From Sheffield Steel To Saving Lives

He lands in Saudi Arabia the night the Gulf War begins, gets offered a bonus to stay, and says yes because unemployment back home is the other option. That single decision opens a career that moves from A&E nursing to pre-hospital emergency care, refugee camps, and later a very different fight inside healthcare leadership. I’m Vicky Ross, and I’ve wanted to share Andrew’s story for years because his resilience is not a slogan, it’s lived experience.

We talk through what trauma work really looks like: rapid interventions with limited resources, the weight of responsibility, and how your nervous system learns to survive. Andrew shares how a Greater Manchester Fire Service initiative trained trauma technicians so firefighters could deliver immediate trauma care when seconds mattered, plus the resistance that came from politics and role boundaries. If you care about emergency medicine, defibrillators, first response, and how systems change, you’ll hear the behind-the-scenes reality.

Then we go deeper into the internal aftermath: PTSD symptoms, guilt, and a form of detachment that protects you in war zones and resus bays but can block closeness at home. Andrew also opens up about toxic management, bullying, and 13 months of gardening leave, including the moment he decides he will not be pushed out. We finish with practical tools for staying steady, from mindfulness and the power of now to yoga, breath, gratitude, and the simple question: “Right now, do I have a problem?”

If this conversation helps, subscribe, share it with someone who needs a lift, and leave us a review so more people can find Rise Up Stories.

Transcript

Welcome And Meet Andrew

SPEAKER_01 0:03

Hi, and welcome back to Rise Up Stories. My name is Vicky Ross. I'm your host. And today, being a story, I have brought a long-standing friend by the name of Andrew. Now, Andrew, I met around about 2010. He participated in one of my NLP business practitioners. And what started as a seven-day him being a student, and I was his trainer, turned to be a very, very rewarding friendship. And there's a lot of things about Andrew that I absolutely admire. He's got the most amazing resilience, and I've learned a lot more about his resilience through doing the story. But he's got amazing resilience. He's got such integrity and beautiful life philosophy that it was one of those things that when I started my Rise Up Stories, I thought I've got to bring Andrew in and share him to the world. So I'd like to introduce you to my friend Andrew. And Andrew, if you can say hi and just start your life story wherever your life story wants to begin in this episode. We've only got a few, you know, like less than an hour, but let's go for it. Let's see what we can do.

SPEAKER_00 1:28

Oh, thank you, Vicky. That's a nice introduction. Oh gosh, my life story. Well, I think I'm at the end of my professional career and enjoying retirement. So and I spent 40, 42 years in healthcare, which moulded me really into the person. I mean, uh I started I started my career, as we previously discussed, really, in the Thatcherism years.

Steel Factory Lessons And Escape

SPEAKER_00 1:58

And I started off as a factory labourer in um.

SPEAKER_01 2:03

Okay, so you loved Thatcher then.

SPEAKER_00 2:05

Oh, yeah, yeah. She really kind of helped me grow. And yeah, I was in the steel industry in Sheffield for I started as a factory labourer because there was no other work. And you had to, you know, the years of the Buzzcocks and all that stuff going on and revolutions that were that weren't appearing. Similar times, really, to what I'm seeing now for the younger generation. But in that 18 months, the only thing I ever learned was how to play ant music by a demand with two spanners on the top of a lathe. And it was the stand and deliver.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

I remember everything.

SPEAKER_00 2:46

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. And the painted faces. And and uh to cut a very long story short on this aspect, basically there was five lathes going down in a line, and the beginning of your career was there, lathe number one, shall we say, and the end of your career was five lathes down. Yeah, and the difference was the people at the end of the line wore brown, were allowed to wear brown overalls compared to blue. And I thought to myself, after 18 months, and I was a labourer, I was cleaning the machines, these were apprenticeships, but but it was kind of aspiring to be an apprentice at that time. And I thought, I've got to get out of here, I've got to get out of here. And what it showed me was the rough life of kind of factory working, and I found myself filling in every application form going, which I think is is kind of what I'm seeing the young folks doing today. And I quite fancied being a paramedic or firefighter, which I think is relevant to later on in when I ended up working for the fire service and I ended up working in pre-hospital care.

Nursing Training And A&E Resilience

SPEAKER_00 4:06

But I ended up as a stop short kind of start a holding block. I I went into nursing, thinking, okay, at the age of 18, having done left school at 16, I need to do something. And if to be a paramedic at that point, you had to be 21. So it was a that would that was the rationale. But I ended up doing my nurse training and thoroughly enjoyed it. And and we talked about resilience and the the the clinical, the reason it's important is that clinical career throughout, which you're going to gave built me a resilience, my my way of how I coped with the world. Because I went down a nursing route, which was predominantly accident and emergency.

Gulf War Evacuations And Hard Choices

SPEAKER_01 4:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 4:54

But then that took me into pre-hospital care, which took me to the Gulf War, the first Gulf War. So I was working in Saudi Arabia, working for the Ministry of Defence and Aviation of Saudi and was evacuating Saudi, Syrian, Bangladeshi military who'd been injured back to Saudi Arabia.

SPEAKER_01 5:18

How old are you then?

SPEAKER_00 5:20

Oh gosh, that was what 80 1990. So yeah, I was kind of in my late 20s, wasn't I, early 30s? I spent the whole full 12 months there. It was quite ironic, really, because I ended up getting this role working for the Moda, and I flew in on August the 1st slash 2nd, late at night in this aircraft, not knowing that there'd been an invasion into Q8. And they basically said, Well, we'll give you a very handsome bonus if you stay, because we need nurses, or you can get back on this plane and fly out. So I thought, well, I'm going to be unemployed if I come back. So what's my option?

SPEAKER_01 6:04

Take the bonus.

SPEAKER_00 6:05

Take the bonus. And it was my skill set, you know, trauma, trauma in its physical sense rather than its emotional sense. And pre-hospital. So I was flying in aircraft, which I love, you know, later became a pilot at general aviation. And so it showed me, so it was so it was so full so fulfilling that I ended up staying a year until the actual ground defence had finished. So I then came back in May 1991, roughly, and I ended up then going out to Iraq

Iraq Refugee Camp Rapid Response

SPEAKER_00 6:42

and worked in a refugee camp.

SPEAKER_01 6:44

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 6:45

And in the end, there was 48,000 refugees and a team of uh 11 of us working a mobile hospital unit dealing with things like cholera, diphtheria, trauma. There was a lot of landmines. There was a lot the uh population who was in the uh northern Kurdistan, so we went in through Iran and then drove up onto the Iran-Iraq border, and they were living in tents given by uh UNICEF in the UN, and obviously candles were the mode of heat and lighting, so there was tent fires, mine injuries, and then diphtheria, cholera, typhoid. So that was extremely challenging because there was no resources there.

SPEAKER_01 7:37

It was the kit that we bought in, and we established it it sounds it sounds really, really hard. It's so I mean, how long did you do that for?

SPEAKER_00 7:47

Well, we were there, that was a part of kind of the um the medical team that I was working with. We were a team that went in and established. So we were there about two, only two and a half weeks, and then we handed over to Save the Children and the United Nations, where they then established a more long-term. So part of my background was always and continued after that, being part of a team that went in and did very acute, rapid interventions, and then handed over to more sustainable. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_01 8:31

Yeah, yeah, and and because of the way I know you, it makes perfect sense. I know you were very young then, very, very testing, trying times, but your skills, your in, you know, who you are in your core, were really starting to shine through.

SPEAKER_00 8:47

Yeah, yeah. And the the that was built on, you know, that I went to work in America for a while before the Gulf War. I was in Northern Ireland as well. So it gives a flavor of kind of the work I was doing, which was around wanting to become this pre-hospital trauma expert. And because it wasn't around at that time, but I could see from my days of working in the States what England could look like, and it looks like pre-hospital emergency care today, but that didn't exist at that time, and I was lucky enough, I reckon, to be one of the founders and father figures of that because you know, we did I did do work that allowed an open doors.

Fire Service Trauma Technicians Built

SPEAKER_00 9:36

So after coming back from Iraq, I was then working in clinical AE departments and I got seconded to Greater Manchester Fire Service to set up a trauma system for them, which we did for about four years, setting up systems. Yeah, and during that time I worked with the millage.

SPEAKER_01 9:58

Can I can I ask you to talk about a very, very high achievement that you've got here? Because is it at this time where you did something that it was introduced to this country, something you saw in the States about the pre with the fire service, where they come talk to me about you know what I'm talking about. Yeah, well share this achievement because it's big.

SPEAKER_00 10:21

Yeah, it was big at the time, and uh and still going today, I understand. And and so there was a gap. And the the thing about the fire service at that time was that they, particularly in Manchester, they could get a fire pump anywhere to an incident within four minutes. Now, when you look at trauma, blocked airways, severe road traffic accidents, stabbings, gunshot wounds, cardiac arrests from heart attacks, these minutes count.

SPEAKER_01 10:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:52

And so at the time, the ambulance service response was nine minutes, fire pump was four. So we worked with Greater Manchester Fire Service to put in trauma technicians at two-tiered system, so that every firefighter went through what we call this trauma, basic trauma life support, and then we put a trauma technician who went on to do a more robust course and time in accidents in emergency departments and theatres on each pump so that every shift had this qualified trauma technician. It was somewhere between a medical technician and a paramedic, it was somewhere around the in between that, and it was it was fundamentally set up to support other firefighters being injured. Yeah, and then we'd have a resource, and that was a political move because we were getting so much resistance from the ambulance service at that time. There was a lot of division, a lot of barriers between this is our role and this is your role, and so therefore, it was put in pr predominantly to support fire service personnel, because there's certain situations where only firefighters could go, but then could become injured, and but obviously it was shroomed out because you can't give people those skills and then not allow them to use it when they're first on scene at a road traffic accident is the working example. Yeah, so they're sitting there first to arrive and helpless to do anything because they're not trained or or I I would argue the time were maybe inappropriately trained because trauma care is very specific. You know, C spine injuries, da-da-da, and how you open airways without getting too technical is important when you've got potential spinal injury, yet they weren't taught how to do that.

SPEAKER_01 12:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:53

So, yes, that there was recorded incidents where firefighters felt very helpless at the scene of a road traffic accident waiting for the ambulance service to arrive. And it's not a criticism of the ambulance service, their response times were slower than what was required for fire. And that that kind of mushroomed into fundamentally becoming a derivative of it. So the Greater Manchester Trauma Technician system set up, and then other brigades started to adopt a very similar approach, and if not the approach, across the whole of the country. And it all came one of the it's it's interesting we talk about this at this time because I I won't name them, but there was a firefighter, and it and it's his anniversary of his death this week as we're speaking, who was there was a fault on the fire pump door, and as they were dispatched in the middle of the night to a car fire, he leant on the handle and fell out of the fire pump and received massive head injuries. And the hospital team at the time clearly stated on record that if it hadn't been for the trauma technicians who were on the pump with him providing emergency trauma care to get into hospital, then he would have succumbed to his injuries immediately. And he did survive a few days but then died. Now that that for greater for the fire service and for the trauma technicians and the academy that we'd established was a turning point because all the diehards at that time who were saying, you know, not sure we really want this, they actually saw its true application. You know, it was conceived to support firefighters in an environment where they couldn't get any other help. And that was the catalyst for it to be really embedded, in my belief, really embedded into the Greater Manchester Fire Service because they said this must never happen again. Yes, they'll fix the locks, but they wanted the emergency response to be so close. You know, it got and it got so good that you know, I'd be working in the emergency room in Manchester, and a fire pump would pull up, sirens blaring. They'd contacted us and they'd be pulling a patient out on a spinal board, fully packaged, because they could no longer wait for an ambulance. And they knew that this patient needed to get to the emergency department and the and the surgeon's hands. And we we did a piece of research with Manchester University that showed that in you know that basically they saved more lives doing this system than they ever did from fires in the first 12 months of its implement implementation. So for me personally, you know, it was a fantastic piece of work.

SPEAKER_01 16:03

And achievement, really, what an achievement.

SPEAKER_00 16:07

It's yeah, it's legacy stuff. And and kind of knowing that they've still got some form of that system, I don't know the detail, but they've got trauma technicians because I see it on the news sometimes. I read in newspapers that trauma technicians performed emergency care at the roadside. So some form of it is still going on as a legacy, although, you know, pre-hospital care in England has changed and so much for the better with the the helicopter systems and the roving critical care paramedics now. But having that kind of layer and that led on, that that work was was well recognized, and that led on to other organisations, such as again, these things that we've are difficult to talk about because of the work that we're doing, but part of the UK Special Forces we ended up training, tactical firearm teams. We ended up training because there was this niche, there was this gap where immediate trauma care we knew saved lives, but it couldn't be provided because of the environment these people were working in.

SPEAKER_01 17:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:20

And therefore, we gave these people these skills. So yeah, I went on to work with with those organizations and again Greater Manchester Police in their firearm teams and and some of their road teams. And then we, you know, that that can be moved on to things that we talked about previously. I also started to train flight crews, cabin crew in defibrillation and airway management, because again, they're in an environment where they couldn't wait for people to come along who had the skill set.

SPEAKER_01 17:57

Well, yeah, when you're 35,000 feet above the ground.

SPEAKER_00 18:00

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, because defibrillation, you know, the semi-automatics at that time, now fully automatic, but so easy to use. And we wanted, you know, I I'd seen the American system. I'd been to Seattle, I'd worked in Pittsburgh, I'd worked in Dallas, where you know, every emergency vehicle carried a DFIB. And it wasn't about which emergency service was called, the nearest emergency vehicle went. And, you know, I saw on the news the other day about a campaign going on about putting defibs in every police car in England.

SPEAKER_01 18:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:39

Well, in 1989, that's what was happening in America.

SPEAKER_01 18:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:45

You know, and uh the there's the kind of laughable thing that in Seattle, where all this kind of work took off around early defibrillation, there were people, you know, the laughable joke was that there were people lining up to do CPR because everyone was trained in CPR and on every street corner was a defib. And now we do see that. But the struggle we had trying to put defibulators onto fire pumps is another massive conversation. You know, it was just something that wasn't allowed to be done because of the demarcation. Yeah, a fire pump could get there in four minutes, and they served the community, so yeah, it I've seen in that career a massive transformation, and part of that was I contributed to it, and it was you know one of those things that yeah, it's a fantastic legacy, but then I went on from there working more on an international level. The foundations being the the Gulf conflict and then Iraq gave me a lot of in the refugee camp, gave me a lot of skill set, and the fire service gave me a high profile, and therefore I went on and I worked again as an international assessor, and I went to Afghanistan on two occasions, the first one being around '98.

Afghanistan Missions And Real Danger

SPEAKER_00 20:20

Now that was interesting in itself because I was in Kabul and well, I went all over Afghanistan in a taxi in a taxi. We drove looking again. I'm a bit challenged on what I can talk about on that, but but that's when the Mujahideen were in power rather than the Taliban. And then I went back again in 2000, 2001, just before the ground offensive, where again I worked in a small team that we needed to close down some of the facilities, knowing there was an impending ground offensive, and take out these Land Rovers and other equipment to clear these houses where we'd got things. And yeah, so that that was a ch, you know, we talk about rise up. That was the most life-threatening experience it ever had, was the second time. The first time was really bizarre because it the Mujer Deen were in power, the it was roadblock after roadblock of different uh tribal groups, so you literally had to bribe your way through to get to places. But on the second occasion, the Taliban were in power, and obviously didn't yeah, yeah. I think there was a naivety the first time, you know, and then is that saying isn't the stupid is what stupid does, and and I went back a second time, and yeah, the second time was more scary because w not only were it you know the When the Mujahideen were in power and there were different fractions, it was kind of very, very chaotic, but bizarrely, I felt a bit safer. When I went the second time, the Taliban were in power. I remember having a conversation with the equivalent of their Secretary of State for Health about closing down some of the healthcare programs, and he had an AK-47 on his desk. And he said to me through an interpreter, basically, that if he didn't like what I was saying to him, then the gun would solve this, would be the solution. Now that that's an interesting negotiation point, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 22:42

Because how do you know what's the right thing to say?

SPEAKER_00 22:45

Yeah, and I uh my agenda was I've got to take this equipment out. His agenda was you keep it in. And we spent a lot of time sleeping on roofs because they had what what we sussed out, the psychology of it all was that they had they being the Taliban, they had a very routine which was morning prayer, and then they'd come and hunt us and try and capture us. And so we slept on roofs. When you heard the early morning prayer, we then got our stuff together and we'd roof hop or we'd get in the vehicles and drive off. Unfortunately, I got I won't say captured, I got arrested, would be the word. Kandahar Airport, which was the mother, motherland of of the Taliban at that time, the home base. And I ended up being arrested. I got out via the United Nations, they negotiated my release.

SPEAKER_01 23:48

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 23:49

And basically they put me on a UN flight back to Islamabad. And that that was quite a scary moment because you do all these things and you actually don't recognize your life might be at risk until it is.

SPEAKER_01 24:18

And then you look back, and then it's like, oh my god. That's what really.

SPEAKER_00 24:24

And you start thinking of well, what the might have been there weren't, but you think what might have happened, which is a bizarre mental psyche, because you don't, I I didn't think of that at the time, yeah. Um, but you think about it afterwards, and then one of the team that I went out with, so I was I was flown back because I was no longer viable, useful. One of the other guys that was in the team, he unfortunately died. And you do think, well, I had a guilt trip about that, to be honest, Vicky, because I was the team medic and team medic and logistics. When I was shipped out and then he died, I thought, well, maybe I could have done something, I couldn't have done something under the circumstances. I know that when I found out how he did die, but it's kind of you know, there's a guilt trip there because when you're going in as a team medic, you want to be their medic. Yeah, and help them survive, help them survive, and we go in as a team, we came out as a team, and that didn't happen on the second occasion. It was ended up being very fragmented. So yeah, it was it was but

PTSD Signs And Protective Detachment

SPEAKER_00 25:35

you know, yeah. Did I suffer PTSD as a the you know, post-traumatic stress disorder? I think I did, and that's where our journey kind of came together, didn't it? Around Eurolinguistic programming, because I'd I'd before, you know, I I I felt as though I had some of those symptoms and was looking for a solution. Yeah, you know, and uh when you look back, I think I did because you know you'd hear a bang go off. And uh when I first came back, I literally jumped under a table. Yeah, you know, and then you realize that's not normal. It might have been normal in Kabul or in Kandahar or Herat, but it wasn't normal in Manchester. In Manchester.

SPEAKER_01 26:20

Yeah.

unknown 26:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:22

And but I didn't get I didn't I didn't get any kind of flashbacks and stuff like that. But I I did think about those, the team and and what could we have done differently.

SPEAKER_01 26:36

It's interesting how the how the mind will will rerun, replay, replay, replay. Had we done this, had we done this, maybe if I said this, maybe if we didn't go there, maybe if we did go there, maybe if I done this first, maybe if I hadn't done that first, you know, to to see if it could have had a different outing, a different result. And sadly, if if we can just catch ourselves in that moment and go it couldn't have happened any other way because it happened the way it happened. And and we we can never, I mean, it's it's a true testament that we can never go back to the past. The past isn't real. Thinking about it, agonizing about it doesn't change it because you can't go back and change it. You have to the only thing you can do is accept.

SPEAKER_00 27:26

Yeah, and I and I did have uh problems accepting it. But you do come to a point where you recognize it's just wasted energy, yeah. And that overthinking about the past is a waste, a waste of energy.

SPEAKER_01 27:45

How how did you come to that? Because in the work that I do, there's people that are still going over things that happened 40 years ago. They haven't yet reconciled in their minds that what I'm thinking about is wasted energy. Is they're still angry, they're still scared, they're still feeling inadequate because of something that happened so long ago.

SPEAKER_00 28:09

Yeah, and that's a very interesting question for me as an individual. It goes back to that word resilience. It's what my past allowed me to formulate a resilience plan. That for me, which had its pros and definitely its cons, was around detachment. And if the pros were that because my clinical career was the way it was, and I was seeing a lot of death, and I was seeing a lot of injuries, life-changing injuries, then that detachment was really, really necessary for me to survive. What I do know through working like with people like yourselves and NLP and all that sort of stuff at that time, that detachment also didn't support me in relationships.

SPEAKER_01 29:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:07

Because I became detached. I found it difficult to to love, basically. I found it difficult to be get close to people because they may not be there. Not saying they're gonna die, but they may they may leave. So why am I putting this energy in? You know, you you you distort it into those kind of natural things that it shouldn't be distorted into.

SPEAKER_01 29:33

And the thing is, you know, at the time, it's the best choice to survive a situation as to dis detach. Yes. What you don't realize, so so that kind of detachment that you do for survival is an adaptation of yourself because that's where you can get through it. However, 10 years later, 20 years later, whatever it is, that adaptation is no longer needed. However, that adaptation is it's almost become part of your personality, or so you think. And therefore, you you're still detached even though you're not under in the war zone.

SPEAKER_00 30:07

Yeah, yeah. And and you know, the the the conversation we've had about the war zones, you know, people could turn around and go, well, you know, that that was a unique situation and an unusual situation. But that detachment also was beneficial in my accident and emergency career. You know, people coming in in the 20s, cot deaths coming in, and you're having to tell, you know, the relatives that that that you that your child's died, and uh, and it's kind after doing the resuscitation, and you know, all those detachments, it's kind of it builds up.

SPEAKER_01 30:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:48

You know, you're doing that two or three times a day.

SPEAKER_01 30:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:52

And I was in a career for 24 years where I was frontline, yeah, it you know, it builds. And then you're seeing it in those, you know, 48,000 refugees, you're seeing it at such an intensity for periods of time and in people, you know, 40, 40 odd thousand people in living in tents, and and you know, it's what people in the Gaza are seeing right now and in in the Lebanon right now. Yeah, it's and we when you're in it, the intensity is significant. So your only way of, I'm not saying it's a generalization here, but my only way of coping was was detachment. Yeah. You know, I did I did that now, and I'm doing this now, and then I walk away and uh I blanket out. But it does it does have a role on subconscious effect, and that at some point has to be worked through. And that that's where you kind of that re rebirth and reborn, and and you need to get through that to be able to move forward is is what I found. But I didn't really, I didn't do it in a very structured way. You know, I came on NLP courses, I was looking at myself, trying to do self-work, the time, but still trying to hold down a marriage, trying to hold down a very busy career and all those sorts of things. There was no reflective time, there was no, you know, can I take a year out and work on myself? You know, that would have been ideal, but you know, society doesn't allow you to do that. You're in this rat race of trying to keep up with your peer groups, trying to hold down a mortgage, trying to pay your bills, and it's always there simmering. And then so one so that got to a point in the the the kind of early 2000s where I had worked through a lot of that Afghan stuff, the Kurdistan stuff, and therefore decided that I could no longer do a clinical

Leaving Frontline Work For Management

SPEAKER_00 33:12

career. I could see I was heading for a complete burnout. So I ended up moving into management within healthcare, and then worked my way up through management roles and into leadership roles where we again met when I was working in Manchester and in Shrewsbury. What I didn't recognise at that time was the toxicity of management and also leadership. Yeah, it came with its own political agenda.

SPEAKER_01 33:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:43

And hopefully, what what any listener will have learned was that I was at that point, I was I would class myself as a humanitarian. That that that was the language I guess I would label myself with now, looking back. Very, very patient focus focused, whether that's in an AE department or in a refugee camp or in the middle of of Afghanistan. And I found management in in healthcare not patient focused.

SPEAKER_01 34:17

At all.

SPEAKER_00 34:18

At all. A big generalization from my point. There could be managers there listening to this screaming, going, you know, you're wrong, you're wrong. But I've I've worked in a number of organizations within the health service, and there was a general consistent factor.

SPEAKER_01 34:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:36

And there was a very small group that I would call the minority that were patient-focused, and they generally came from a clinical career background.

SPEAKER_01 34:46

Yeah. And you know, Andrew, I I worked in quite a few of those organizations, so I totally support what you say because I've worked with other people, not yours. And I've seen a lot of people that were absolutely brilliant for their jobs, wanted the best outcome. And then there were others. But the others, I wouldn't say that they weren't sort of, you know, like good heart. There was a lot of toxicity, as you say, in that thing, because there was just so much threat and so much pressure that everybody was just desperately trying to survive. And they were just trying to survive for themselves so that they still had a career and a salary, supporting their families. So they would put up with whatever was told as if almost it looked like I don't care, I'll just do whatever they say as long as you give me my salary. But it was toxic because it was to the detriment of what they were there for. And then there were the very, very small that said, no, I'm here for a certain reason, and I'm honoring that, and therefore I'm going to put myself at risk. But as you know, you put yourself at risk and stand for your principles, and you get yourself in trouble with that.

SPEAKER_00 35:58

Yeah, definitely. And and that I'd rather not name the organization, but I but I did come foul of that in that trying to modernize. I became a change agent, you know, neurolinguistic programming helped with that. I went down a system called Theory of Constraints, uh, which allowed to look at bottlenecks and systems and was a change agent. And you know, in the organization I ended up in, didn't want that change. And I fell foul of kind of my chief exec at the time, and we we went into conflict, and that ended up me being kind of put on gardening leave, for want of a better word, for a period of around 13 months.

Toxic Leadership And Gardening Leave

SPEAKER_00 36:50

Yeah. And you know, that that was again quite probably tell by the way I'm not speaking or breaking up, but that that was a real hardship.

SPEAKER_01 37:04

I remember it so well.

SPEAKER_00 37:05

Yeah, because it had never happened to me before. You know, uh we've discussed the clinical career that I'd had and how important it was to me as an individual, but also the population that was trying to serve. And I was trying to do the same in you know this organization, and and I fell foul of and uh and to this day, I know what the accusation was around not modernizing, but ironically, I was accused of not modernizing a service quick enough, and and therefore was put on gardening leave. The real the real reason as I saw it was that they were trying to deband everybody, at least two grades, and I stood up, I stood up for my managers, I stood up for myself, put my head above the parapet because I was thinking that was the right thing to do, and and fundamentally, you know, I got shot. Yeah, your Yeah, they knocked me off the parapet. And and I did get support from some of my managers, others I didn't, you know, in the sense that they no longer I never heard from them again. And it started that I guess that's one of my first leadership roles where you know you put your head above the parapet because you want to support the people around you and who were working very, very hard for you in a very difficult system. And the new executive team were wanting to downband everybody to save money, and yeah, put my head above the parapet and bang. And and suddenly you're working in this like huge environment, lots and lots of hours a day, and then suddenly you're at home doing nothing, yeah, and the clock's ticking, and they've got the upper cards because they can just, you know, I mean, we discussed this previously, what a waste of public money to keep me sat at home, but they had the upper card that and and one of the kind of things that work through with yourself and others was that well, if that's the game they want to play, I'll play it. And rather, you know, I I've seen it done previously, and I and I've seen it done afterwards, where people then go, oh, go, well, okay, you put me on gardener, I'm just gonna go and find another job and leave. But I couldn't from from the the situation I was in at that time with my kids in in infant school, and my uh ex-wife was working in the local community as well. It would have been too a significant uplift to to move them. So, you know, my strategy was right, I will sit it out. And and 13 months later we did come to an agreement, and that allowed me to move on. But that that time was again resilience, again, detachment, but forced detachment because I wasn't, you know, I wasn't allowed to go on site. You weren't allowed to talk to anyone, wasn't allowed to talk to anybody. I went through a number of interviews with investigating officers, and they couldn't, you know, no accusations, no charges were ever bought because they couldn't find anything. And it got resolved when that chief exec left.

SPEAKER_01 40:33

And I remember that the way it got resolved was we're really sorry, move on. And I just thought Yes. You know, had you not looked after yourself, had conversations with myself and the other people that were supporting you, I've seen this happen to other people. It completely destroys people. So in nothing, if nothing else, kudos on you for standing up and saying it will not take me down.

SPEAKER_00 41:04

Yeah, it took it took me down a few ladders, but it didn't make me fall to the bottom. You know, my confidence did get knocked. I was lucky enough after where when he left, you know, that within a month they called me in and went, well, we need to come to some form of agreement. You know, A, that I sign these forms, so I don't really I'm retired now, it's not a problem, but you know, it's something that I'm not supposed to talk about. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And you know, we've all moved on, hope you can, sort of thing. Bye-bye.

SPEAKER_01 41:41

Yeah, have a nice off.

SPEAKER_00 41:43

And yeah, and I was literally, you know, met in a car park of the hospital. You know, how it was done was was was just, you know, how not how yeah, how I would not want to do it to anybody else.

SPEAKER_01 41:58

No.

SPEAKER_00 41:58

And yeah, but it luckily, again, I won't name the organization, but luckily after pretty much straight afterwards, I got another post because I was free from the shackles. I'd come out with the standard reference, started no longer. I think the thing that really, really annoyed me during that kind of 13 months was that they owned me.

SPEAKER_01 42:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:26

They they held the cards around ownership. I couldn't, I could have gone and got another job, but at that time the reference wasn't agreed. Yeah, you know, there's no smoke without fair, all those sort of connotations were going through my head. How my self-worth had taken a knocking. Yeah, and therefore, you know, how how can I come up from this? And I needed, I I wanted closure. Yeah, and the only way I could get closure was to see it through.

SPEAKER_01 42:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:00

I think if I'd walked away, I wouldn't have had closure.

unknown 43:05

No.

SPEAKER_00 43:06

And that was the resilience piece on why I stuck it out. Because I could have got another job, yes.

SPEAKER_01 43:14

So was there a moment in the time that you said to yourself, no, damn it, no, they will not destroy me. I've done nothing wrong. If anything, I've done everything right. I remember at that time your division was actually financially doing so much better than the others that they were looking at like, what are you doing wrong? That is showing as you know, you're being profitable compared to the others. You're making everybody else look bad.

SPEAKER_00 43:43

Yeah, and we'd and we'd won national awards.

SPEAKER_01 43:45

I know. So what was it inside of you that said, I will not lie down and just take this?

Refusing To Be Bullied Out

SPEAKER_01 43:52

Because that for me is that that pivoting point, that rise up moment where you go, it sucks, I'm scared, they're not.

SPEAKER_00 44:02

I think it's the way they treated me.

SPEAKER_01 44:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:06

And in particular, that chief exec at that time. And that this is hard for me to say, really, but I really started to hate the person. And because he had so much power over me, but also over my family. And, you know, I think we'd use the word bullying now that I was I was bullied out of the organization. And I had such hatred for that individual because everything he was throwing at me, I could fight back. I was, you know, the files I had of of the work we'd been doing, you know, both with yourself and my teams, the the excellence awards that we'd won, the transformation of the services, that I just felt really, really wronged. And there was some yeah, betrayed. And and I just felt, you know, you've done me wrong here, and I'm not going to allow you to bully me out of the organization. And that that was the moment when I saw their evidence against me and this the accusations that they put forward with no substance whatsoever. And they brought in this investigator from another organization who happened to be a personal friend of the chief exec. You just knew it stank.

SPEAKER_01 45:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:35

And and I thought, yes, I could walk away, start my own business, become an interim, because at the time I didn't think I'd get a substantive job because you know my ego, my my ego was hurt, my career was damaged. And I thought, okay, I'm gonna fight this. You're not you're not gonna get away for about uh regarding this at all. And yeah, that that you've got there's certain points in time in your life, you have to stand up.

SPEAKER_01 46:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:16

And you know, some people stand up and be counted, blah blah blah. I stood up for my team and I got knocked down, but I was damned if I was going to be buried by this. It was a okay, I'm gonna fight you with everything I've got. And even to the point where they then came up with the you know, the agreement after he'd gone, I still fought that. Yeah, I fought for the right agreement for me and my family because I wasn't just gonna lie back and take what they're offering.

SPEAKER_01 46:49

And for me, Andrew, and I mean, you know, we worked again later on, and there was some more of this similar kind of stuff going on. So it that's why we know toxic is there. But it's a thing that I admire in you, and this is why I invited you today to talk to the rise up stories. For somebody who feels knocked down, because you're an expert in this. Somebody who's knocked down, what's what's the thing that you would say to them? You know, what is like your your little bit of gold nugget that you can give them to hold on and to stand up, rise up and fight for their lives, fight for themselves.

SPEAKER_00 47:31

I think you've got you've I can't put it into one word. If it was, it was going to be resilience. I think I think from my gravestone there'll be Andrew Kent was extremely resilient. The question is, and then I love the Spike Milligan quote of, and I told you I was ill. And I and I think for me it's finding your resilience.

Power Of Now And Daily Gratitude

SPEAKER_00 47:57

Now that that could be a run that makes you feel more robust, because it it may not be a career thing, it could be a personal thing, you know, that happens to you, a life-threatening event, death of a spouse. You've got to find your resilience that allows you to carry on because life is very, very short. I'm now at the end of my career, I'm in my 60th decade, which I never ever thought I would be at. I couldn't, I can't I still sit here at times, I can't believe I'm here. And and it's gone in the blink of an eyelid. And so you've got to find that resilience and then use that to regrow, rebirth, whatever language you want to use to move forward and move onwards. And there is the important lesson I think I came out of working with yourself and your linguistic programming, was that and you know, the Eckhart Tolley stuff, there is only the now.

SPEAKER_01 49:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:08

You know, and you can regret the past, yeah, and that that's a wasted emotion.

SPEAKER_01 49:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:16

And you can have anxiety about the future, and boy, is that a wasted emotion.

unknown 49:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:24

So there is now the power of now. Yeah, it is.

SPEAKER_00 49:29

And and that that, you know, was was that is how I came to resilience. You know, I still have regrets about the past and lick in a much lesser about not just about then, something we've talked about in depth, but my whole career. But I've also got some very, very good and positive memories about all that stuff. And now, you know, the where I went to after the Manchester experience was to start my own business and be a consultant for four years. And that was one of the happiest times in my life, yeah, professionally. And now I've retired from that and I'm living a retirement journey, which again is equally interesting and another conversation. But it's about, for me, that resilience piece, finding your resilience, and it is an individual thing. It ain't in a can that you can go to Tesco's and buy off the shelf. No, it's about self-exploration, it's about a journey, it's about living through these unfortunate events.

SPEAKER_01 50:39

Because life does give you all these things. You know, I I haven't met anybody who's had a calm life. We've all had, you know, some adversity, whether it's in childhood, in teenage years, in early life, middle life, end life, all our lives, it's there. But I think what makes us stay happy and positive is the way that we see it. And the way that we see it is the way we see ourselves and what this means. I mean, Adyashanti always talks about, and it's a Buddhist kind of thing, that all your suffering is down to attachments. Attachments to how you think an event should have gone, an attachment to how a person should have behaved with you, an attachment to how you should have reacted. And you know, we all do the best we can with what we've got in that moment, and the the quicker we can release that attachment, the quicker that we are free and light and therefore focused to now.

SPEAKER_00 51:48

Yeah, I agree. And uh, you know, all philosophies have you know, part of my journey was is yoga and this the movement of yoga, the asana is just one of the eight limbs. Um and you know, Sanskrit talks about de-attachment, yeah. And you know, all the philosophies of the Eastern philosophy certainly have this de-attachment of to physical things and to to non-physical things, i.e. your memories and stuff like that. And that that to me has been an extremely powerful journey, but but all relates, doesn't it, to to try as best as you can to live in the now.

SPEAKER_01 52:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:29

And because as we're sat here right now, there is no trouble in the world, in my own personal world, you know, and every day I do you know chants, and one of my loveliest ones is shanty, shanty, shanty, and I interpret that as peace within me, peace within my world, and peace within my universe, because at times you can't affect what's going on in the world, and you look around and it's an oh my god situation. But in me, and in my world, and in my universe, I promote peace and gratitude, and for me, those those two things are really, really important, and that's part of my resilience. I have gratitude for everything I do, and I live as far as I can. I wake up every morning wanting peace.

SPEAKER_01 53:22

Yeah, and being grateful. I mean, I always teach people to go, you know, in that moment where you know that you've got adversity kind of thoughts, feelings going on inside of you. You need to ask yourself right now, right now, this very moment. I can feel my hands on my desk, I can feel my feet on the ground, I can feel the seat that I'm sitting on, I can see the blue skies and the clouds playing, I can see the bees going onto the things, I can hear the wind. In this moment where this is the only thing that is real for me, do I have a problem? And it's always a no. And therefore, live in that moment and recognize that the issues and struggles and and and stresses that we have is the things that are going on in our minds. So when we think about the politics and we think about Gaza, or we think about you know what's happening anywhere in the world, then that opinion, that meaning, that attachment that we have, it's it's where the suffering comes from. But when I go, but actually, I'm sitting here and I'm looking at the skies and and the way that the clouds are moving and the bees outside, and the you know, I can hear the wind. And and in this moment, but this is the only thing that is real, because I'm assuming the rest of the world exists. This is the moment I can see that this world where is around me, it is true, it exists. Do I have a problem? No.

SPEAKER_00 54:46

And they're and I find, yeah, and uh I totally agree with everything you've said. And I find the asana in yoga, you know, doing a yoga posture, whether that's hatha or the vinyasa, when you're in a pose, you really, with your breathing attached to that, which is the most important part of your asana, then you're in the now.

SPEAKER_01 55:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 55:12

And that's the glimmer, the peako, the opening of the curtain, the glimpse of the curtain of being able to veil. Exactly, of being in that that now rather than then the busyness of your mind, which is always the challenge to control.

SPEAKER_01 55:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 55:31

So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 55:32

So I guess in in in many ways, what you're saying, or what I hear you're saying, is that the resilience basically comes down to hearing your mind, understand your mind, focus on your mind, control your mind, and be in the moment.

SPEAKER_00 55:50

And that's your life's journey and purpose.

SPEAKER_01 55:52

Yeah. And I mean Ecartola has it, like it's the journey back to yourself. When you're back to you, everything goes okay.

SPEAKER_00 56:01

Yes, yes. And uh, and it took me, and I'm still on that, you know, I I am on that journey. And I think if I was to tell my 20-year 20-year-old something self, I would be saying start looking at that as early as you can.

SPEAKER_01 56:21

Yeah, yeah. Unfortunately, like Joe Dispens always talks about that, it normally takes a crisis for us to stop and step back and go, what happened? And analyze ourselves. And a lot of the times people then go, Why did this happen to me rather than what happened? And how can I change that? I mean, uh, you know, you say you're still on that journey. I I always say, I and I say this, and I don't know if you remember me ever saying this in class, that I say that if you wake up in the morning and there's still breath in your body, you're still cooking, you're not done. So keep going.

SPEAKER_00 56:59

Exactly, and and have the gratitude that you're still breathing that morning.

SPEAKER_01 57:03

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 57:04

I know it sounds profound, but in the you know, in the lives, in the career I've had, it's so profound. And and it isn't a given.

SPEAKER_01 57:14

I know. You know, with with with gratitudes, I sometimes when I work with people that are really in a bad place, and I go, What are you grateful for? And they're going, Oh, you're crazy. Have you seen my life? Nothing. There's nothing. I said, you know what? You woke up this morning. There's a lot of people in this world that didn't. Are you grateful for that?

SPEAKER_00 57:34

Definitely, Andrew.

Final Thoughts And How To Connect

SPEAKER_01 57:37

This was super, and I know I'm going to have to cut it short, but we we are gone quite over, but that's fine. It's been a beautiful story and a beautiful conversation that we've had, and I'm very grateful for knowing you, for having you in my life, and for giving your time. So I'd like to say to everybody, if you enjoyed this and you know somebody that could benefit from listening to this, please share this episode. Subscribe so you will always know when the next episode's coming out. I have a beautiful membership where if you want to do more of this kind of work and be part of a beautiful community, the links are in the show notes. And for the rest, I'd like to say thank you to everybody for listening and have a good week. And here's to your success.