The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast - The Importance of Leadership Skills , Culture Awareness & Emotional Intelligence

Episode Date: July 11, 2022

Show Notes for The Aspiring Psychologist Podcast Episode: 31: Leadership and emotional intelligenceThank you for listening to the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast. Today’s guest speaker, Kul Mahay, shares his experience working in the police force and developing leadership training for aspiring psychologists from underrepresented groups. Kul Mahay has shown great success in helping others to improve their emotional intelligence and leadership qualities. I hope you enjoy listening as much as I enjoyed the recording! The Highlights: ·       00:28: Introducing the lovely Kul Mahay·       01:40: Applying to the police force·       02:39: Kul’s role in the force ·       03:37: The importance of good leadership and positive communication·       05:18: Improving leadership outcomes for underrepresented groups ·       09:05: The ups and downs of our stories ·       10:26: It's okay to UM and AH! ·       13:03: Components of emotional intelligence ·       13:32: Thinking about where you are right now·       17:12: A book called Smash the Habit  ·       19:33: Relationships and development ·       20:38: 26 competency areas ·       21:32: Personal power: Our relationship with ourselves·       23:51: Compassion and the DClinPsy·       24:59: Imposter syndrome·       29:08: Working on yourself·       32:50: Leadership for NHS psychologists ·       37:48: Culture temperatureContacting Kul Mahay: LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/kulmahayWebsite: http://www.igniteyourinnerpotential.comLinks:Connect socially with Marianne and check out ways to work with her, including theupcoming Aspiring Psychologist Book and The Aspiring Psychologist Membership onher Link tree: https://linktr.ee/drmariannetrentTo check out The Clinical Psychologist Collective Book: https://amzn.to/3jOplx0 Like, Comment, Subscribe & get involved:If you enjoy the podcast, please do subscribe and rate and review episodes. If you'd like to learn how to record and submit your own audio testimonial to be included in future shows head to:https://www.goodthinkingpsychology.co.uk/podcast and click the blue request info button at the top of the page.

Hi there, it's Marianne here. Before we dive into today's episode, I want to quickly let you know about something exciting that's happening right now. If you've ever wondered how to create income that works for you, rather than constantly trading your time for money, then you'll love the Race to Recurring Revenue Challenge with my business mentor, Lisa Johnson. This challenge is designed to help you build sustainable income streams. And whether you're an aspiring psychologist, a mental health professional, or in a completely different field,

the principles can work for you. There are also wonderful prizes to be won directly by Lisa herself. And if you join the challenge by my link, you can be in with a chance of winning a one-to-one hours coaching with me, Dr. Marianne Trent. Do you want to know more? Of course you do. Head to my link tree, Dr. Marianne Trent, or check out my social media channels, or send me a quick DM and I'll get you all the details. Right, let's get on with today's episode. If you're looking to become a psychologist, then let this be your guide. episode. With Dr. Marianne Trent Welcome along to the Aspiring Psychologist podcast.

It is an absolute pleasure to have you here. And thank you as ever for listening or watching, as you may be watching this on YouTube. Today's episode came about from a conversation with a LinkedIn connection, because I love networking with people. And we were talking about improving access in psychology, and that's where the idea for this podcast episode came about today. I am joined by a lovely man called Cull, who is going to be talking us through leadership, change, inclusion, all of those good things. Hope you will find it so useful and I will look forward to catching you on the other

side. Hi, welcome along to today's episode of the podcast. I am joined today by my lovely guest, Carl Mahe. Carl, thank you for joining us. No, thank you for having me. It's an absolute pleasure. Lovely. So could you tell the audience a little bit about you and your background, if that's okay yes absolutely so I spent 32 years in the police service from the age of 16 yes I was a 16 spotty face kid when I joined the police there was back in January 1983 it's all I ever wanted to do from the age of 10 it was like my dream and back in those days you used to have full-time police cadets and I applied to 26 police forces and I just committed to whichever one would say yes to me first I just joined then

it happened to be in Derbyshire so I up sticks from my concrete jungle in Wolverhampton and landed in the beautiful green fields of Derbyshire and been here ever since. Amazing oh I feel like there's lots and lots of questions I can ask you about mental health in policing and mental health in the people you look after in policing but that's probably a separate issue. So how did you get from being working in the police field to where you are now? Well my journey in the police service was quite an interesting one given that the kind of job that we were doing, but also my own personal journey. When I joined the police service, I was literally a brown speck in a sea of white. Two thirds of my service was spent at leadership levels.

Towards the end, my last third in the police service in my last eight, nine years, I was what they call a gold commander, sitting at superintendent, chief superintendent level, or a gold commander for all major incidents, critical incidents. I was the person, I guess, where all the problems would be sitting on my shoulders. If something went wrong, I'd be responsible for that. So I've been responsible for major public disorder issues, firearms incidents, bomb hoaxes, bomb threats, major football matches and things of that nature, as well as managing my day-to-day department of, you know, up to 400 people at a time. And what I learned in the police service was this how powerful good leadership can be and how it can impact and empower people but also how it can destroy people's lives uh one of the first things i used to say to any leadership team that i would take over in a new department is that we need to be mindful of the language that comes out of our mouths because it can either empower people, inspire people,

and help people move forward, or it can destroy people's lives, and they will take it away home with them, and they'll infect their families and their friends with how we treat them. So I realized for me that people in leadership, the concept of people is very, very important. And when I left the police service I wanted to help other organizations create those kind of cultures and those conversations

where there was trust throughout the organization greater performance in the organization as a result the people became much more emotionally intelligent and and and stop using that as a glib phrase to truly understand what emotional intelligence in practice looks like and now i have the great honor pleasure of teaching other people exactly that i work with leaders on a one-to-one coaching basis i design programs for universities for organizations and i help organizations change their culture and I'm sort of in my sweet spot I guess. It found you you know you just you ended up where you needed to be. Tell us a little bit about how you've been working alongside doctoral programs lately Carl. Well I mean this came sort of out

of the blue for me really and I'll have to admit to some imposter syndrome kicking in for me because essentially I was being asked to teach psychology to psychologists. And there was this internal conversation inside myself as to whether I could actually do that. But the way it happened was this. I'd been working for a number of universities who had asked me to come in to design programs for them and then deliver those programs to help those underrepresented groups of members of I designed a program which was a very pragmatic program based upon the 26 competency areas that we talk about in social emotional intelligence. As a member of the Institute of Social Emotional Intelligence over in America, I drilled down deep into these 26 competency areas and pulled out some pragmatic tools, if you like, and techniques, leadership techniques that I could teach people.

And for me, any program that I design has to have some pragmatism involved within there. People need to be able to grab hold of something and then be able to apply that in their lives. So we brought this program together for the underrepresented groups in this university and we saw some incredible success as a result of it. It was a six-module program spread over about three months and we saw people being promoted and applying for much more senior positions and that the university itself was seeing this representation this diverse

representation that they had aspired to so a few months later I got approached by the Trent doctoral program which I think was a collaboration with the schools of psychology from Lincoln and from University of Nottingham and they have they, look, we've got some underrepresentation as well, so could you run a programme, the same programme, for our postgraduates to help them to aspire towards the doctoral programme? So we ran the same programme with two cohorts of assistant psychologists, and what we saw at the end of it all was I think we had four or five people who were successful in applying for the doctoral program and those

that weren't successful or those that chose not to apply actually went on to see some level of success in the work that they were doing so So we had a number of people being promoted, and we had one in particular who reached out to me and said, hey, I went for a job interview at a much more senior level, and I used all the techniques that we'd learnt on the programme, but I got told I was unsuccessful. But the reason I was unsuccessful was apparently because I was too good and instead I was offered the job of the manager for the post that I'd applied for so she went off

and got a bit of a bonus job I guess. That's a great result we must have felt absolutely thrilled with that and I guess my own experience with the um the aspiring psychologist membership is that just it's incredible when you get to follow stories and when you see your work make a real difference to real people's lives it's really really um it's just you know the sort of thing and I guess you'll have those memories from the police as well you know and throughout your career when you feel like you've been able to make a difference it's just a golden nugget that you get to keep forever and it's really lovely. Oh, there's no substitute for that. And stories are the things that keep memories alive for us.

You know, when we put a memory in the context of a story for me, I think it brings it alive. So in much of the programmes that I deliver, stories sit at the very, very heart. And one of the modules on the programme that I delivered was based around public speaking. I mean, I teach public speaking. So on this particular module, all of the candidates,

all the delegates had a very intense day of learning how to do public speaking. And one of the elements was how do you structure a story and for me a story has to have a beginning a middle and an end the beginning is really setting the scene and talking about the adversary the the act two if you like part two of the story is really about the journey that you undertake the you know the ups and downs if you think of the hobbit and all of the things is really about the journey that you undertake the you know the ups and downs if you think of the hobbit and all of the things that the hobbit had to do uh in in in the lord of the rings and then finally it's that realization and implementing this newfound knowledge and wisdom and then what happened as a result of that so those are the three acts for storytelling and

i think storytelling is critical to any learning that we ever undertake in our lives. I love that. I love that. And as you're talking, I was just thinking, maybe Carl can get me to stop saying um. Here's the thing, Marion. I still say um and um. And I purposely now do it. And the reason I just did it there and the reason why I do it is because it's real you know when we're having a conversation we um and ah we

don't think twice of it so why should we think about it when we're in front of a camera or on a stage I have delivered I would say in the region of 200 keynote presentations in the last two years of lockdown. And I guess I will have ummed and ahed in every single one. You know, I've done television interviews. I've spoken on stages. At one point, I think I spoke to 1,000 people. And I um and ah, because I think it's natural. And people are drawn.

People are drawn to people who come across as being really natural and authentic. And I think that's the new superpower in this changing world in which we exist that people are looking for. People are drawn to authenticity. So why be that absolutely polished individual when you can be real? I love that. We're embracing my ums when I listen I think it's the trauma episode of this podcast I was obviously wanting to make sure I handled it really sensitively so it's really slowing it down and honestly I feel like I need

to do an like an um bop like bingo where people listen to it count the ums and then there's a prize for whoever gets the right number because there are are lots of ums. But it is a great episode as well. So I will embrace the ums. Thank you. I mean, one way of reducing the number of ums, I mean, I would always say don't eliminate them. That's my personal take on it. But you can reduce them just simply by slowing down. So the reason why we um and ah is to give ourselves thinking time and space, right? So rather than um and ah, just pause. Just pause and allow yourself time to think. And actually, when it comes out in the final recording, it doesn't sound anywhere near as bad as you think it is in the moment of taking that pause. So we're so scared of pausing.

We want to fill every single gap with some kind of noise. But actually, when you take that pause and you listen back, you think, wow, that sounds pretty good. So all the best interviews, all the best presenters in the world know how to take a pause. Good. I will bear that in mind. I don't notice my ums at the time that I do them I think it is anyone I'm editing back you know you're editing the podcast

you're like oh there's a lot of ums there but yeah I'm going to embrace them and I'm also gonna yeah just think more mindfully about that um I know that my audience will have listened to you saying you know there's these key concepts in emotional intelligence. I don't expect you to go through them all, but could you give us like a flavour of a couple of your favourites of the key components of these? Oh, absolutely. I think these will resonate with a lot of people.

So let's think about emotional intelligence as almost like a mountain. So you have the bit that you can see and then the bit that goes underneath that you really didn't know was there or you didn't know how it's made up so the bit that most people know about when it comes to emotional intelligence are is that it's made up of four quadrants okay now each one of these quadrants is critically important in any leadership journey. So those four quadrants are self-awareness. Any leader worth their salt should have the ability, the constant ability to reflect, inwardly reflect, and as a consequence of that, be able to move on to the second quadrant, which is self-management. Now, let me throw some

examples in here so it makes sense. So for example, despite the fact that I did 32 years in police service, I've got nearly three decades worth of leadership experience behind me, I am still constantly curious and I'm still growing. So I recently was honoured to have been invited into a very, very select society of leaders. It's called the Society of Leadership Fellows in Windsor Castle. There's only 250 fellows in the whole world. So for me to have been chosen, I was like, wow, you know, where did this come from? So I had my first opportunity to go to a physical meeting,

and it was just a few days ago. I think it was last Friday. And it was a beautiful summer's day, and I drove to Windsor Castle, and I drove over there. I got a security pass so I could walk into those areas that other people couldn't walk into. And I just found myself, as I'm looking over this balustrade, and I'm looking across the field, and I could see Eton,

Eton College in the distance. I'm thinking, wow, where have I landed? But the whole day was incredibly deep for me because they took us, they helped us to, the concept of the day was crafting your story as a leader. And the idea was to explore where you've been in terms of your learning, your understanding, your values, your visions, and to follow that story through to where you are right now. So at the conclusion of the day, it was, where are you right now? And we were asked to write down about

three or four paragraphs describing where we were right now. Now, I've got that written down here in front of me. I found myself just sitting down and I just wrote. I had it done in five minutes. I just wrote about three or four paragraphs in a language that I wouldn't ordinarily have used. But I remember one phrase that I used. I said, I find myself looking at myself as if I were in a glass box, such as similar to the one in Crystal Maze, where there is air being pumped into this box

and there's ticker tape literally all around me. And on every piece of ticker tape is the word opportunity. Those that I grab, I own. Those that I don't, I don't worry about because there is so much opportunity in my hand right now that I can actually do anything that I want with it. And it's true to where I am right now. Just lately, in the last year, I have been involved in all sorts

of leadership development programmes. I've carried out cultural diagnostic audits of organisations. I co-created a police drama that's being filmed as we speak right now by the BBC in Scotland. I mean, I never thought that would happen. And I've learned the philosophy for me in life is just to say yes to everything. And when I say yes to everything, all the things that excite me will come my way. And some will drop off the edge, but a lot of them will stick and we'll just go forward. And it's created this abundant life. So leadership awareness, self-awareness is critically important. Self-management is really

about understanding, okay, so what are the habits? What are the things that don't serve me? And what am I going to do about them? So this is really hard. This is stuff that you have to give up where you're creating new habits. So when I wrote my book, Smash the Habit, it was really about physical habits. You know, 20 years ago, I was a big smoker, big drinker, big meat eater. I was the guy, if I went into a restaurant, I had to have the biggest steak on the menu. And overnight, I stopped drinking, smoking, eating meat, fish, eggs, and I have never turned back. Seven years ago, I gave up drinking fizzy pop, sugary drinks, tea and coffee overnight, and I've never gone back. Six years ago, I gave up drinking milk.

You must have had some withdrawal headaches, I'm thinking, from all of that. Do you know what? I genuinely cannot remember if I had it. I must have had something. But my passion was so strong that I would have just ridden over it. And this is to say that I'm not unique. It's just that the clarity of thought was so powerful for me that I was much more committed. And that's what quadrant two of emotional intelligence is all about. Quadrant three is saying, okay, now that I i've fixed myself now let's look outside of myself so quadrant three is all about social awareness really understanding how the world works around you so if you're in an organization for example

or let's assume that you're going for a doctoral program this is one of the things i taught the the the the delegates that came onto the program, I said, what are the expectations, do you think, of you being on a doctoral program? What are the hoops that you have to jump through? What policies are there? What givens are there that you have to achieve? And how many of you have ever tried that and still failed? And a lot of them put their hands up and said, okay,

so what else is there? What is underneath the surface? What are the nuances? What is the language that goes on? What are the groups that you can go and visit, that you can align yourself with? What relationships can you develop? What conversations can you have that actually increases your level of knowledge,

your overall level of knowledge? And it's the same in organizations. A lot of people get frustrated in organizations and say, oh, I don't fit here, you know, and I will never get promoted. And the reason why they get frustrated is because they don't understand the nuances of the organization. And this is not about nepotism, it's just the nuances, because wherever there are human beings, you will always find these subconscious unconscious biases that exist because it's a natural facet of being a human being so start understanding that kind of stuff and finally and probably the most important and probably the most powerful if you

get it right is relationship building who do you reach out to to build one-on-one relationships deep lasting relationships. I'm an introvert by nature despite the fact that I can stand on a stage to speak to a thousand people. My introversion is such that I prefer one-on-one conversations but when I meet people I develop strong deep lasting relationships and that's who I am. But when you do that then you'll find that people will elevate you as you elevate other people. People will recommend you as you recommend other people. Your relationships become much, much

of a higher quality. So those are just the four quadrants. Now, beyond those four quadrants sit the 26 competency areas. So within the 26 competency areas, there's all sorts like personal power is a really big one for me. power was the the one competency area that was actually pulling my overall eq score down i have a very high eq score only because i've been working on it not because i'm some kind of a you know superhero or something like that i used to have a poor eq uh sort of profile but i've worked on it over the years. But this one competency is still dragging it down. And personal power is really about your relationship with you. What kind of conversations are you having with you? So we talk about imposter

syndrome. We talk about self-esteem. All of that fits within this concept of personal power. So we need to find out how do we improve? How can we improve our self-esteem? How can we have better quality conversations with ourselves? How can we build a better relationship with ourselves that is as good as the relationships that we have with other people? Sometimes we are our worst enemy and we can be the biggest bully to ourselves. And yet we wouldn't look to wouldn't tolerate bullying in anybody else.

So for me, this is about changing language and constantly being aware of the language that we're using with ourselves on a day to day basis and learning how to reframe that language, challenge that language. And sometimes if the language cannot be changed, then it's about watching your actions because that language will lead to actions or inaction. So watching your actions, really policing your mind, using the analogy from my past, policing your mind and policing your actions. So if your thinking is not of good quality, you adjust that. If you're not able to adjust that then it's

actually looking at the action so you might find yourself doing something or not doing something as a case maybe and saying actually that's not good for me so i need to get off my backside and i need to go and you know we were talking about linkedin a while ago marianne and we're talking about improving our profiles on linkedin i thought to myself, I really don't want to do this, but I need to do it. So let's get it done. So that's my attitude in life now. To overcome my personal power issues, I just tell myself the job needs doing, get it done. So I've coined a phrase, which you might see up here, do it now, it says. Hashtag do it now. Yeah. And for me, the moment I think about doing something,

whether it's grasping an opportunity or doing something that I really don't want to do, Brian Tracy will call it eating your frog, doing a task that's unpleasant, I just get it done and I get it done in the here and now. Do it now. And that philosophy has served me well I used to be the worst procrastinator in the world but now I at least I get things done you know absolutely it's really powerful stuff and you know reflecting on what you've said you know

I trained in the doctoral program between 2008 and 2011 and it was very much about upskilling us to have the necessary skills to be a good enough clinician with our clients our mental health clients when we're in the room but there wasn't really much of an emphasis on compassion and self-talk and the quality of your thoughts and I really have spent time since I've been supporting aspiring psychologists really trying to warm up the compassion warm up the temperature of the water and encourage people to look after themselves because often there won't be anyone coming to rescue you and I think I really hope that the doctoral programs are going to start embracing and doing some more of that as

well so there was personal development there was a personal tutor relationship but in terms of the stuff I needed to get me through life you know in terms of becoming a parent and losing a dad and you know managing a busy um you know caseload and teams and stepping into leadership roles when I hadn't really been taught how to do that compassion is needed you know like you said you've had imposter syndrome and even me as a qualified psychologist i've been qualified uh 10 years over 10 years um you still have imposter syndrome you know of course absolutely and that's okay but that's really normal it's just part of having these really tricky human brains of ours and so i really hope that with you know your support and the support of other people that have got compassionate voices in the field that we can not just equip fully qualified clinical psychologists

but to equip people with life skills that help them to be able to navigate their own lives which then help people to navigate their clients lives as well absolutely you know this whole issue of imposter syndrome we talk about it as if we're the only people that suffer from it i would suggest that 90 of the people that you meet on a day-to-day basis will have some level of imposter syndrome i recall when i was a senior police officer and a highly highly specialized specialized critical incident gold commander. I was like at the top end, the very top end of any major incident. I was, I'd been on so many courses.

I was highly experienced. And, you know, thankfully, I never made a mistake in that sense where somebody's life was at risk. But do you know what? Every single time with every single incident, there was a touch of imposter syndrome. So in whichever field you're in, I would suspect that at some point in time,

if we are not guarding the gates of our mind, the imposter syndrome will creep through. So we need to be prepared all the time. We need to be alert all the time. We need to be alert all the time for this negative language, these limiting beliefs creeping in, and we need to have some kind of a strategy to deal with them. And when it comes to emotional intelligence and EQ, I think we have been conditioned to believe that technical skills, qualifications and IQ are everything that you need in life to be successful in life. But that's not true, as you've just quite rightly identified there.

IQ, technical skills and qualification will get you to a certain point. But if beyond that point you want to be successful then it has to be about EQ it has to be about how good is the conversation that you're having with you how good are the conversations that you're having with other people how good are you at understanding the social context in the environment in which you live work or operate and how well can you manage your behaviour or manage or perceive the emotions in other people? How well can you read a situation? How well can you read people? How well can you communicate? What kind of language do you use? What's your tonality like? What's your connectability like? All of these kind of things are absolutely critically important and you've touched upon

something very important marion i absolutely believe that when you have high levels of emotional intelligence from that you'll also build high levels of emotional resilience so when you do come under these very testing and challenging times that let's face it we all will or do at some point i literally have lost count of how many dead bodies i've seen or how many post-mortems i've been to that emotional resilience comes doesn't just come automatically it can be built over time when you learn how to a identify your thoughts and your emotions and how they impact on your thinking and then learn how to make friends with yourself so that you your emotions don't serve as a as the chimpanzee as steve peters often talks about in

this chimp paradox it's not some wild creature inside your brain running wild so you become irrational you have to allow your prefrontal cortex to kick in so you can make these rational logical empathic decisions in life yeah yeah absolutely absolutely it's really golden stuff carl um have you got like top tips for if people want to like make a change that's going to make a big change for them? What would be, like, your take-home piece of advice? Well, I would suggest something around self-awareness is critical. In this very, very fast world in which we exist, it's very hard nowadays to actually sit down, put the phones away, all of these distracting things away, and actually sit

down with a pen and paper. And in doing that, really analyse where you've been, and where you intend to go, and where you are right now. And within that, it's almost like doing a SWOT analysis on yourself. What are your strengths in everything that you've ever done and everything that you could ever do? What are the weaknesses in everything that you've ever experienced and what you could do in the future? What could be your future weaknesses? But in doing the weaknesses, I would suggest that you look

for evidence-based thinking. We can make up all the weaknesses in the world, but what's the evidence to substantiate that this is actually a credible weakness? So I have to put this caveat. You're doing a bit of CBT there, Carl, whether you know it or not. Thank you. And then, of course, the opportunities. So what is it around you in life?

What relationships exist or potential relationships? What access do you have to in groups environments that you could now nurture and grow and evolve what relationships and finally the threats so i don't like the threats part you know when we talk about the swot analysis i very rarely pay much attention to threat i'll tell you before we're conditioned from the moment that we are born to live in a very competitive environment. So even in business, people talk about competitors. I literally have no competitors. That's my vision in life. I have no competitors in life, no competitors in business. I had no competitors in the police service. I can only

compete with me. So if there is a threat, it's the quality of the person that you are in the police service. I can only compete with me. So if there is a threat, it's the quality of the person that you are in the here and now, how you're showing up. Don't worry about the potential competitors around you. There's a really good book, Marion, I don't know if you know, from Simon Sinek, who is one of my heroes in leadership. Simon Sinek talks about the infinite mind. I think it's called The Infinite Game Simon Sinek talks about the infinite mind. I think it's called the infinite game, but he talks about the infinite mind. He says in life, there are two mindsets. There's the infinite mindset and there's a finite mindset. The finite mindset is the leader who has a winning post. They say, right, by the time I'm 30, I want to achieve this, or my goal

now is to get to here but then you have to ask yourself well when you get to that winning post when you get to that goal what then and that for me is a finite mindset it's a very limiting mindset whereas the infinite mindset says I want to go in this direction and I want to keep going and keep learning and keep being curious I want to keep growing throughout my entire in the entirety entirety of my journey. And what you'll find is if they were to go for the same amount of period, the one with a growth mindset, the infinite mindset will have grown 10 times than the person with a finite mindset. So do a SWOT analysis on yourself, use a caveat that I've put in place there, come at it with an infinite mindset and see where where you are that's all about self-awareness

really getting an understanding of where you are who you are in the here and now and then you can start moving forward great i wonder if the same might be useful for helping people step into their leadership as well because as um you know psychologists we graduate um as band seven in the nhs which is quite high up bearing in mind it now starts at band two. And generally the top of the pay scales would be band nine, but they do go on beyond that for more senior levels, but they're not banded. There's an expectation that you're going to have some sort of leadership role, ultimately. Certainly as you go up to band eight a and b and c you know and d but that's sort of it can be a tricky thing to get your head around the fact

that maybe as soon as you qualify you go from trainee to qualified then they're looking for leadership and it's it's not necessarily something that's that easy to get experience of on the way up so how do we get our heads around that and get any good at it, Cole? That's a really good question. I've done a lot of work with the NHS, both in terms of culture change and leadership development. And I understand how the bandings work. But there are a lot of positions where you are in a similar position to that which you've just described. So for example, doctors, doctors don't train to be leaders, they train to be doctors, dentists, I'm just doing some

work with some dentists, they don't train to become a leader, they train to become a dentist. But the addition to that is that they automatically are seen as leaders as soon as they start working. Right. And it's no different with psychologists. So for me, leadership is not about the position that you own in an organization. Leadership is about how you show up in life. Let me explain that in a bit more with a bit more sort of common sense, really. I once trawled Google for the definition of leadership. And firstly, I was astounded that on the word leadership, I came up with nearly four billion responses in 0.67 seconds, which demonstrates that there's a lot of people interested in leadership.

Well, if it's nearly four billion, that's nearly half the world right but then when i look for the definition of leadership the definition i got was uh leader leadership is when you are leading an organization or you're leading a group of people now i don't know about you but if you have to use a word leadership sorry leading to describe the word, it's almost like the dictionary itself doesn't understand leadership. So being a non-conformist, I came up with my own definition, which I think is far more accurate. I think you are a leader whenever you are influencing people, you're influencing circumstances. Now within that, that should help to identify the answers to your question, because we can, therefore, be a leader way before we become a doctor in psychology, if we are influencing our pets because they look up to us for guidance as the alpha male, alpha female, if we are influencing friends because they see us as being an expert in a certain area, so therefore they come to us for advice,

or they just see us as an agony aunt and agony uncle, all of these are leadership roles. If you're the elder sibling, it's a leadership role. If your parents are getting old and they're now leaning on you, that's a leadership role. So if these are all leadership roles and these are just roles in life, let alone going in, working in NHS or anywhere else, it's as well that we start getting our leadership skills right from the outset. It's about reading the books. It's about practicing emotional intelligence. It's about becoming much, much more self-aware, analyzing ourselves. It's about asking for feedback, but then creating the environment

for that person to feel safe to give you feedback. You know, people often talk about asking for feedback, but it's no good unless you create a safe environment so there's psychological safety for the individual giving the feedback back to you if you do all of that then actually you're you're already on the journey to be becoming a leader and the natural transition from you being at a band seven to going further thereafter is so subtle it will almost be unnoticeable so leadership is something that we can all learn it's not something that we're born with it's something that we learn throughout our the entirety of our lives but we have to look for

leadership in the most in the most sort of unexpected areas of our lives don't align it to our work or position align it to who we are so the boots on the ground example for our audience would be i guess cultural temperature of organizations and how people want to show up in terms of dignity and respect for their clients, taking time for their colleagues, not being afraid to use their voice so long as they're using it in a compassionate way. They've got a plan where they're going, and they can guide people gently by the elbow to get there in a way that feels supportive.

Absolutely. And if you think about the role that a psychologist performs, you have got such an important role in somebody's life. You are influencing their life. That's a leadership role. And I loved what you're talking about, the cultural temperature. If you are going to work within the NHS, remember that all of these NHS trusts up and down the country, they will all have similar but different cultures. There will be subcultures that exist within an umbrella culture. So work for an organisation whose culture aligns with your culture,

whose values align with your values, and then you'll feel happier in that workplace. I've just done a cultural diagnostic on a healthcare provider with 1,400 staff, and there are so many staff who are frustrated, angry, upset, scared about being in that organisation because the culture is not right. So it really is about the values and the culture need to be one, they need to be synonymous. But also the values of the organisation and the individuals in the organisation need to be aligned. So test yourself at that level. Next time you go for a job application,

don't just look at the banding or the wage or the money that comes from it or the position that you get. Ask yourself, would I be happy working in this organisation? That is such an important point and a wonderful one to leave it on. Carl, how can people find out more about you, about your book, about your upcoming book as well? Where is the best place for people to connect with you? Okay, so the best place, I guess, is either through my website, which is www.igniteyourinnerpotential.com or just find me on LinkedIn. I'm always looking for people to connect with me on LinkedIn. So it's Cole Mahay on LinkedIn. That's K-U-L. And second name is Mahay, M-A-H-A-Y.

Find me on LinkedIn. Connect with me. I'm always happy to connect. Perfect. Thank you so much for your time. It's been a pleasure. You're so welcome. I've enjoyed it. Thank you. Oh, thank you for your time in watching and listening. Isn't Carl just, you know, super inspiring? He's like a little rocket in your pocket that you can keep there for a day where you need a little bit of motivating self-talk, which I know that many of you have been in contact to say that this is what I do for you too. You know, I help you weather the storm of this wild ride in clinical psychology or the route to other qualified psychology routes too.

Thank you so much for listening. And I will catch you for the next episode of The Aspiring Psychologist, which will drop in to your favorite podcast supplier at 6 a.m. on Monday. Take care. Be kind to you. And thank you for being in my world. Then let this be your guide With this podcast at your side You'll be on your way to being qualified It's the Aspiring Psychologist Podcast With Dr. Marianne Trent My name's Jana and I'm a trainee psychological well-being practitioner. I read the Clinical Psychologist Collective book. I found it really interesting about all the different stories and how people got to become a clinical psychologist. It just amazed me how many different routes there are to get there

and there's no perfect way to become one. And this kind of filled me with confidence that, no, I'm not doing it wrong and put less pressure on myself. So if you're feeling a bit uneasy about becoming a clinical psychologist I'd definitely recommend this just to put yourself at ease and everything will be okay. But trust me you will not put the book down once you start.