuff. Yeah. They found new and different ways of doing things that weren't part of the pattern or the script they might have always had. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then the hardest one I think for most people is they learned to understand not just their cognition but actually how we are intelligent through our whole body. Like how, how actually your whole being is giving you information about what's going on. Like we talk about gut feel, don't we? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Heartfelt. Okay. Or, like, actually doing things. So many people only talk about thinking, not about how tense their body might be, or how their breath, what happens with their breath when they go into that meeting, or

James:

Ah, that's interesting. So it ties in a wee bit to the conversation, I don't know if you listened to it, we had a lady come on, Rachel Edmondson Clarke, and she talked to us about moods and emotions.

Jimmy:

Yeah. It's amazing how many people hold their stress physically rather than mentally. So, you'll say, I'm not stressed out. But actually Your shoulders are all tensed up or your jaw is tensed up or something like that. So you are stressed and because you're not recognising it, you don't deal with it. So you've got these five things that he realised that were the transformation the therapist went through. And what does that mean in terms of their overall, overall performance, their lives, their capability?

Dawn:

But then he realised it's not just about people training in therapy. Yeah. Like, wouldn't we all live? Better. Wouldn't we all be more, uh, holy intelligent is why he calls it. We all flow through life in a different way. If we could all get better at these things, then we would, we would help one stick. When we can't ask for business, we would be better asking for help. We would speak up more in the meeting or because we would understand some of the factors at play more wholly.

James:

But it's really a bounce. Awareness, is that?

Dawn:

Yeah, awareness.

Jimmy:

That will help them live better lives, perform better at work, have better relationships.

Dawn:

It's about how do we live happily, more happily, more contentedly, more productively, whatever the more is, there's always a thing.

James:

But, there have been times when I've been sitting in meetings and things have gone awry, and really they've gone awry because I just ran out of options. I wasn't sure how to steer the conversation. I didn't know what was going on. I felt uncomfortable, and all of a sudden you find yourself in a dreadful position. Whereas, if you've got more options, and you can see what's going on better, then, well, you'll get a better outcome. Which is close to the whole point, isn't it really?

Dawn:

I get increasingly frustrated by silver bullets. There's an easy answer. There's an answer. Because maybe actually the search for quick fixes, and silver bullets, and like, A to B done, maybe that is the problem. Yeah. Actually maybe there needs to be more space for exploring these five things in order to understand and embrace the complexity of what's going on, rather than assuming that there's a simple answer.

Jimmy:

And I think that's one of the. It's one of the challenges more generally in life, isn't it? You know, we're in a world where everyone wants a quick answer, a quick fix. Kids want immediate gratification. Everything's got an immediacy to it. Whereas some things do take a bit longer to get into.

Dawn:

Some of these thorny things we deal with at work. They're not. They're complex. Yeah, they're not simple. The world is complex. Businesses, people are complex.

James:

Yeah, but people like simple answers, don't they?

Dawn:

They do.

Jimmy:

Well, it's not just a lie. We are addicted to simple answer.

Dawn:

But what if the simple, the simple answers, the quick answers, what if that is the problem? What if we're actually creating problems? Well, go on. By Oversimplifying. Oversimplifying things and therefore we keep skidding past everything. Well. And never actually addressing what might be going on.

James:

And I think that's really interesting, right, and I'll get political, but the recent U. S. election, I think it's a really valid point. So people like simple answers. President Trump has promised everybody that the solution to their economic woes is he's going to get rid of immigrants, we'll shut the border and we'll throw everybody out. And people like that because it's really simple and they think it's going to work.

Jimmy:

Well, it's easy to understand. It's a hugely complicated problem.

Dawn:

It's something else that's making me cross, the polarising of things. Yeah. Because the, the opposite of simple answers and quick fixes, and I think this showed up in the US election as well. Yeah. Is an ideological left wing namby pamby world that people, you know, only an educated elite can take part in. Yeah. And that polarising view misses what is actually going on. Yeah. Yeah. And I think these five principles, for me, address not this idea, this simple view, or this ideological view, but we have to start being with what is. Right. Regardless of whether it's here or there, because it's neither here nor there, it's probably a bit of both. Yeah. Because we need to start meeting our people with how things are. Not with how we would wish them to be or oversimplifying them. And I had it with AI, I guess you've talked about technology yourself a lot. Yeah, AI. And I think in some circles that I know I'm in, people are like, I reject AI, like I'm not doing it, it's poisoning our children. And I have teenage kids. Yeah. And that is their reality. So you can reject it as much as you like, but by, by taking a completely opposite view, and saying we all need to go back to, you know, eating nuts in the wood. Yeah. You're then polarising again. Yeah. So, but what these five things do is, let's just stop and meet what is actually there. Whether we like it or not. Now there might be conflict, there might be politics, but let's, let's be with what is. And I think we find that increasingly hard to just stay with what is.

Jimmy:

As an advocate of simplification, I think it really has its place where we have over complicated things that we do. Over complicated processes, ways of working, systems. But actually when it comes to some of the challenges around people, I think that's much more difficult to simplify. To your point, if you keep looking for simple solutions to complicated problems, Not necessarily getting to the root cause of those.

James:

Well, and there's a difference between simple and simplistic. Yes. Yeah, and there's that quote, I can't remember who it was by, but, Things should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler. Yeah, but that's really your point.

Jimmy:

Is that, you know when you say that quote, is that something you said, James?

James:

No, it wasn't. I'm going to look it up, I'll put it in the show notes.

Jimmy:

You do like to do, you know that quote, I can't remember who it is, and you want to give some of your wisdom, But you make out like it's some guru, when actually it's just you, Joe.

Dawn:

It's like page 127 of his book.

James:

Yeah, alright, let's move on. There's nothing wrong with that.

Dawn:

Can I say one more thing?

Jimmy:

Of course. He does, that's his line. That is his line. He's like Columbo. You'll never have me back, will you? We might, you never know. Go on.

Dawn:

I went to see my daughter in her production of The Addams Family on Monday. And there was a song in the show, and it was called Happy and Sad. And the premise was that his daughter was growing up, Gomez was singing it, and he's happy because she's growing up, and he's sad that she's not his little girl anymore. And the premise of the song was that you can be happy and sad. At the same time. At the same time. Yeah. And for me it's that. Like the song made me cry because you can be happy and sad. There isn't Night and Air, there's Dawn Oh, where, and right. This was, this was in the show, not that wasn't mine. Yeah. But it's the ability to hold both polarities and, and know that there is a simpler solution, but that you can have both, you know, it's not, it's not just one or the other. It gives you more options. Yeah.

James:

So we did warn you there was going to be a cliffhanger.

Jimmy:

Interesting stuff. You'll have to wait till next week though to find out more about the five explorations and what they might mean to you.

James:

Speak to you next week.

Jimmy:

Thanks everyone.

We cover a whole host of topics on this podcast from purpose to corporate jargon, but always focused on one thing, getting the job done well. Easier said than done. So if you've got. Unhappy customers or employees, bosses or regulators breathing down your neck, if your backlogs are out of control and your costs are spiraling and that big IT transformation project that you've been promised just keeps failing to deliver, we can help. If you need to improve your performance, your team's performance or your organization's, get in touch at jimmy at jobdonewell. com or james at jobdonewell. com.

People on this episode

Head Shot

James Lawther

Co-host
Head Shot

Jimmy Barber

Co-host
Head Shot

Dawn Wray

Guest