069 - Pit Pony Revisited: The Summer Series - Paul Lennon

In this powerful Summer Re-Issue, we revisit the story of Paul Lennon, a teacher whose career spanned 28 years and took him across the globe. From Japan, Italy, Malawi, Moscow and Senegal to his final role in Warsaw, Paul built a life around travel, education and family.

But after decades of success and fulfilment, his last school brought him face to face with one of the most toxic leadership cultures we have ever heard described on the podcast. Shouted at in meetings, undermined at every turn and caught in a destructive clash of egos, Paul’s confidence and mental health began to unravel.

He speaks openly about the panic attack that stopped him at the school gate, the therapy that helped him rebuild, and how he has since found a new chapter of purpose working with the NHS in the UK.

Paul’s story is one of resilience, clarity and proof that there is life after teaching — even when the exit is forced by circumstances beyond your control.

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Transcript

Thank you to our sponsors Little Voices. Are you a teacher with a passion for drama, music and performance or feeling stuck in the classroom? Little Voices gives you the chance to step into a role where you can truly inspire young minds through the arts. This is a company I know well and admire. 

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Hello lovely listeners and thank you for pressing play. This has been recorded in July, August 2025 so technically school's out for summer and Sarah and I, still teachers to the very core, are taking a little bit of time off but we still want something dropping regularly to you so we've chosen a few of our favourite episodes. We've loved doing all of our podcasts but we've chosen a couple that have really struck chords with our listeners that have had a huge impact and we're going to revisit them. 

There'll be a couple of special episodes as well, this may even be one of them, where me and Sarah are chewing the fat. So yes, we're putting our feet up so sit back and enjoy what we've got for you. Thank you. 

Coming up in this episode... The way you're speaking to people, me in this case now, is totally unprofessional, it's totally unacceptable. I'm out, see you later, you can deal with it, you can speak to whoever you want, I'm gone. I wish there'd been a little bit more forthright and, for want of a better term, in the conversation aggressive because I think that would have created a bit of shock because instead what I did was remove myself professionally. 

That's the last time I spoke to that human being face to face. Hello listeners and welcome to a wonderful episode of the Pit Pony Podcast. We've got Paul Lennon with us today and Paul actually started teaching at about the same time I did. 

We worked out that there's probably a year apart between us and he served 28 years in secondary schools. Started off originally as a PE teacher, rose to head of department, assistant principal, held a whole host of roles throughout his career. Started potentially as a professional footballer and he used a PE teacher role as a backup, as a bookworm, self-confessed. 

His second subject was literature so when he'd finished university he travelled to Japan but when he came back from Japan he did three years in a school in Peckham which he loved but the rest and the majority of his career was spent overseas. Fascinating, absolutely fascinating to listen to but it was in his last school that Paul experienced bullying and I listened to a lot of bullying within schools but he experienced a type of bullying, a sandwich of toxicity between alpha male relationships, the likes of which I've never come across before. So welcome Paul, thank you for sharing your story with us and can you tell us what it is you're doing today? Yeah these days I work for the wonderful NHS, one of the foundations as part of the NHS based with the South Central Ambulance Service. 

I take calls for the 111 service, I coach new call handlers as they come into that service and I'm just about to embark on a middle management role there as a team leader within that whole context. Taking emergency calls and managing that work with with the National Health Service. Wow, so before we get into all of that can we have just a potted walkthrough of your career right up until, just to get a flavour of who you are really, your family and the vision that you had for yourselves when you started out into teaching and take us up to that last school when you left teaching in your 50s after your school in Warsaw. 

Right thanks Paul, I'm really looking forward to hearing this. Yes so you know I, we've spoken before Sharon, I started off moving into the plan for education doing a B.Ed at university and P.E in English Literature as you've already said and in the role of going through that I realised that I wasn't yet quite ready on graduating to simply simply go into a school in the UK and take the normal job as most of my peers were doing at the time. I was determined to travel and in my first year out after graduating I was really lucky to be offered a job teaching English and coaching and playing football in rural southern Japan of all places and cutting that very long story short it didn't work out.

On paper it was my dream job I thought I'd you know I'd literally landed on the pig's back and that wasn't the case and so within two weeks of being out there I was back with my tail between my legs back living in the town where I graduated feeling sorry for myself at the truth be told and thanks to some really close friends and also the person who eventually became my wife applied for some roles doing supply teaching and on the back of a couple of terms of full supply in Luton actually I ended up with a job as you've mentioned in your introduction in southeast London in Peckham at a school called St Thomas the Apostle College which was one of the most amazing experiences I've had in a long life of travel and education. After about three years of that the urge to travel was still there and I'd been saving up so went off backpacking as many people did back in the 90s did a bit of supply teaching in Australia as part of that in a school called St Elysian College in Melbourne and then on return the person who is now my wife and I kind of said hold on a minute how do we work overseas but not travel because we now need to be mature adults we were engaged we were thinking about having a family and so we ended up applying for international teaching jobs which in those days were advertised on the back of the times educational supplement the back couple of pages we applied for two jobs in Turkey which fitted because they had PE jobs for two of us and one in Milan and there was PE jobs for two of us and the one in Milan came off we didn't really know what we were doing but we accepted and off we went and worked at the International School of Milan for four years and from there the career progressed and we would have been there forever but we still had itchy feet and so when we had our first child I applied for some more international jobs ended up in Oxford in an international school called St Clair's in Oxford England and we had our second child so then we're both ready to apply for new jobs and ended up going to a school in Malawi in Southeast Africa and we were there for six years and amazing times and after those six years again we were kind of a little bit itchy feet again and contrary to what all the advice was we went to Moscow Russia and worked in the Anglo-American School of Moscow for six years before all the chaos of today pretty topical based on the last day or two of news but being in Russia for six years prior to all of that was incredible and six wonderful years there and again we got itchy feet and we moved to another international school in West Africa in Senegal so back to the continent of Africa in a totally different part of that continent and we did four years at the International School of Dakar and at that point my wife made the decision to step out of education so we were ready to have another change but you know she wasn't going to do teaching so I applied for new positions again and ended up in Warsaw at the American School of Warsaw in Poland and yeah that's where things changed let's see. Okay well before we do that last school you cannot globetrot like you've just done without Sarah going wow what do you think Sarah is for that as a CV? I think that's an episode where I think I would love the video because my face said everything it was like where haven't you been? Have you been to every continent? We haven't been to South America and I feel quite settled at the moment and so does my wife but when you ask that question I'm like yeah we need to get to South America. 

Please apologize to your wife I'm so sorry I'm stepping away now. So South America's one continent we've not been to yet. Yet. 

Paul would it be fair to say that you experience really really broad experience in different countries, different schools, different positions up until this last school was it happy? Were you happy with what obviously nobody's 100% happy but in the main had you enjoyed a good and rich career as a teacher? Yeah without a doubt I mean you pre-empted what I was just going to say of course you know we all know life is is a roller coaster so happiness is you know it depends on what's going on at any given time but in terms of contentment, fulfillment, being challenged, being positive in the career yeah without a doubt and we were able to you know meld our passion for travel with our passion for education and you know you know we talk about travel and education and we talk about travel as education and without a doubt that was our experience for the vast majority of that journey. Amazing absolutely amazing and I can only begin to imagine the memories that you have but let's let's go to this school this is your last school and and we'll find out why it was the last school specifically and in as much detail as you feel comfortable talk about your role in Walsall. Yeah so there may be listeners who are familiar with international curriculum and I'm sure there's listeners who are not familiar with international curriculum. 

I was working as part of schools that were taking on the international baccalaureate organizations curricula from the primary years program through the middle years program and their equivalent of A-levels or Scottish Highers or Irish Leaving Cert is known as the international baccalaureate diploma program and so my role moving into Walsall was as the diploma program coordinator so in simple terms it's similar to a head of sixth form in England it's about managing students in the final two years of high school and everything from pastoral issues to you know the organization and the administration of examinations etc so I was the IB diploma coordinator in Poland which was a sideways step I'd been assistant principal and IB diploma coordinator in the previous school in Dakar but was really excited to come back to Europe and my youngest son at the time had two years left and he was very keen to return to Europe and city life which he's a big advocate for as is my wife and so it felt like a really good move and so that was the role in that particular school. Where did it start to go wrong? Where did it not start to feel the way you had felt in other in other schools? Yeah it's a really good question I think there was a couple of things that appeared really really quickly and the first one was something that we can all empathize with I think and that was Covid. The world was different in different places around Covid but we all had the experience of a global pandemic so the first point I understood where certain things were different or potentially problematic was in regards to how that school had experienced Covid in central eastern Europe in relation to experiences that I'd had or other colleagues around different parts of the world had had and it became quite clear quite quickly that the school had taken a different pathway compared to the rest of Poland and the rest of the educational institutions in Poland because it had that slightly different status in regards to being an international school somewhat under the the umbrella of the American embassy in Poland and so at some points in Covid before I got there it was the only school in the whole country that was open and as we all know there was lots of anxiety around all sorts of things in terms of Covid so arriving into that school when Covid was still a thing and we still had lots of testing in the school and you know lots of protocols in place it became quite clear that the school had experienced quite a lot of trauma around that because it was so different to what the rest of the country had had to go through or chosen to go through and so that was the first thing and then the other thing that became apparent quite quickly and I think you alluded to it in the introduction was I became quite clear quite quickly that there was quite a toxicity in the school and it related to a real clash between the overall leadership from director to the high school leadership and I didn't really know the ins and outs of that really until things got bad for me but ultimately the director of the school and the high school principal clashed in a really alpha way and it was very much a kind of you're on his side you're on his side. 

For my sins I had actually worked under the director in Moscow so without even knowing it when I came into a leadership position in high school pardon me I was deemed to be one of his guys and that was the start of kind of trying to negotiate doing a professional job building team being part of a leadership team and then suddenly realizing there was all this deep toxicity deep mistrust and sort of two sides if you like within the school and I don't know if I mentioned this to you before Sharon when we spoke but I remember really clearly there was a really super professional who worked then in elementary who happened to be a friend of a friend and I went down there one day just in my first couple of weeks to say look I'm really open to collaboration and some of the work I do relates directly with some of the work that takes place in primary school and elementary school really love to collaborate at some point once I get my feet under the table and this person who's a super professional who I didn't know just a friend of a friend looked at me and she said good luck with that I stay on my ship down here in elementary because I've tried that and that ship is sinking and I can remember thinking at the time that's a really strange thing for somebody who I can see is a highly competent professional to somebody who's new trying to kind of build bridges and say let's try and do some collaboration so there was some red flags pretty quickly pretty early and obviously with the benefit of hindsight now you can look back on that comment what did she mean what was going on in that school where the word collaboration was just it's just scoffed at what was actually happening within the infrastructure of that school because I think that is the root and the root cause to why you left what did it look like and feel like when you were in that building yeah I think the the first thing that swings to mind is lack of trust you guys as ex-educators current educators will probably have the term suitcase curriculum and it became really clearly really quickly that people were just getting on with the job behind the doors and did not want to put their head up over the parapet for any reason so again to give you an anecdote I can remember organizing a meeting that would happen once monthly that the person in my role would lead and I said to the the team in the office an amazing group of Polish ladies would it be okay to order some croissants and some coffee for this morning meeting it's now going to take place once a month and they organized that with the catering staff and you know that was just at the start of the meeting I said to the teachers coming in basically the equivalent of a level teachers we've got a meeting to go today really appreciate you taking the time coming before school a few croissants and some coffee and some juice you know we'll have 10 minutes to socialize before we begin the meeting and honestly you would have thought that I'd bought each of them a diamond ring it was utter celebration and this is wonderful this is amazing so you know that was it you know that's a positive story but it made me realize straight away oh goodness me there isn't there isn't this feeling of team people are just keeping their heads down doing what they're doing inevitably as is the case I think in every school there are highly competent professionals who just want to get on with their stuff because they don't want to have to deal with whatever toxicity appears so that was again another red flag and it just felt really difficult to have open and honest conversations because there was such a lack of trust and I guess if you and I and Sarah now Sharon just spoke about you know what our views might be around how we conduct meetings we would be able to have a back and forth and an open and we go okay if we if we're going to be having meetings every three weeks here's how we'll do it and we find agreement and move on and that was almost impossible right from the start how how is that how is it impossible were you met with resistance were you gaslit into thinking you were asking for something weird how did how does a block like that actually take place yeah really quickly um but all of those things so in leadership meetings with uh the high school principal the assistant principal myself and counsellors which how is is how it was structured in that type of school really quickly there was deep resistance to any thoughts or suggestions about you know what might you do in this situation or um you know this is what's been going on in this school for a couple of years I'm coming in I've got you eyes don't want to push an agenda too hard but what do we think about x or y and it was immediately met with particularly from the high school principal quite aggressive language and and um how do I say you know being put down in meetings in a very unprofessional way you know almost aggressively that kind of alpha suddenly I'm going to shout because I'm in control and you're not going to be able to have your voice and it was apparent to me quite quickly that the counsellors particularly in that meeting that leadership meeting which happened once a week one of them had a really loud voice which was respected and the other one said nothing despite probably having the most experience in the room so there was all of that kind of to use your phrase gaslighting uh intimidation but it it was really subtle so what I found myself doing really regularly was going home and going is this me am I the new guy trying to push an agenda or in your heart you know you've got 25 years experience in your heart you know you want collaboration in your heart you know you've got the students right at the center of the thinking but in your head you're going am I is it me what's going on and because it doesn't just happen once with absolute clarity and the penny drops it might have potentially happened three times before you'd not clocked on and then it just starts with an odd wobble and it comes that self-doubt you're almost like the boy in the emperor's new clothes everybody else around seems to be thinking this is okay you've talked about a form of aggression in the room and and being spoken to and will come on to how you were spoken to ultimately but you're right if you are not in a safe space within a leadership position and normally the people who are trying to pigeonhole you and stop you collaborating they're normally coming from a position of fear because they are the biggest imposters in the room and anybody is presenting themselves with experience and ideas are hugely feared by those but you're in a meeting you're coming up with well what you know to be or believe to be good ideas improvements did you actually achieve anything in your time there did you get anything passed did you change anything or were you blocked at every single turn no i wasn't blocked every single turn you know and and i think it's it's such a good question again because i think it's really important for us to maintain you know a rationale that a rationale that you know it wasn't all bad one of the most positive things that happened was i i nudged really hard in what we all might describe as our honeymoon period in a new role and to develop a group that was a middle leadership team for the specific area of curriculum that that my role led and that team included four people and it was amazing that we got those four people on on the team it could have been a different four people i could give you i could give you a whole other podcast about that as an amazing lady who should have been fundamental in a role like that and unfortunately she left the school because her husband faced similar toxic issues it's a whole other story but anyway we did get a good team in place and i think what was so apparent with that team for ultimately what was a short period of time there was a there was a trust built because of you know how i know how to lead and which allowed that autonomy in the context of collective leadership flattened leadership but with decision making being taken as required and in terms of leading two or three parts of the curriculum for international baccalaureate diploma students that team functioned pretty well and and i think all the people that were in it would agree that for for a small amount of time because once we got the team in place that was something that the four of us were in charge of day to day week to week and there was trust trust was built it took a while but two or three people in that team said quite early on we actually have a voice here or you you're not saying things just for the sake of it actually when you're saying tell me what you think or your responsibility now is to take that idea and run with it that that's what's happening so there was definitely some positives around work and leadership and of course always in schools the biggest positive is always around students and how students behave and interact despite toxicity that might be going on behind closed doors with adults i don't want to preempt because i don't know what you and sharon have talked about on the pre-record but i'm getting a sense that you building teams that are functioning and functional is potentially a bugbear to leaders who who are not happy about that am i am i preempting or am i off on a no sir i think you're on the money i'd be i'd be interested to hear what you both think because my experience of highly functioning teams are often like this conversation now the question you've just asked has been really careful really considered you you tread carefully there because you weren't quite sure you didn't have all the information and guess what you get a big answer from me and in my experience of dysfunctional leadership and i might be showing my own prejudice here often there are highly egotistical men who refuse to even ask the sort of question that you've just done that's where i'm coming from is i think when you talk about leadership and effective leadership people listen for what's not being said and i'd i'd anticipated it but didn't want to didn't want to preempt it and and i'm i think i'm kind of hearing without you saying it certain traits in that person who is the the head teacher of the school if if that's the correct phrase that kind of grandiosity self-importance the the arrogance interpersonal exploitation in terms of behavior that some things are allowed and some things are not and i've kind of read between the lines of a of a type of personality that that would block but would also not block which then causes you to to gaslight yourself well okay this is okay so it must be me when that situation isn't all right with them and i think that causes a massive internal conflict when you're trying to lead from a place of what am i looking for when you're trying to lead ethically and in a supportive way for your team but then you've got something sat around you that causes you to question why you're doing what you're doing and whether you're doing it right yeah 100 i think that was endemic in that school i spoke about the the you know the female leader down in elementary and who really really you know i i maintain this to this day is a very very highly competent professional and that response is is a symptom of that i also worked with two people who are close friends from previous employment epitomized that kind of you know stepping out because they realized that certain things couldn't certain things couldn't and i think you know sharon mentioned earlier on about the toxic sandwich it really wasn't just the high school principal for whom a lot of that was what i experienced day to day it was the assistant principal who'd come in if you like to to be simplistic and that had been appointed to all intents and purposes by the high school principal and i'd been appointed to all in all intents and purposes by the director so there was all that kind of not kind of all that nonsense there was the dysfunctional relationship between the director and the high school principal and all of these relationships in terms of the dysfunction were all male leaders that are in their positions for their ego above what we're actually doing which is helping young people be ready for the next steps in life whether it's you know from elementary school to middle school or whether it's from school to university or whether it's from school to a gap year this big big problem of ego when you know we're not running governments or you know multinational companies we're helping young people just get a wee bit better every day you know wow and the behavior in and of itself is if i'm writing thinking you you'd sort of wedged yourself in a bit haven't you family wise because you'd got two years to do with your boy so your son came into play here so to a certain extent you you were trapped not that i'm putting that on your kid kind of thing but you'd made a decision for your child's education you had to do two years in this school and from somebody who'd been quite free spirited let's move here i don't want to be trapped i can we can do whatever we want love we can go wherever we want to go in that particular school you had to stay for a certain amount of time do you think that impacted on your mental health yeah i really think it did sharon and and obviously now i'm speaking with the benefit of hindsight and you know my my youngest son was really excited to move to warsaw and then of course once you move and you're starting your last two years of high school as we all know that's that's the toughest time for any kid to change school and it and it went really well for for my youngest lad he was lucky he's a decent sportsman the first sports season in that school was the football season he's a good player he got really quickly and that really helped and he loved being in a you know a fairly medium-sized european city with lots of freedom in terms of public transport and all that kind of thing so he absolutely thrived there's no doubt about that and at the same time because uh my wife and i decided that she was happy to step out of teaching she was volunteering for that time you know i was um the sole breadwinner and we knew that you know owen had to finish school in those two years it's like a levels and was looking to he was looking to go to university so yeah with the benefit of hindsight some of these bad things that were happening i think if they'd happened 20 years ago i would have just gone the next bus and got a job somewhere else right but suddenly you can't because your your child has got to finish school you won't mind uh he needed a bit of a some would say a gentle nudge some would say a kick up the backside to do the studying that he needed to do he did really well and he's now happily ensconced at university in the haig but yeah i think with the benefit of hindsight it was a massive pressure because ironically the day that i had what what we can all describe now in terms of you know medical what the medical profession says is that when i had a panic attack that prevented me from going to school it was actually ironically the day that my wife was driving my son off to university in in the haig in holland that was the day where i couldn't go to school i got halfway i got off my bike and did the old kind of pe teacher thing of you'll be all right take a deep breath you can speak to hr you've got to have this meeting it's not very nice but you've dealt with difficult things before talked myself through it got myself back on my bike and it was about 200 meters from school and the inner voice was what are you doing what are you doing you need to get off your bike you turn around you need to go and call a doctor and you need to then call the hr department of the school and i'm lucky to say i did that's what i did hello listeners we just want to thank matt gibbons from ls25 web design for sponsoring this episode if you're setting up a new business and feeling unsure about how to get a website sorted matt can help he's been building professional affordable websites for over a decade and he's great at working with people who need a bit of extra support and getting things off the ground ls25 web design also offers hosting aftercare and ongoing support everything you need to get your business online and running smoothly listeners of the pit pony podcast can get 10 off initial web design fees just mention the podcast when you get in touch all of the details are in the show notes but just before that there's there's just a slight prelude to what brought on that panic attack you have got into the groove with somebody in that school where they were speaking to you in a way where you refer to it as they had lost their mind when they were speaking to you they were insanely angry with you yes okay so you'd been having interactions you'd gone in for meetings because 10 days even 10 days before a new term you'd been in a room with somebody who i hope i'm not over egging the pudding i've lost his mind and was shouting at you who he works with talk us through that kind of interaction with somebody in the workplace who is to use your words insanely angry yeah no that that's there and so a few days before that we were we were back at the school you know before students come back getting ready for the new year etc etc and one of the things i had to do is have one of those meetings again with the croissants and the coffee with the the faculty that deliver the curriculum to the final two years of school and that particular meeting prior to students coming back was about the previous year's results and so on and so forth and in that meeting i was pretty calm you know i'm i've got some skills and i was pretty confident and competent about negotiating some difficult discussions with the faculty about where results were where they weren't how covid might have impacted how it might not what parents might say etc and at the end of that meeting which in my perception had gone you know as would be expected with colleagues and there was some questions and some concerns and some positives i sort of made a light comment to say you know in the bottom line is every year is different so we know we have to look at the facts and figures and the statistics but ultimately averages are what they say they're averages and i made quite a light comments very end of the meeting i said you know because on average most amputees have only got less than two legs you know point being we have to take statistics you know carefully with a pinch of salt sometimes and otherwise not and that's the first time in that particular academic year that the high school principal got extremely angry and started shouting and saying parents have been talking to me and of course the results matter because this is what i have to face every day and you guys don't understand it because i have to cover for you all and that was in front of everybody and of course directly that what i just led so i felt pretty insecure and shaky about that but because in that particular meeting there's a level of confidence and competence on my part didn't bother me too much but that was at the start of the new year we'd had a really good uh whole school leadership kind of retreat two or three days before that and i was feeling ready for the new year that happened then i came home and i was saying to my wife oh this is another one of those moments where i'm questioning things moved forwards and then two or three days after that the high school principal called me into his office with a question around where we sounds really trivial now and please tell me if i'm going off the point but where we would uh calendar the mock exams that year and mock exams come very similar to a levels you know this time of year basically and i said what i've thought and what i'd planned you always have to do it around different holidays because holidays fall different in international schools for all sorts of reasons around religious beliefs country holidays etc and again he yeah he got very very shouty just in a meeting just with me and him in regards to the fact that i wasn't listening to teachers and i never took on board anything and this is what had to happen and etc etc and i simply said look i'm happy to compromise in any way we can make the exams work in whatever days we need the mock exams what i do have to say professionally and in the interest of the students is if we do them here there'll be less time for valuable feedback from teachers to students before the real exams that was my only professional point at that at that stage i've just got to highlight a professional concern about that short gap and he did i'll quote you shannon he lost his mind and he started shouting and i wish now with the benefit of hindsight i had been a little bit more forthright at the time i thought i'm going to stay professional i'm going to take a deep breath and i'm going to say you know with all due respect we can't conduct meetings like this if you continue to speak with me like this i'm going to remove myself from the meeting which is what happened get in mind was one door and then there was the office management staff outside that thought they could all hear that's what i did i removed myself from my meet from the meeting in that way with the benefit of hindsight i wished i'd said you can't speak to people like this the way you're speaking to people me in this case now is totally unprofessional it's totally unacceptable i'm out see you later you can deal with it you can speak to whoever you want i'm gone i wish there'd been a little bit more um forthright and for want of a better term in the conversation aggressive because i think that would have created a bit of shock because instead what i did was remove myself professionally as the last time i spoke to that human being face to face i went and reported that incident to my line my upper line manager the assistant director of the school and that person said take a breath go and have a cup of coffee do you need anything and then i actually went back to my office and carried on my day's work because both of us assumed that the high school principal at some point would come and say look sorry that meeting didn't go well let's reconvene never saw him again i ended my day having done my day's work and it was the next day that the panic attack happened on the way to work i've never spoken to that person since i'm sad to say i'm really sad to say it's i told you this was an unusual one because it is very in my experience it might not be very rare for our listeners but to actually hear of a line manager or someone anyone within a school raising their voice shouting losing their temper with people i speak to loads of people paul they were being bullied but it's not in that way it's not in that aggressive violent way of doing there's no there's absolutely no point in trying to relive what you should and shouldn't have done you were in massive shock because you get to a certain age where people don't speak to people like that we don't live in a world where somebody's shouting in your face oh you you will have frozen not you i think you handled yourself really really well but that is unusual behavior it's what do you think sarah it's not something we know and i'm writing lots of things down and i think we'll probably talk about it in the epilogue because i suspect sharon you know where i'm going with this that principle is exhibiting or exhibited to you some very specific traits that suggest a specific personality disorder and i wrote down what you said that they said that you don't listen that you don't you don't come to the middle ground you don't do this well actually that was their description of their behavior they weren't listening they weren't compromising they weren't doing i think for me there's a difference professionally you can have crosswords with someone it happens it absolutely happens but i think where you came to is absolutely right you have crosswords with and i'll tell you for nothing sharon and i have had crosswords yeah at different times and then an hour later one will ring the other and go i am so sorry that was me that was on me my head's up my bum or whatever it was but there will be a coming back together fresh out sorted you you articulated it you were expecting them to come back and go i am so sorry i was out of order and they didn't and and it wasn't the first time as a result of that it became the last time yeah and i think it's really important for me to say here um that that person experienced those sorts of conversations with the director and for whatever reasons nobody within that world called them both out and said guys what you doing you know and and that's really tough because i i think it became really apparent to me that people's heads were in the sand and i'll give you one more anecdote if i'm in it's it's nothing to do with me it's to do with young people a lot of us were involved in coaching sports teams there and as i said my wife had stepped out of teaching but um due to an absolutely brilliant athletics director head of sport at that school and she was persuaded to come in three times a week in the winter term to um to coach to coach sport she's also an xpe teacher and at the start of that season all the kids are in there they're all really excited and the sports director or athletics director as it's called in american international schools sort of introduce all the new coaches and get everybody up up for the new season and so my wife was there you know she hadn't she didn't know this school she'd heard a couple of stories this is early in my time i'd heard a couple of stories about some of the dysfunction and at the end of the little introduction that evening the high school principal came in to just sort of get students up and then we were all going out to the fields i was coaching football at the time my wife was coaching volleyball everyone was going to go off and do their first coaching session and he lost his mind again because one football player 18 year old lad probably been doing a level biology of the equivalent strolled in a wee bit late sat down at the back on the floor by the way it's in a gym floor said hello to his mate and this principal started screaming about where was everybody's commitment and what was going on i don't need to articulate the length of that angry exchange but my wife had never been in school environment heard a few anecdotes from me and when that finished myself and the guy i was going to be coaching football with just walked over to kate he knew her and she just said oh my god she you know again very experienced professional with many years just in that school environment just for that evening that was her phrase and she said how can this person be anywhere near young people she had no background at all and me and the other football coach he wasn't in the school every day was an outside coach we sort of just laughed and we sort of said welcome to our world but that was just about young people going out to do volleyball practice or football practice you know so i think you're right sir that again points to these alpha males with what you would term as you know personality disorders or dysfunctions or their own mental health issues that are not addressed was it were there loads of complaints about him was he constantly being pulled up in front of the equivalent of the governors were parents kicking off well i think what happened was again because i'm taught i mean this is really deep toxic toxic culture and there was this huge sort of to be crude cockfight between the director and the high school principal and so people tended to side or keep their heads down and get on their job quietly because ultimately and i want to make this clear a lot of very good professionals in that institution doing really good work for young people which is always the case right but the the there was complaints on both sides about director about high school principal about assistant principals involvement in this or that and it was just a real mess and i guess i still haven't unpicked half of it because it became really clear to me once my son left school and all the things that happened to me i was just like i'm out and i then i had hope it might be mediation and you know reconciliation and i lost faith in that pretty quickly as well so ultimately handed in my resignation because i was like i'm not prepared at my age to go through a process that i don't have any trust in well it it does beg a belief that that kind of behavior is going on anywhere but let alone within a school it's crackers it's i don't know if i don't know i don't know if it's because it's abroad i don't know if it's because people didn't want to rock the boat because they'd found themselves in this position they're at the other side of the world parents are frightened that the kids will lose places at the school because you never put your head above the parapet if somebody's got something over you that you need really whether it's your job or you your kid's position but i don't think that would happen in the uk i could be wrong sarah but i would be i don't know what are your thoughts on that i don't know i i've been in situations in schools where for exactly what you've just articulated that even though you know that something's going on and even though there's a body of you as adults who know that something's not right you don't want to whistle blow you don't want to you don't want to stick your head above it because actually what happens if that backfires and i and i but you do see it over here with parents parents gather together and i've seen head teachers ousted and and things like that but i don't know i genuinely don't know i told you it was an unusual one i told you it was it was bullying but not typical of of the bullying behavior that we have but what i think is also interesting is i've got this picture of you practically at the school gate on your bike knowing that something is very very wrong and in a short period of time i don't know you at all paul we've got great mutual friends but i suspect you'd have periods in your life where your mental health wasn't as robust as it could have been and because we all do life's life but you're there at the age of 50 odd on a bike having a panic attack because of the way you're being spoken to in a state of abject trauma how did that impact you you get out you go did that lead to the need for therapy at that point yeah it did um i think i spoke a few minutes ago about um you know the inner voice was saying what are you doing you need to call a doctor i knew that somewhere deep inside myself and call hr the hr department the school were outstanding and so called the doctor and told hr and they said yeah whatever you need and i went i got a doctor's appointment that day actually as it turned out and you know because luckily in those sorts of schools we were all on you know because you're overseas you're all on you know overseas private health care etc etc and i went to see the doctor and i really was in a bit of a state by then because it was kind of that release of okay i haven't gone in okay i've got a doctor's appointment and i'm now with the doctor and and she sort of did what doctors do and said yeah you're definitely um in trauma you're definitely having physical manifestations of what we'd describe as you know high high anxiety panic attack and she said so what i'm going to do is i'm going to sign you off work for two weeks and in that two weeks i'll i'll put you in touch with a range of options for therapy and she said sometimes when people get in touch with the first person it's not quite right feel free if that's not right to get in touch with us again but this first person i think might be the one but don't feel guilty at all if it's not and i in my state i laugh now but i was going but that's not enough that's i had my heads in my hand like that's not enough and she said well what is enough then and i said i need time i need time and she said that's what we're buying here you've got two weeks off you'll see a therapist it's not the right therapist we'll get another one and then that therapist will determine from their professional expertise what you need um and so i ended up being signed off for six months um and then the way the world went i ended up not you know my my notice was handed in at the end of that time but the therapist was amazing absolutely amazing and you know i think men sometimes are again a little bit more reticent to engage in that kind of thing quite early in that process the therapist said to me i think you're probably okay you don't need me anymore but i'm quite happy to engage if you're happy to engage and so i continued to engage as long as i was in poland and it was amazing it was an amazing learning experience and of course i needed it in in the first instance and it really helped and helped clarify all sorts of things not just around that tough two years but you know things over time that had perhaps built up you know wow i just i'm glad i'm glad it worked itself through to that did anything happen within the school or do people just leave smoothed over leave smoothed over was there any big changes that you heard of afterwards where people had changed their ways or there was a detoxification of the culture or did you just shut the door on it and go i don't want to know anything about that place no i mean there's some people i deeply care about apart from anything else some really close friends and my son but there's also colleagues there that i care about and um all sorts of things have happened really some by default some by the fact that i'd been i quote my therapist i had been a whistleblower and i remember the therapist saying to me you know being a whistleblower whether intentional or not is a lonely job because of course people want to you know protect their livelihoods and their families etc and so on especially in a dysfunctional society or a dysfunctional community so the director has reached retirement age which is a blessing in disguise and i heard recently that the high school principal has been released from duty and as often as the case in those sorts of situations then the wagons are in a circle i don't necessarily need to know the details but at the same time it's really interesting that even people that i love and care about there will say nothing now i guess that's to do with non-disclosure agreements and all the rest of it but i do know that that person has been released and i think it's a blessing in disguise for him as well because as you alluded to Sarah he's got some issues and some mental health concerns that need need addressing and i hope he does somebody said to me you know a few months ago how do you feel about the people that bullied you and i said regarding that particular person i i honestly without being patronizing at all feel pity and compassion and for a couple of other people there particularly the assistant principal for the sake of being diplomatic on this this podcast and i don't feel compassion or pity for that person because they're one of these people that continue to leverage their ego and their narcissism for their own position and so that person is not somebody i've got any care or pity or respect for but for the high school principal himself if i saw him i'd say how you doing i hope you're getting the help you need as i did and it helped me you know i don't harbor any bitterness towards him because i think it is an issue of of mental health maybe narcissism wow that's very very benevolent of you and i think that probably is a result of your therapy is a result of the healing because anger is toxic only to the vessel in which it is held isn't it at the end of the day so in order to to reach a position of forgiveness help helps the the healing what are your thoughts sarah told you it was a firecracker of a story i i've not actually written that many notes down because because as it's become customary now i'm so in so kind of tied up in the story that it's so unusual because because so much of what happens in schools in terms of our experience with group members is covert it's subtle it's um it's that thing where we've said it to a few people that that unless you write it all down and actually build up the big picture of all of the lots of little things it feels like you're being an idiot whereas this was so overt it my brain can't quite process how overt it was if you think about it i don't know if you've ever listened or our listeners have listened to this episode yet we've got a great walkthrough by a guy called johnny millard and johnny millard was a an nqt an early careers teacher and he went through some of the most i don't know covert forms of bullying you will ever find in a school so we're listening to you paul who's been screamed at shouted at johnny was brought to his knees by the way a book was put on a table and a chuckle so let me just work that one through for you he presented something to his head of history and the book was like slammed on the table oh johnny ha ha and and that's what was crippling johnny eye rolling people stopping talking when he went into a room a changing tone and atmosphere on a corridor he couldn't put his finger on it he had a head teacher who'd say things like johnny it's like juggling jelly with you wrapped up in what looks like compassion and humor and kindness this was breaking this fella to the point you can't get out of bed like you it could that's what we're used to well when people come to us and say i've been bullied but even when i've written it all down how can i go with this because it's about how it makes you feel in the main what you've got to do is you've got to go in and argue well it might have only been a chuckle it might have only been the book going down it might have been an eye roll but put all this together and it's making me ill you you went through really violent bullying being screamed at shouted at nobody wants to be shouted at you feel sick to your stomach and shaking when it's happened because we haven't lived in that not even raised our kids like that yeah and i think what's really interesting sharon is i think the covert stuff is is really more powerful so the way our chat has gone today i'm talking about you know some of the big the big overt things that happen and i can really empathize with that colleague of yours because all of those covert things were happening i now realize all the way through all the way through and you know yeah yeah all of those things books on tables i mean that resonated because one of the first meetings i led you know i again it was that kind of oh this is being given to me as a new a new leader i asked if i could provide 10 copies of a book called the culture code to leadership team for a meeting i was leading culture code by coil is the the author and it's just about enhancing positive culture in in workplace and i was granted the the monies to buy those books and hand them out and so that was a you know it's kind of like a gift at the start of the year and that we dip into it in meetings the second time that i referred to that after the handing out the gifting of those there was those chuckles and those were all we're going to the culture code now are we and it and yeah all of that so that's one example of that code and it drains you it makes you feel stupid it embarrasses you it shames you and it is that passive aggressive laughing at you rolling of the eye knocking you on the shoulder what are you like with these bloody newfangled ideas you're bringing in here we go again and that you're right that is as soul destroying as being in an office being shouted at it's not okay and actually where employment law is concerned sarah it's illegal isn't it it's tantamount to harassment yeah tantamount to harassment and it's the sort of thing that interestingly i think it's i'm going to say something really contentious and i'm probably going to get shot down somewhere ironically on the place that i'm going to talk about i think it's easier to prove this sort of thing on social media with screenshots of comments here and there than it is when it's in a work environment and it's happening through the the body language the gestures the the the words that are said in the moment the the law now that actually the police will act if it's in written form very quickly but it's very difficult in a cult in a work environment face to face to prove that that's happening and you talk yourself out of it you said it yourself is it me i'm i'm questioning is it me when your wife went in and she went oh my god what you and the other coach did was justify minimize and just go well welcome to our world okay that's it you've normalized it now yes that professional that you talked about who you held in high esteem you had other people this was happening to it's when you get a team of people who want to whistle blow that's probably where the power cupboard but they're all frightened and isolated the woman you really you really respected now leave me out of it mate i am getting on with what i'm getting on with i'm not interested and that's one of the real successes of a bully and it's to isolate people yeah so so you're out you get out of wow you have your therapy do you relocate paul to bring us to where you are today have you relocated have you gone back home where are we at what did you do yeah so um it's a good question because it definitely fast forwarded some plans my wife and i had to um come and live in the uk again um you know we were like when it came to the point when i i was like no i'm out i'm resigning i'm not even going to see the end of the year i can't go back don't trust mediation etc and so we we were very lucky that we've got a house in oxfordshire where which we bought when i got that job in saint claire's in oxford which i talked about our second international job and we've had amazing tenants and luckily the way it worked with what their lives were doing and we didn't you know we didn't feel like we were booting them out in the street it sort of worked out with their next move we were able to give some heads up so we moved back here and that's where you know i mentioned at the start of the the show that the uh the nhs thing came up i saw some possible work in the town that we were moving back to and with the nhs in the call center and thought well you know we don't really know what we're going to be doing yet but this might be interesting to certainly pay the bills keep the wool from the door and so i applied for the training of that and was successful and the rest is history of it's been an absolutely superb organization to work for talk about um regrowing professional confidence you know just the overall the way that the training took place the way the trainees were welcomed the way we were guided in terms of what the options were what the work would be what the challenges would be etc etc etc really best practice of not just you know education in terms of training but how it you know a highly functioning team should operate and so as a result i've stayed there and and now you know as i mentioned at the top of the show i'm doing some coaching there i'm doing some leadership there and i'm really invested now in you know hopefully bringing some transferable skills to that world and my wife you know by luck more than judgment as well she applied for a few jobs in the same kind of way just saying well we're back here let's get some work and she got a different job with the nhs and doing some admin leadership around community hospitals and has since got a promotion to head up a non-clinical admin team and in an outpatients department which is just opened up in the north of oxfordshire so um again transferable skills sounds like a cliche you don't know know until you do it i'm sure you guys can appreciate this but then you go oh my goodness you know people in their 30s are looking up to me and i've only just started to them they're asking me questions and i'm able to provide advice without ego you know literally i've got something to offer and yeah the confidence builds and suddenly you're you're uh you're realizing to quote you guys that you know there is life after teaching 100 hello loyal listeners we're not going to go full-on bob geldof during live aid but if you could give us some of your money even pennies to help us fund the amazing pit pony podcast the link is in the episode notes below it's called buy us a coffee and we really do appreciate your contributions thank you we always come to this when we get to this section in the podcast that's when people blossom and bloom that body language changes that semantic field shifts because you've remained the same but it's the environment that changes it is the environment that brings out the very best in the individual the culture the structure that needs to succeed and allowing the people around you to be the very very best versions of themselves so with that in mind with that in mind what's your sliding doors moment then what are you going to bring to us that has happened paul since you relocated but left teaching tell us a moment in your life that you know wouldn't have happened had you have remained where you were again really really tough question really good question and you know i'll probably give you 100 answers i think you know the first response is honestly and i hope it doesn't sound cliche again the gift of time i think we're sort of blinded sometimes in teaching that one of the big parks is 13 weeks a year holiday which is a big park but we sort of seem to think that there isn't time then in other other professions and i've definitely had the gift of time and i think therefore the biggest sliding doors moment was having a time for for long-term friends that maybe we hadn't seen and spent time with over you know the 25 30 years overseas and the most important one at the moment is a very very close friend who interestingly is also an ex teacher an ex international teacher and he currently lives down in st agnes in cornwall and his life took a to mine and he was faced with a life-changing cancer about four or five years ago and long story short he had to have a life-changing operation or face palliative care and because of his family circumstances and his resilience and drive he chose the life-changing operation which has thankfully and touch everything touch wood has left him cancer free and it's also left him disabled um but the sliding doors moment was um a day last summer which wouldn't have happened if i'd still been overseas and still been teaching um it wasn't in summer holidays to speak in school terms and we went kayaking um off the coast of st agnes in cornwall uh he and i his disability is there it becomes a little bit less when you're in water and because obviously your legs matter less when you're floating in the water and so on and we kayaked and we snorkeled and yeah he squealed with joy when we went to a couple of caves that he knew about he's an ex lifeboat guy as well our nli lifeboat volunteer and uh yeah to to spend that day with tom and you can hear the emotion sorry please don't apologize so that wouldn't have happened um without all this oh yeah it was a very special day in the coast of cornwall and hopefully there'll be many more well i wish you many many more because to spend time with you paul has been remarkable it really really has you have spoke with such eloquence and compassion and you've been incredibly measured you've talked through very difficult times and what we're realizing more and more myself and sarah is people are coming on talking about periods of their life that that they'd healed from or they put to one side and they're reliving it and i should imagine in between us speaking and you recording this today you've had certain things come back to you and things have come back up so thank you for coming and sharing that with us today it isn't easy yeah not at all and you know i really appreciate it because i think what's also really important to say is um in regards to you know to quote you the healing process there really isn't any bitterness anymore and one of the things my therapist said was you know it's okay to be angry the emotion of anger isn't in itself negative and sometimes we say that she said you know where you know where to put your anger and i quote her again and she was speaking in her second language which i always you know hold my hands up she also said righteous anger is okay sometimes 100 oh i like that so i think we will leave with that beautiful thought righteous anger is okay sometimes all thank you for your time um it has been an absolute inspiration to sit and listen to you and be hot on behalf of myself sarah and all of our listeners thank you very much thank you both as well thanks paul well sarah what i loved about that we we started teaching at about the same time i think he was the year below me at school and i genuinely would like to think that had i have known him he would have remained one of the good guys in my life somebody who would have been a great friend very wise probably somebody i would have turned to as a colleague and a friend throughout my life for advice he was sage he was measured there's just something about him that you just you were in the presence of a genuinely good guy and i always feel like this when we do an epilogue and we've listened to somebody's experience and then their thrival what a loss to the profession what an absolute loss to the profession what a great leader and head teacher he would have been had that have been his path and it it saddened me in in some ways to hear what he went through last two years because i really felt a sense of injustice the way he was spoken to the way he was treated and i and i think i think he fell victim of the narcissistic traits within teaching and within within leadership positions i don't want to i don't want to generalize that much he fell victim to the narcissistic traits of those people that he was around because i don't think it is it's not all leaders it's not but he was i listening to him and listening to what he was describing and knowing some of the work that that that i've done and and reading on that he was subject to a very narcissistic leader and there were two of them and there were two camps and he said very early on one of the red flags that hit that that came up pretty quickly pretty early was that because he i think worked under the director in a different in a different context he was deemed to be one of his guys there was a them and us straight away at the start and that them and us was being driven by two very narcissistic people it was it was really difficult to listen to in parts and it was really difficult to to listen to the impact that it had on him as a person i mean it's always great that he's out the other side and he's now thriving and he's in that world but i've not heard that type of type of bullying really we deal with the the more typical types of bullying and it was a very very difficult lesson for me it really was it was a fascinating insight into teaching abroad because up until that last school sarah he loved it when we were doing our pre-record the stories he was telling me the places he's seen felt in relationship with his wife they've got a shared vision over 25 years of marriage no doubt where they knew what they wanted for their kids their lifestyle i thought what he said about traveling and education and education being it was brilliant he'd had a clear clear vision of how he wanted to live his life and he just he had a really difficult couple of years but it's not defined him and also it didn't define him at the time because if you listened to what he talked about he still managed to build teams with trust he still managed to achieve what he wanted to achieve to an extent in terms of getting it right for kids in spite of everything that was going on around him he still was able to maintain his own path and i think there was there was a moment and obviously listeners can't see it but there was a moment where i can't remember what question i asked him but i think i talked about the covert nature of a lot of the bullying that that goes on in schools that we talk to people about i think he had a moment of kind of light bulb moment with that of oh actually yeah now you're saying that there was stuff that went on yeah so to be so to be sat with covert stuff and the overt the overt's actually easier to deal with in a lot of respects because you can see it you can deal with it it's done but yeah it struck me that his clarity about what he wanted to achieve and who he was really really shone through with with that that he still managed to build a team that were able to deliver despite the nonsense that was going on around him and towards him like when he came in it was it was to me it was a couple of things and i thought yeah he's right he wanted croissant some coffee he wanted to buy them all a book this was about building people valuing people seeing people developing them to actually come in with a resource about culture or i can't remember what the book was he said he gave the the the culture code by daniel coyle i mean could he have dropped more of a ball where they're in is in a toxic culture and he's trying to detoxify that culture it must have frightened them to death when he was doing that kind of stuff and the greatest leaders that i've worked under i've always done that they've referenced other people's material they guided you in the right direction of self-development those who i haven't worked i've worked under who haven't done that they know best they do it from them they don't rely on other on other people and other experts and and they certainly don't want to educate the people around them he felt trapped he felt he was just stuck in this horrible horrible world and to think of him because his world you know he was going to be a professional footballer really outdoors the fact he was cycling to school so i've got this image of him he's cycling through the streets of walsall he's on his bike and he cannot physically a physically fit man cannot get into a building because he can't breathe his body is breaking down this is a man who probably does his macros and his nutrients and his steps in a day he probably does 10 000 steps a day just thinking about what exercise he's going to be doing and it physically impacted him to the point where he could not get on a bike and ride a bike it was a heartbreaking one it really was for me and i think when he got upset telling his sliding door story we spoke to him afterwards and he apologized and he said i'm i'm so sorry and i said and we immediately went please don't because male voices who are talking about these experiences who are showing their emotions is what we need we need if we if he's in a world where it's normalized that you shout and scream at people then we want to be in a world where it's normal for men to talk about their feelings and show emotion and get upset because the more you surround yourself with that with that culture and that understanding it will be the legacy of our pit pony hopefully that men start to benefit from what's going on because that happened it was all male players wasn't it in his world a toxic alpha male sandwich yeah and it was interesting that was the language he used of two alphas and i i'm trying to think of my own circumstances over the years and i i cannot think of a situation where i've worked within teams where there's been two alpha males there's there's always been i mean it is the term isn't it there's always been a beta to balance the the alpha and i can't imagine what that would be like because i i'm i'm sure that would create in me a sense of how on earth do you make your voice heard and i don't necessarily mean but how do you how do you how do you make yourself heard in a team where where you've got two people who are displaying that kind of because alpha behavior and i know it's not just men i know this i know there's women as well it's that arrogance and and grandiosity of of my way or the highway and that doesn't get you anywhere ultimately it might for a period of time but it doesn't ultimately because your team then stops speaking up they stop offering opinions they stop making suggestions and and your team ends up weaker unless i'm rich for it you always want and you've talked about it in the past you always want that kind of leader within a school or any environment that is going to publicly back you but is not frightened of taking you in a room and privately going what the actual that's okay it is okay and strong leadership it is making you feel i've got i've totally got your back here but i am also confident enough to challenge you when things are not going the way it should be going but i it's like you said i cannot imagine how that must have been people had different coping mechanisms within that school a woman he went to who he massively respected just went count me out i have built a world for myself here where i know what i'm doing i have safe i'm totally safe it's not ideal it's not where i want to be but i am coping and it was it was a very very sad sad episode for me that it really did um just because of who he was as a person more than anything such a genuinely decent person who now is as they always do thriving in the right environment able to bring his skill set and another organization the nhs is benefiting from those leadership skills so i i did i thought it was a another that's the similar episodes there but they're all unique in their own ways aren't they yeah yeah they are can i lighten the mood though oh yes please go on at the start when you said about going to warsaw i misheard you and i thought you said walsall as in the west midland and and i was trying to think how is that an international school i genuinely sat there for the first five minutes going i don't know where this is going on and of course he's naming all these places to me that he's been to and i haven't got a clue you know i can't even tell you geographically where the cotswolds is in england let alone where half of these places were but but a fascinating guy with a fascinating life and a fascinating story as well so it's a it's a it's one i think i would listen to a couple of times to really start to pick out and educate myself on some of the things that went on there so cracking cracking episode again we uh we tend to record these on a sunday afternoon so as it gets to the end of the epilogue i always start thinking all things sunday dinner um what are you having to eat one of the hello fresh recipes i don't know which one yet oh probably some really big stacked burger possibly i'm just doing a simple big chicken nice and controversially aunt bessie's roast roast a yorkshire puddings we do your puddings with every single roast my mum i can hear in the back it should only be served with beef but we will bang some aunt bessie's on irrespective of the meat okay listen go on to me a roast dinner is about the trimmings and i have no this is going to go down a rabbit hole i have no issue with there being pigs in blankets stuffing yorkshire pudding the mustard and the mint sauce if necessary bring it oh bring it all am i right in thinking you put something on facebook the other night about a yorkshire pudding stuffed with yes with what was the cream clotted cream and jam and and somebody somebody said that that yorkshire pudding with jam is actually quite an old thing i've yet to go down that rabbit hole but yes anyway listeners yeah rambling rambling done wood right okay fantastic and um let's bring this to a close my friend and i'll see you on the other side ta-ra thank you so much for staying with us throughout another great episode and on behalf of myself sarah dunwood and all at the production team we appreciate your continued support if you wish to contact me directly for a support session or a clarity call for your next steps please find my link in the comments below see you soon