The Secure Start Podcast Episode 8: Lynne Peyton

Welcome to the Secure Start Podcast. I am Colby Pearce, and joining me for this episode is a vastly experienced leader and consultant to top teams in the child safeguarding and community services sectors.

 My guest is Lynne Peyton.

 Bio

Born and educated in Belfast Northern Ireland, Lynne’s spirit for adventure was fostered in the Officers’ Training Corps where she participated in a  wide range of adventure training and leadership activities, including a transfer to the Virginia National Guard during a temporary social work position in a family crisis centre in Richmond in 1980. She also gained her Private Pilot license during that time.

A qualified Social Worker, Lynne is a former senior manager in Health and Social Services, having held both operational and strategic management responsibilities for mental health and services for children and families. She was the director of a not-for-profit children’s charity for a number of years. She is also a master practitioner in NLP and neuro strategies, which she believes are essential to building rapport and great communication. 

Since establishing her consultancy almost 20 years ago, Lynne has been passionate about helping organisations working with vulnerable children to get better results. Her CORE Leadership Programme (Communication, Optimisation; Relationships, Evaluation) simultaneously targets executive teams as well as managers at all levels in organisations to bring about changes in attitude, culture, confidence, performance and outcomes.  

In the words of one CEO,  ‘Lynne has an amazing ability tounlock individual potential and bring out the best in people and inorganisations’.

Key areas include: 

• Strategic development 
• Building effective top teams 
• Coaching and mentoring senior managers
• Mediation
• Empowering  front line team leaders

Lynne has always had an entrepreneurial spirit and has been investing in real estate since the 1990s, with a portfolio of residential and commercial properties in UK and USA. She bought her first house in an auction in Belfast – so she could get practical experience, as you can only learn so much from theory.

She had significant losses in the 2008 recession and she and her husband had to learn some hard lessons and develop new smarter investment strategies, and learn to read the market and anticipate trends.

She has recently invested in the housing market in Sydney and is partnering with her son and his colleagues to build a Family Urgent Care Centre in Perth, Australia.

Lynne is passionate about growing and contributing and is fortunate that her husband Rodney, a retired trauma surgeon and expert in medical malpractice, feels the same way.  After completing every course offered by Tony Robbins, they were both Senior Leaders with the organisation for 7 years, supporting participants at Robbins’ events in the UK and USA several times each year. They then participated in Success Resources International, where they were  introduced to JT Foxx, who has been called ‘the world’s number one wealth and business coach’. Being mentored by JT has vastly increased their business acumen and exposed them to a fantastic group of likeminded entrepreneurs who are committed to adding value, educating new business owners and giving back.

At 72,  Lynne believes life is for living and giving and she has no plans to retire anytime soon.

On her podcast,  ‘Success is Never Accidental’  she interviews highly successful people across countries and industries, to share their insights and themes for success. 

 Lynne's website : https://www.lynnepeyton.com/

Disclaimer

Information reported by gues

Transcript

Welcome to the Secure Start podcast. And I have loved being a social worker. I manage services all over North and West Belfast, which was a real political hotspot at that time.

There's no such thing as life-work balance. There's days when you have to be just working all the time and then somebody gets sick and your family demand your attention. What we have to do is life-work integration.

I like a whole agency approach because culture flows downhill. And very often programmes, workforce development programmes are run by middle managers. Middle managers can't coach and empower and work with and be the confidant for more senior managers.

So what I bring is the independence and the years and years of not just experience, but expertise in working with senior people. And one of the things I found out recently, Colby, just because I've been probing it a wee bit more, not everybody has somebody like that in their corner. And I think it's critical that we do.

Hi, welcome to the Secure Start podcast. I'm Colby Pearce and joining me for this episode is an experienced leader and consultant in the social care sector. Before I introduce my guests, I'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands I'm coming from, the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains and the continuing connection that the Kaurna people feel and all Aboriginal people feel to land, waters, culture and community.

I'd also like to pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging. My guest this episode is Lynne Payton. Lynne is a former senior manager in health and social services, having held both operational and strategic management responsibilities for mental health and services for children and families during the 1970s to 1990s, a time of political unrest in Northern Ireland's history.

Since establishing her business consultancy almost 20 years ago, Lynne has had major successes in helping organisations and senior managers to get better results. Her core leadership programme simultaneously targets the top team as well as managers at all levels in organisations to bring about changes in attitude, culture, confidence, performance and outcomes. In the words of one CEO, Lynne has an amazing ability to unlock individual potential and bring out the best in people and in organisations.

For more than 30 years, she and her husband have invested in property, initially throughout the UK, then expanding to commercial properties in the USA and more recently in Australia. Nowadays, business has to be integrated with spending time with their three sons and their families in Perth, Australia, Charlotte, North Carolina and Cork, Ireland. Fortunately, they love travelling and growing as part of JT Fox's Global Entrepreneurs Network.

Welcome, Lynne. Hello, Colby. It is so good to see you again.

And you. And a little bit about that in a moment. I wanted to just bring out how we met.

But was there anything that you thought needed to be added to that little summary of you? There's probably loads, I guess. Oh my goodness, my goodness. It's like I'm always trying to think, Colby, what's going to be the next chapter? So maybe the next time we talk, there'll be something else.

Okay, no worries. And I was, I'm pleased to have you on the podcast because we've known each other for a number of years. And I think it was only been my first podcast interviewee that I, who was a practitioner from here in Adelaide, where I am, who I've known.

So all my other podcasts, I've been kind of meeting people. The first time, for the first time. But we met in 2015 in Castle Blaney.

In Castle Blaney, I remember it well. Yeah. And just, yeah, we were, I was there just talking about my therapeutic model of care.

And I remember you arriving. And I remember we had a person, a foster carer with lived experience of the rollout of the programme. I think that might've been in 2016, actually, who you found very impressive at the time.

And of course, just to add to that, I was there for an entirely different reason. But I'm so curious about everything. I'm thinking, who is this guy? Came from Australia.

What's he got to say? So I popped in and I was blown away by your insights into how best to work, not just with traumatised children, but how to enable and empower the people who work with them. And so often we think of that in terms of the social worker and the psychologist. But really, what really intrigued me was your hands-on advice for the hands-on people.

And that foster carer, as you say, lived experience of the difference, the techniques that you had taught were making in the life for her and for that child who was so insecure. And I remember at the time, it was attachment to food. It was clinging behaviour to her.

And you had helped her to see that's just what he needs in this moment. You know, Colby, I still have goosebumps thinking about that because that was such a powerful intervention between you and that foster carer. Yeah, well, thank you.

You're very kind. And you'd probably be pleased to know that they're still rolling out my programme in the Toosler Fostering Service in Donegal. They're not as the primary therapeutic model of care, I think for the last year or so.

They've gone back to... They've had a change in management and it's gone back to circle of security. So for a long time, I had a very strong support there with the... Now, what was the position that they called her? Principal social worker. The principal social worker.

Yeah, yeah. There's been many, many changes and they're restructuring again. I would just say that we can all learn from different models.

The important thing is that we constantly ensure that our practice is influenced by tried and tested models. And I think it's so important that you are persistent because we know that model works. So, you know, people change, but we have to just keep trying to encourage them to do more of what works.

And we'll talk about it later, but one of the elements of the core programme is evaluating, constantly evaluating the impact of everything we do and doing more of what works. And sometimes with changes in leadership and changes in ideas, we experiment again instead of staying grounded in the things that work. Well, I do hope that it still continues to be rolled out and I'm really looking forward to being able to return to Ireland sooner rather than later.

It's been a lot... I haven't been back since 2018 with the advent of world events over in the intervening period. But yeah, hopefully, fingers crossed, we'll be back there again in the next year or two. But look, enough about me and what I'm doing or not doing at the moment.

I really wanted to just start off by asking you what led you into this career supporting leaders and teams to deliver best outcomes for their clients, including in the social care sector and who and what perhaps were your major influences in that? I'm going to start a wee bit further back because I never wanted to be a social worker. I always loved style and glamour and I wanted to be a French and German language teacher and I could see myself in Paris as an assistant. But my first job away from home was in a holiday camp in England and there were people in the kitchen who always had to get a job that had accommodation with it.

And of course, the summer season was easy but then they didn't often know where they were going to go next. And I thought, oh my goodness, how does anybody live with that level of insecurity about not having a home? And then there were people who were just out of Forstall, which was the juvenile offenders centre. And there were people who were on the game and in the early days, it was alcohol was the issue because drugs weren't really an issue at that stage.

And I thought, I have had such a sheltered life. There's a whole world out of here that I know nothing about. And it's so interesting.

So it was really back down to that curiosity. So I got the boat back from England because nobody flew in those days and I changed my course from languages to social science and psychology and the rest is history. I've just been fascinated by people's stories ever since and I have loved being a social worker and progressing through all of the levels to the point where in, I think one of my most exciting jobs, although I loved working in Belfast and running services, sometimes in very difficult times, I really enjoyed the strategic management role where you were focused on working with all sorts of partner agencies to better understand needs, to look at where services currently were and to see which ones were having the greatest impact so that we could map those and then look and see where were the gaps and how could we fill that gaps.

And from my days working in Belfast, I knew we could only fill those gaps in partnership with local communities. And interesting, the organisation in the Republic of Ireland that I do most work with is now reshaping towards an integrated care model where it's small localised teams that do sort of from front door right through to children in care and work more closely with families and communities. So in 40 years, it's gone back to where I started.

The leadership bit came about because there were several reasons why I felt I wanted to start my own consultancy in 2001. And I'll talk about the influences for that later. But I did a lot of work at that time chairing multi-agency reviews when things had gone horribly wrong.

Either children died or were very, very badly injured. And the goal was for all of the involved agencies to get the learning from that. I got frustrated because in every single review and we need to strengthen the environment within which people are doing their job.

Because staff retention was an issue that put more pressure on the people left behind. Balls got dropped, but people forgot that when they were writing about what went wrong. So for years and years and years, I tried to encourage that strengthening of leadership, empowerment, staff wellbeing.

And I kind of felt while it did get some attention, it was always the things at the front door they wanted to fix first and the practice issues and the inter-agency issues. So I just decided, well, I'll write my own leadership program and I've been delivering that for many, many years in all kinds of contexts. And the beauty of it is I make it bespoke to whatever organisation or team I'm working with at that particular time.

Yeah. Wow. And it's been quite the career really, hasn't it? And I remember part of your response there, you mentioned managing services during some very particularly difficult times in Norton Island.

And am I right in thinking that you, I once heard you talk about managing a residential care home that was on the Falls Road? Oh, I managed services all over North and West Belfast, which was a real political hotspot at that time. I mean, it was such a challenging time because kids were taking and driving away cars. It was something called joyriding at the time.

And there would be dreadful accidents. And so the IRA tried to control that with a process called kneecapping. And of course, the kids that we were most worried about were inevitably the kids that were tied up with all the antisocial behaviour.

And kids would turn up by appointment sometimes and they would give them their Valium and tell them what to tell the hospital. So it was dreadful. And there were times when we had to negotiate for the safety and wellbeing of some of the kids in care or children in the community that we were worried about.

So there were areas we couldn't go into some days. And then you add to that all the other problems of the Friday night money lenders and some of the kind of other influences. So it was a tough time.

What was amazing was the staff were just incredible. We prioritised safety. We were sensible about what we did and how we did it.

And we made a commitment to uphold good practice, to uphold good behaviours, to respect everybody we were dealing with. But we got real creative sometimes, Colby, about how we got things done. It was interesting times.

And I would still pay tribute to the amazing staff who worked through those incredibly challenging conditions. And I think the reason why I bring it up is because those kinds of adversities really do have the potential to bring out the very best in people and to bring out the creative solutions that are part of people's growth. And again, working with communities was absolutely essential.

And we were fortunate because every time a government minister went walkabout, we had a dose of proposals ready to pitch to them. And we did get lots of funding to try creative things. We also got funding which brought communities together across the divide and led a legacy for some brilliant work that continues today.

We also did some in the next role, in the strategic development role, we did a lot of great cross-border work. And again, we were creative about pitching for European peace funds, which allowed us to partner with organisations in Denmark and Italy because their policies were, I think, much more family friendly than ours. So it exposed us to learning about how people did it in different cultures and countries.

Yeah. Fantastic. And were there particular people or particular theories or ways of working that were influential in your development through your career? I think it's so important that we remind supervisors and especially your first ever supervisor, just how important they are.

And I look back with fondness and still thankfulness and gratitude. I had the most amazing early team leaders and supervisors. And it was for one of them, it was her knowledge was everything that you had to know whether it was the benefits that somebody was entitled to or the nature of their condition.

You had to research and have the knowledge that equipped you to work with people. And then I had another team leader who, his calm, quiet way of getting everything done was so inspiring. And someone else who, no matter how frustrated you were, she had this capacity to bring it down a level and always ask great questions.

And one of those is, well, OK, so what should we do? It's the simple question, isn't it? That sort of cut through the drama and the crisis. So I think early influencers are so, so important. And then I had some people I worked with that I wasn't so aligned with.

And that could be very uncomfortable. And I'm quite outspoken. So I would say what I feel.

And then that didn't always work so well. And I'm fascinated these days with people like Gabe Karp, who talks about conflict resolution. And I'm saying that conflict is inevitable.

If you have good, strong minded people with good ideas, the chances of them butting heads is really quite good. And that's back to what you were talking about earlier. Somebody thinks a different model may be more relevant than secure start.

So that's good and it's healthy. What we have to do then is learn to have healthy conversations about it. And I wasn't sure at some of those times I was mature enough to have those healthy conversations.

And I think I've got a lot better at it over the last maybe 20 years. Yeah. And I think it highlights that we're always continuously developing.

We're continuously growing. And it doesn't really serve too much of a purpose to reflect back and think, oh, I wish I knew that this or that. We're not at that point in time.

And when you were talking about your first supervisor, it put me in mind of my own first supervisors. The first one, particularly, shout out to Professor Tracey Wade, if she's listening. And I think what they instilled in me, so first Tracey and thereafter, fellow by the name of Ken Kobayashi, was confidence.

They had confidence in me until I had confidence in myself. And I thought, you know, and I think that was, it's been a tremendous legacy from them, as it sounds like yours have been as well. And that's the number one benefit that people feed back to me for the core leadership programme, that it has helped them immensely with improving their confidence.

And as you and I know, confidence comes because we're more competent. So, you know, we need the skills and the knowledge and the experience in order to be competent. But it also comes from the ability to risk assess and make decisions.

So the choices we make and the impact of that helps improve our confidence as well. So I think confidence and competence go so well together. And I totally agree with you.

We must never stop growing and developing and learning. And my influencers for the leadership part were I did my first firewalk at the Unleash the Power Within event with Tony Robbins in Geneva, I think in 1999. It was either 1999 or 2000.

Everybody still talks about it because there were so many people in the room and Tony has people jump up and down with excitement. And the engineers, structural engineers told us we had to stop jumping or the ceiling was going to come down into the room below. So we used to do the jumping in a Mexican wave across the room, but because he still wanted to keep the thing.

But the thing that Tony always, he taught so many wonderful things. The one that is really relevant, I think, is the six human needs. And the four essential housekeeping needs are certainty.

And we talked about that earlier. People need a basic level of certainty and security in order to thrive. So certainty, uncertainty, we need a bit of variety.

That's why when people stay in the same job for 30 years without growing and learning and developing, they get tired and switch off and become dissatisfied. And that can dissatisfy the rest of the team because we all either affect or affect the people that or infect the people that we work with. And then he talks about love and connection.

And that's so, so important as well. So the human needs. But he also talks in about that's not enough because the spiritual needs are for growth and contribution.

And that's why, you know, you and I and others like us, we get so much back from the work we do because we feel we're making a contribution. And then because how we contribute has to change over context and time. That's where the growth element comes in as well.

We have to stay relevant, Colby. Well, that's part of the reason why I've been doing these podcasts because I get to talk to all these leaders in the field who and I and learn and I reflect. I think one of the big things I think is that we should never stop thinking about what we're doing.

And the podcast gives me the opportunity to hear and understand and reflect on and integrate what I'm hearing in my own work. And Lynn, you've mentioned a number of times you've referred to CORE, which is your leadership model. I wonder if you might just share a little bit more information about it.

I'm still so passionate about it, Colby, because it works. So I thought, what are the core elements of leadership? And when you think about it, they really come down to the C's for communication. As leaders, we have to be effective communicators.

Now, that doesn't mean about talking. It's good that when we talk that we can convey what we want people to hear. But the most important bit about communication is listening.

And to be a great listener, you have to be a great question asker. So it's all about learning the art of being present when you're talking to someone else, really listening to what it is that they're saying. What are the issues? Why are they upset? Why are they taking this position? And that's why I think curiosity comes into it as well.

But I could only have one C. If I could have a second, it would have been curiosity. So it's been effective communicator. And then I think that's everything that's involved in communications.

It's using your facial expressions, your body language, not just your words. And one of the things I say to people nowadays is when you're on a Zoom call, you have to remember there's no hiding place. It's not like the long end of a table where you can roll your eyes.

It's something the boss said. When you're on the Zoom screen, everybody can see that eye roll. So you have to look and you have to continue to be interested.

And you have to continue to be present when you're on Zoom calls. So communication is critical. The O is for optimization.

Whenever people talk about resources, they always talk about budgets and staff. And we've got to definitely optimize those. So that means that you have to have good financial scrutiny so that you minimize waste.

You've got to be creative with your budgets as well. You don't want money sitting there doing nothing. So you have to make sure it's invested.

And the other thing we have to optimize is our staff. But also it starts with us. So as leaders, you have to optimize your mindset.

You have to convey that sense of confidence and self-belief and belief in the people that you're working with. But also belief in the plan and belief in the potential outcomes. And we've got to optimize our time.

If there's one thing I teach over and over and over again, it's time management and energy management. So some people might put in their time. But if you don't bring the energy and the enthusiasm, you're not optimizing who you are.

So I say be yourself, be the best version of yourself and optimize everything that is you. And time management, for everybody listening, the number one thing you can do to improve your time management is do a stop doing list. What are all the things you're currently doing that are just a waste of time? And stop doing them.

The Rs for relationships, it's like you and I just talked about, the reason for the podcast is to meet and learn from other people who have expertise in certain areas. Relationships are fundamental to leadership, whether it's the relationships with our top team, if we're a senior manager, the relationships with all the organizations that are essential to us doing business, the relationships within our family, because we want to make sure we get that life work integration. There's no such thing as life work balance.

There's days when you have to be just working all the time and then somebody gets sick and your family demand your attention. What we have to do is life work integration. So when a project's due in, OK, we might have to work extra hours to get it done or if a client needs us or a child is not safe.

And then we have to learn to take the time out, to rest, recuperate, whatever later on. So optimizing our time is so important, but the relationships in there are what restore us and keep us going. And that includes the debriefing when people come back from what has been a difficult situation.

So relationships have to be worked at all the time. And the E is for evaluation. We have to measure everything we do.

I was coaching somebody for a senior position yesterday and I was going evidence means that you provide the data. When I started, it was this. When I finished, it was this.

And the change was down to me because. So you've got to be able to evaluate. But at its most basic, it's evaluating what you're doing that works and do more of it.

And what is it that you're doing that's having no impact and seriously question why you're still doing it. So in a nutshell, the value of it is I like a whole agency approach because culture flows downhill. So there's no point in me fixing, empowering, sorting the kind of words that sometimes get used front line managers if the culture doesn't change and the culture starts with the CEO and the top team.

And one of my joys at the moment is coaching CEOs and not for profit organizations. I'm really, really enjoying the impact that that's happened on the organizations. Yeah, it's a consistent message, really, that any change process, any endeavor, therapeutic model implementation or other really starts at the top.

I must admit, I've always been a bit of a supporter of the bottom up approach as well, probably because largely in many of my endeavors, I've never had the interaction with and support from the very top. But, you know, I try to influence practice through things like this podcast, through YouTube videos, through my writing, through books, that kind of embryonic development of people's knowledge and capacity. And your books are really influential because they're like a toolkit.

And I think that's what people need. They need something that is grounded in theory, but gives them the tools and the resources. Yeah, a lot of contributions in this space very much focus on what you need to know.

I guess I've always tried to ensure that I've got plenty of information in there about what you need to do. When you do it. And you've been incredibly generous on your website as well.

Over the years, I've always told people to go to your website because there's lots of free stuff on there that are brilliant tools and assessment kits and things. So thank you for the contribution you've made as regards to those tools over all these years. Yeah, well, thank you again.

And I think I'm going a bit red. But the important thing is that there are good outcomes for children and young people. And I was speaking to a very interesting guest a little while ago, a week or so ago about human capital.

And we were talking about what is lost when we don't intervene successfully with our young people. Intergenerational trauma persists if we are able to turn a life around. We're turning a life around for that person but also their children and grandchildren potentially.

So yeah, but it's not all plain sailing trying to roll this stuff out. And I do wonder even with rolling out a leadership model are there any particular challenges that you've faced in doing that? And if so, how have you overcome them? Oh, the usual ones. We've no money.

We've got our own. So you just have to help people work through that. So if people are saying we haven't got a budget right now I very often say, well, let me do a taster session so you can see what the benefits would be.

It's also good to ask them, well, if you had money what would be your priorities? I think another thing is how many social workers did you lose last year? Because the fallout, it's like a funnel where the policy is to create even more jobs but they're still dripping out the bottom and the attrition rate can be really quite significant. So it is around looking at, well, how many more social workers can you afford to lose? Or as one person told me recently nobody will take the senior positions because it's just not worth it. So how are you going to run the service without senior people? I can help you to empower your senior people so that they are more effective, so staff feel valued, so they stay.

And of course, happy staff, confident staff are much better practitioners. So everything that I do and everything you do the end result is so that young people and their families get a better service. But empowered, confident staff, competent staff always provide a better service than people who are exhausted or overwhelmed or not sure they want to be here anymore.

So that's one. The other one is where we've got our own leadership programme and I go, that's great. And I'm so glad that so many organisations are focusing on that.

The challenge is that they don't have anything like the level of experience I have. And very often programmes, workforce development programmes are run by middle managers. And middle managers can't coach and empower and work with and be the confident for more senior managers.

So what I bring is the independence and the years and years of not just experience but expertise in working with senior people. And so I think that's it. You have to keep at it because people will take the path of least resistance and it is important that you and I and people like us keep actually ensuring that we do.

And the other thing I do like you, the podcast I've just finished 50 episodes of success is never accidental. And I've interviewed not just people from our sector but people from all over the globe and from all different sectors. And the theme has been, what is it that has made you successful? What have you learned about being successful? What would you pass on to other people? What happened when you hit a bump in the road? How much is mindset an issue? What would you tell your younger self? And it's amazing because there's a formula for success and there are themes.

Now, everybody might do it their own way but you're not gonna get there if you don't work hard, if you're not persistent, if you're not passionate, if you're not clear about why you're doing what you're doing. In other words, like Simon Sinek, if you're not living your purpose. And so often the work I do actually helps people see that they're square peg in a round hole.

And if we can get them into something that's more aligned with their values and their passion, they do so much better. And that's a really important thing about leadership. Not everybody who takes a leadership job is equipped to be a great leader.

A lot of leadership skills can be learned. In fact, most of them. And if you're not naturally a good communicator and if you aren't naturally passionate about the role that you have, it's not going to work.

So sometimes it's helping people pivot and move out of leadership roles into maybe a more specialist practitioner role. But it's so important that we're in the right roles for us because happiness of work is essential. Yeah, there's so much in that there, Lynn.

The first thing I want to pick up is the real importance of what you said about people being aware of the work that they can do that is consistent with their own values. And because values burn out or values fatigue, it goes by different names now, but it is the experience of working in an endeavour that runs counter to or is not consistent with your values. And child protection is a really obvious area for that clash to occur because most people who get involved in child protection get involved because they want to help families.

They want to help children, they want to help families. But particularly here in the jurisdiction I live in, child safety is the paramount consideration. And so rather than necessarily being a place to support and help families, our child protection authorities intervene to ensure the safety of our children.

And look, there's arguments both sides of the ledger on whether it should be safety or best interests is a paramount consideration. But in any event, what we end up with is if we have too many people in our workforce who are there to help families, that's what's consistent with their values, then child protection is really not necessarily, or at least as it is in this jurisdiction, is not really gonna be their best place to work, I think. And that's particularly the case when older children are in very high risk circumstances.

And I think sometimes we have to ask, if we remove them from home, what have we got for them that is actually any safer or better? And often that answer is very nebulous. Well, I don't know that the question is often asked very much. So the role of the agency is to intervene to ensure safety.

What comes after that is a secondary consideration. But I guess what you're referring to is that a child's journey through care can be quite a vexed one. And it is something that we need to keep, I think, in the forefront of our thinking at all times.

Because I often say the most healing relationship for our children is the repair of the one with their birth family, birth parents in particular. That's the most healing relationship. I think that is so true.

And that's why one of the things I work on constantly is empowerment. Because if we empower staff to be more confident in their practice, they're willing to do more to empower families to get better at their parenting or their family relationships. So empowerment really, really is the key.

And I think that all starts with leadership. So you have your toolkit in your books. My toolkit, I haven't written the book yet, to my shame.

I should have had it written long ago. But on my website, just lynnpaton.com, there is a thing called the Leadership Library, which is absolutely packed with toolkits for leaders on anything that is likely to come up. And people will say to me years later, I still do that perceptual positions exercise or I'm still using the seven steps to change.

Or, oh, do you remember the day you told me about the single issue meeting? Well, that changed my entire practice. So there's lots and lots of stuff on there that will help because for leadership, we need a toolkit as well. I'll briefly tell you about the single issue meeting.

How many times have you been in a supervision session? And as the supervisor, there's this one thing that you need to raise. And what happens? Well, you do all your case management reviews and you get to the end and you think, I'll bring that up next time. And what happens is the elephant in the room just gets carried forward.

So I say you never deal with those things in supervision. You have a single issue meeting. You have it in a territory that is private, but that you control.

So you can leave when you're done saying as the supervisor or the leader what you need to say. And you make it really, really short. And you practice it because how you communicate it is very important.

Gabe Karp talks about doing it in your shopping list voice so that there's no emotion attached to it. And then you give the person a minute or two to respond or you can just say to them, so have a think about that and we can talk about it again. But you do the thing that needs to be said.

You set it up to say it, well, you control the environment as the supervisor and it's short. The meeting is short but sweet and then you can pick it up again later. But you plant the seed.

You say what needs to be said. You don't leave it to supervision. And then I think the other thing is perceptual positions.

It's a beautiful exercise where you rant for a minute as you and then you completely shake it all off and you become the other person. So I always say stand like they would stand and they might say, well, they would sit. Okay, well then sit and breathe like they would breathe.

And now rant as that other person. The insights that come out when people truly accept that the other person has a completely different view on the world. Sometimes that's enough.

Sometimes you need a higher authority. So I'll say, who's the wisest person you know? And they might say their granny or for some people it might be God. And I kept, okay, so could they look down at these two people and please tell me what's going on here? And then from that position, it's amazing what comes out sometimes that has healed fractured relationships.

It has helped people to stay in organisations that they didn't think they would stay in. Because remember, most people leave because of the relationship with their immediate boss. When that relationship isn't safe, when that relationship is fractured.

I mean, I had somebody who's boss didn't speak to them for six months. How do you sacrifice somebody that you're not even speaking to? So perceptual positions can unlock a lot. So those kinds of tools are all on the website.

And if anybody wants to know more, they can reach out to me by email as well. Well, that's very generous of you too, Lynn. And you said something about five minutes ago that gave me chills.

And that was, you said, you were talking about if a worker is empowered, then they have an improved capacity to empower their client. In child protection, we're wanting to be empowering and encouraging parents to really take the bull by the horn, so to speak. Yeah, and what was going through my mind is the disempowered worker.

And how does the disempowered worker work with the disempowered? Well, we know the answer to that, don't we? Sadly. You've mentioned a number of times about leadership mentoring, leadership supervision. I mean, what would you say to senior leaders and managers about the importance of supervision? Supervision is absolutely mandated in social work practice.

And it is a governance responsibility at all levels to ensure not just that it takes place, but that good quality supervision takes place. So that does require, I mean, everybody has a supervision policy. Everybody audits supervision.

But does anything change? I mean, it just is such a necessary requirement. It has to be quality from the point of view of case management. And generally, that's the area that it's strongest in.

But supervision is also about personal development plans. It's about staff growth. And hugely, it's important about staff wellbeing.

You know only too well the vicarious trauma that's experienced by staff in these fields. It's got to include wellbeing. It's got to include appropriate debriefing.

It's got to assess whether there is accumulated harm over time and over incidents and working with a particular family. It's got to check in about just general wellbeing. Thankfully, most organisations are putting wellbeing on the agenda.

But it's our job as a supervisor to check in, are you sleeping? You seem to be eating a lot of junk food. What is going on? How are the kids? We're all carrying multi-responsibilities. You might have a parent who's elderly that you're looking after.

You've got kids. And so many children nowadays in the families of the workers with particular issues that need maybe some special attention. We have to treat and care for and look after the wellbeing of all of our staff.

And as leaders, we've got to lead by example. I can't ask somebody else if they're eating properly, sleeping well, drinking water if I'm not doing it myself. We have to model the behaviour that we want to see.

And it's so critical in our world that people take care of themselves. And we take care of others as leaders, but not just that, because you said about bottom-up approaches earlier on. Everybody on the team needs to take care of everybody else on the team.

You need accountability bodies. You need people to speak up. If I think you're looking a bit ragged, I need to be able to say, Colby, what's going on? You just look tired or whatever.

And it's our responsibility to take care of each other. And if we do, then we are providing a safe containing space for people to allow themselves to be a little bit vulnerable and share that the work and life do have an impact on us. And in doing so, being open to support or open to time away, a break, whatever we need to ensure that when we are at work and servicing the needs of our children and families, that we're optimal.

As you said earlier, that we're at our best. How do you find in group supervision? Can you create that space there? People respond best. People are, in my experience, people are more likely to trust, to participate, to open up, to reflect in circumstances where they feel like their experience is honoured, is known, is understood and is honoured.

Absolutely. I think that is so true. And when I do team building, I did a bit recently in Australia at an academic institution.

And I always have the same model. I ask people to introduce themselves and I ask them, what gifts do they bring to the team? And inevitably, when people do that, they get feedback on it. But I ask them to stand up, tell me what their role is, not their job description, but their role and why they're in the work.

What gifts do they bring the team? And then I ask them, what do you need from your colleagues? And it's amazing what comes out in that simple exercise. Again, it has to be well facilitated. I find when people try to do it themselves, they get stuck in their own head about what they think should be going on.

Whereas as the facilitator, you and I have no investment other than to make this a great experience and for them all to get to know each other better. And then I ask everybody in the room, what did they learn about the person? Not what they heard. What did they learn? And that lets them decide they've got amazing energy or you could tell that they're really committed.

So all that other stuff. Now people just glow when their colleagues give them all that amazing feedback. It's not rocket science, but team building needs to be managed by someone who's good at team building.

Group supervision needs to be managed by somebody who's talented in providing that group supervision. Yeah, for me, I think it's, I talk to people every day. I'm primarily a psychotherapist working with children.

And I think one of the things that you alluded to there is the benefit of looking beyond the behaviour and looking at what's really going on and acknowledging what's really going on for a person. I think that the question is, not so much what you observe about a person, but what you've learnt about a person, which means you have to take an open and reflective stance. And one of my mantras, I think in supervision is about it being an opportunity to stop and think about what you're doing.

Think about the work that you're doing, think about your clients. And it's one of those core aspects of trauma-informed work and trauma-informed organisations that there is a focus on looking beyond the behaviour and trying to decipher the meaning of that behaviour. And something else that you said that resonates with me and is also very much aligned with an interview I did earlier with a gentleman by the name of Simon Benjamin.

And his podcast may come out before or after yours, but they'll be adjacent to each other. And he talked about leadership, supervision being important because it models it, but also because if it's good quality supervision to leadership, then leadership will see the value in supervision. And if they see the value in it, then they're more likely to promulgate it and support it right down through the organisation, which I thought was also very similar to what you were saying.

And I think we all need coaches so I still have three coaches and sometimes I pick up coaches. So I had challenges, I had an organisation with challenges that needed mediation. So I actually got a wee bit of coaching on mediation just to refresh my skills.

And I think that's important. I would not dive into something that I thought, gosh, it's a while since I've done that. I need to brush up.

But I have my Tony Robbins coach from it's now going on 23 years. I have quarterly sessions with her. She's a very dear friend.

I have another very dear friend who I met through Success Resources America. And she and I have an arrangement where we coach each other for an hour each month. Now it flows, but we do our updates and we identify our challenges in advance.

That's the other thing with all my coaching. It's all you must prepare for it. We have to agree the actions you have to keep going or I won't continue to coach you.

So I do accountability coaching. But with her, it's amazing for about seven years. Now we've had this monthly session.

Now, again, these are two people I could, my life could depend on them. I could, if I needed anything, I would reach out. And one of the things I find out recently, Colby, just because I've been probing it a wee bit more.

Not everybody has somebody like that in their corner. And I think it's critical that we do. So again, it would be an exhortation to everybody listening.

Have you got somebody who, regardless of what it is, you can talk to them, you can be yourself, you can be vulnerable and they will listen and not necessarily advise, but ask you the questions that allow you to work through it yourself. And sometimes become, shift from a coach to a mentor where maybe their advice is the right thing to do. So I would encourage everybody to ensure that they have somebody in their corner.

And I think the other thing is I have a business coach, which is a very different approach to the approach in this. But I love business. I think everybody should run their organization like a business.

And I have other businesses outside of this is my passion. This has been my life's work, but I love business as well. So I've got a business coach and that's entirely different kind of relationship than the relationship with with my growth and leadership coaches.

So much I could pick up on and talk more with you about Lynn. Thank you very much for your generosity and the grace in accepting the invitation to appear on this fledgling podcast of mine. What I usually, you've kind of asked me a question already, but I'll give you another another go.

I always because when I when I'm working with children, I if I if I find myself having for whatever reason, ask them a series of questions. I'll always say to them, well, that was a lot of questions for me, wasn't it? How about you ask me a question? So it's kind of like a return serve for them. And the most common question they ask me is how old I am.

And I was answering in months. I was then someone worked that out. So then I was answering in dog and cat years.

I mean, before that, I always used to say what my grandmother said, which is I'm as old as my tongue and a little bit older than my teeth. That that served me for about 20 years. But then it was months.

Then it was dog and cat years. But I heard a really good one yesterday, which was from a client. And she told me how old she is in adult years.

So adult years start when you've left your teenage years. So I don't know if I'll see how that goes. I'm not sure.

It's very flattering, of course, because it's if I say how old I am in adult years, it's much lower than my actual age. But anyway, age is literally just a thought, you know, I mean, you're literally I like the bit you're literally only as old as you feel. I was 72 last week and I feel about 50 and I have loads more to do.

And a numerical age is not going to stop me. I did a zip line, my first ever zip line when I was in Perth a couple of weeks ago. And I've got a new daughter in law now.

So I said to her, you need to think of an adventure for us to go on. So here's my question for you. You've done a number of these podcasts now.

What has been the biggest learning, Colby, from the people that you've interviewed so far? From the podcast process? From the process. I think the important, I would say that you can be in an area of endeavour where you are highly experienced and you always wish you know more than you know. And the longer you stay in an area of endeavour, you're probably more appreciative of what you don't know.

But I think what has stood out for me is I've talked to people in the related endeavour that I'm in and I have learnt and been stimulated in so many ways by each of the different perspectives when I've done that. So I think not only should we be speaking with our mentors, our supervisors and so on, but I think we should speak to a diverse range, a number of people in our area of endeavour. And the other thing that I've learnt is that all the people that I've spoken to have been really keen to have a chat with me.

So, you know, people are keen to speak and share ideas. And so there is a, so don't, I would encourage people to not be backwards in coming forwards and reaching out to people and making connections and communicating. I think, yeah, and that's, and of course, for me, the conversation is, you know, the foundation of all the work that I do.

And a bit like what you were saying before, I've absolutely loved doing podcasts because of the conversation, because of the interaction. It's really floated my boat. And you feel so energised about in doing that.

So there you go. There's a range of things. I thought you were asking me initially what, who'd said the most profound thing.

And I didn't, I think it's a bit early for me to choose favourites just yet. Oh, no, no, no. I just think we learned something.

As you said, it's so stimulating. We learned something from everybody. And I think what it's done for me, in addition to all the things you've said, which, with which I concur, it just gives you hope, even more hope.

You know, we're hopeful people anyway. But you just realise there's so many amazing people in the world doing amazing things. And as you say, who are generous with time and spirit and willing to share.

And every single person I speak to, I learn something profound from them, whether it's their take on a particular thing or just their attitude to life or something that a challenge that they've overcome. It is such a privilege to both host a podcast and to be a guest on a podcast. Well, thank you for being a guest.

And perhaps this might, if you're willing, will be the first of perhaps a number. Maybe backwards and forwards, because I have appeared on your podcast as well. You have, you were amazing.

It got very good reviews and I continue to be a huge fan, Colby. So keep up the good work. Thank you.