In this episode of the My Kinda Leader® podcast, Anna is joined by Darren Putt - the founder of Motus Training - a health, fitness, lifestyle, and performance consultancy business.

Darren (and the team at Motus) work with both individuals and organisations (including businesses and schools) and are involved with anything to do with how to improve performance using health as the mechanism to do that.

A lot of their work at the moment is around helping people manage stress better, and then how that then affects behaviours in the more mainstream areas of health such as nutrition, exercise and sleep.

Darren shares how the health and fitness industry are aware that the struggle to be healthy and fit is mostly in being consistent. In fact the health industry is built knowing that the gym would never be full, and it couldn't cope if every member stayed consistent and turned up! Just because it is a struggle to keep consistent, perhaps the 'trick' is to stay consistently getting back on track. If weight loss is your aim, but for whatever reason you cannot stick to your dietary regimen, stick instead with getting back into it as quickly as possible.

Anna and Darren touch on what's in the way of people doing the self-care even when they have the knowledge. We've all been their with the plan, the project, the programme and the focus (initially) so why is looking after ourselves still so hard to keep going?

For many committment to self-care is a struggle because they fall out with themselves and then don't allow themselves to forgive the falling off the diet, or falling out of the gym. That then turns up as a 'What's the point?'. Failure is not an option. What if failure wasn't even possible in self-care...and it's just healthier to think it's a bumpy journey that never ends?

Darren shares his challenge of finding what people prescribe in the health industry is often not what is done behind closed doors. This can come across as insincere, double standards and yet massive profits are made. Anna asks Darren what's the main question we should be asking ourselves as human beings right now, whilst we face coming through this pandemic and also face a health crisis mental and physical health.

You can discover more about Darren and Motus Training through the following links:

www.motustraining.co.uk

www.linkedin.com/company/motustraning

www.instagram.com/motus_community/

www.facebook.com/motustraining/

www.youtube.com/channel/UCr8fbgBZgguZRUYA2dv-CDw

To watch and listen to more episodes of the My Kinda Leader podcast, and for more information on the MKL Methodology® books, trainings and workshops:

www.mykindalife.org

In this episode of the My Kinda Leader podcast, Anna is joined by Tara Nolan - a Master Certified Coach who works with C-Suite Executives and Senior Leadership Teams to disrupt thinking and invite change for a renewed sense of Purpose, Clarity & Ease.

Tara's extensive business experience includes investment banking, headhunting, and most recently coaching. She also hosts The Game of Teams Podcast, exploring the thoughts and thinking of others who have a role in making teams great.

Tara courageously shares her personal background as well as her life in the financial industry. She discovered from her hardship as a child that it had created a resilience and tenacity in her that she then developed into her coaching to support other people's growth. She also shares that deep experiences create deep sensitivities and these can be 'triggered', in other words; create emotional and behavioural responses in us that we often not in control of, and not proud of.

Tara goes on to share how becoming self-aware as a leader was important to her. She describes an event where she was triggered by someone's behaviour and she behaved in a way that she describes as volatile. She went on to de-sensitise some of these triggers and worked purposefully to discover the types of behaviours and types of environments that she found and still finds triggering.

Anna & Tara discuss how permitting and having one's emotions as a leader creates robustness and empathy for others. They discuss how thwarting our emotions doesn't make them disappear, it only squashes them down for a time. Hence leaders finding they may well 'boil over' with anger for example; particularly if they're unaware of how they feel and why they feel that way.

This discussion illuminates how contrary to popular opinion, squashing down emotions for too long doesn't create strong leadership, it inadvertently weakens the leader and deems them less able to control/choose their behaviours.

Tara rightly brings to the table the extraordinary challenges leaders have faced and still face bringing the unprecedented times of Covid19 Pandemic, Brexit, invasion of Ukraine, political extremes, the new workplace, hybrid working, mass resignation. The level of uncertainty is de-stabilising, and leaders face the demand to stabilise the people, the workplace whilst they face the same uncertainty themselves.

Thousands of leaders around the world faced the turmoil and torment of a pandemic with no rule book, no guide, each had to create their own. Many did this with ease, many did not and are not through to the other side of it as yet. Tara & Anna discuss the uncertainty this now requires where care, and trust will need to be built again, or perhaps for the first time.

Tara, as a team coach talks about her three C's of Collection, Context & Co-creation all keys to leading and building trust in teams. She talks frequently about this in her podcast The Games of Teams.

You can discover more about Tara Nolan through the following links:

www.taranolan.ie/

www.thegameofteams.com/

To watch and listen to more episodes of the My Kinda Leader® podcast, and for more information on the MKL Methodology® books, trainings and workshops:

www.mykindalife.org

In this episode, Anna returns to one of the common themes in leadership; that of bullying. This comes up time and time again with discussions with leaders wanting to improve their leadership and those embarking on trying to understand their own emotional scars of being victims of bullish behaviour. How does the experience of bullying now affect their ability to lead.

Anna is often consulted by people in leadership roles who are trying to deal with their bullish behaviour and by organisations who are trying to deal with bullying in the workplace. This subject is one of the central issues that inspired the My Kinda Leader® podcast and why it focusses on kindness in leadership. Kindness must be both within the person and so shared within the organisation. This podcast tells you why.

The effect of bullish behaviour is not only challenging and distressing it is traumatising. Victims of bullying can suffer years of torment, and then post-trauma symptoms. Some leaders come to realise later on that their leadership is affected by their early experiences of bullish behaviour.

Bullying cannot be acceptable, but it can be understood and addressed. We cannot continue to bullying is inevitable in the workplace. We, therefore, have to understand why this behaviour is happening, not condone it, but to understand it and so be rid of it.

Leaders who resort to bullish behaviour must be encouraged to take responsibility and become self-aware enough to adjust this behaviour and to not have to rely on it to make themselves feel better. Anna explains how a leader in good relationship with themselves will not need to bully another person be it a direct report, an assistant, or anyone within their life.

Anna describes trying to find ways to manage this issue for the greater good of people in small and large organisations. Nobody deserves to be bullied abused traumatised in their workplace. We therefore must find ways of understanding what's happening why and what we can do about it. There's no point in having a zero policy on something unless we are going to find a way to address it.

Just because it's difficult doesn't mean to say we shouldn't try. We must appeal to people taking responsibility for their own emotional and psychological experiences and take responsibility for their recovery and healing from them so that they do not go on to devastate someone else's life.

Anna describes how bullish behaviour can sometimes be cyclical (but often not) in that if people are bullied, they feel bad about themselves they are often appalled that they were not able to stop the abuse. They often turn it against themselves that they did not make a stand for themselves. If these things were possible bullish behaviour/bullying wouldn’t exist.

People who feel bad about themselves will often advertently go on to use bullish behaviour against others as a poor attempt at making themselves feel better. Of course, this rarely works, and so the cycle continues.

To watch and listen to more episodes of the My Kinda Leader® podcast, and for more information on the My Kinda Life Methodology® books, trainings, and workshops:

www.mykindalife.org

In this episode, Anna describes how you can become an empathic leader and what may be in the way of empathy.

Many worry that they can empathise too much and become 'swamped' by another person's emotions. This can be particularly stressful for the busy leader who is already juggling many responsibilities, and many of which will not be obvious. Anna describes that it isn't possible to be overwhelmed with empathy, if you look after your own emotions, and have kindly and considerate boundaries that look after you.

Anna describes why it's tricky and challenging to describe what empathy is, for those who struggle to empathise with their own emotions and in turn their behaviours based on their emotions. This episode was created because people have said that they struggle with this concept and why it's important and more importantly how to empathise and convey care.

This episode describes Anna’s executive training on what she calls the ‘Full Emotional Palette where she supports leaders around the world to develop ease with all emotions so that they do not hinder their other leadership skills. A positive off-shoot to this being that leaders with a full emotional palette will naturally empathise with others without their own energy being used up!

When leaders are already overwhelmed and therefore under-resourced it's often very difficult to empathise with other people's points of view or feeling/emotions. It's not that they don't care, it's just that they can't for the time being. Anna describes how if a leader is self-aware and is accepting of their own emotional world they tend to be more accepting of the emotional world of their colleagues.

Anna describes the myth of becoming overwhelmed or having compassion fatigue. Compassion fatigue is really when an individual struggles to empathise or have compassion for themselves. Not that they don't care, it's simply that they have no resources to care.

In order to care for somebody else whilst your own needs are ignored empathy simply takes up more energy than they have to spare. This is why people get worn down, and feel overwhelmed.

If a leader is concerned about being swamped by other people that really is an indication that they are already swamped with their workload or indeed their own personal experiences, demands and emotions as we all are at times in life.

Anna talks about how empathy is felt and not just spoken and how this can be difficult to be clear about. She endeavours to do so even though she even gets herself in a 'pickle' with the subject towards the end!!

Why is empathy important. To be able to feel into a colleague’s views, emotions, experiences meaning you can understand what that person brings to the table play to their strengths support their so-called weaknesses.

Why is empathy in leadership important and why does it belong on this pod. Without empathy it’s hard to be kind. Kindness in leadership is where a leader can empathise enough to help make working life for the other better and not worse. Kindness can be used to ease challenging times, it can be used to make difficult information more palatable. It can create solidarity and deepen relationships. Empathy and Kindness are connected and are core values to a positively impactful leader.

More information:

www.mykindalife.org

www.annapinkerton.com

In this episode of the My Kinda Leader podcast, Anna welcomes Amo Raju - CEO of Disability Direct and Entrepreneur. He is the author of the extraordinary book Walk Like A Man, which tells of his hidden journey with depression whilst being a successful CEO.

Alongside his work with Disability Direct, Amo also runs a consultancy company 'Amo Raju & Associates Ltd' specialising in mentoring SME’s and start-up companies focussing in social & health care related services, is a motivational speaker, and is also the author of a book 'Walk Like a Man'.

Amo talks about how he had unexpectedly landed a leadership role heading up a service for people with disabilities. Here he found his purpose. He recalls his mentor Richard advising him to 'feel peoples' pain' so you can help them. Of course, as a disabled person himself Amo, was in thorough knowledge of these pains and challenges, therefore becoming the best person to lead.

Amo describes the beginnings of his leadership like being left with a 'screaming baby' with not enough in the bank to feed the baby, or the workers for much longer. The weight of responsibility motivated him to give it his best shot.

He describes living in council housing and financially having to rely on benefits before he became a leader himself. He worked so hard at the beginning of this role that he had a mini-stroke. He talks about having to become a fundraising expert overnight, and an employment law expert through learning from mistakes made. Having to show the fortitude to continue to learn from his mistakes and not being destroyed by them Amo has forged his own leadership path, he says there is no training manual for leadership. His youth, energy and hunger for knowledge were his tools for success.

Amo talks about how discrimination, harassment and prejudice of any kind particularly towards people with disabilities sits like a demon on his shoulders, because he does feel it for others, and this can be a burden to carry. He tells of how he is full of ideas, and how he captures them.

Amo kindly shares his biggest challenge with mental ill health and what he did privately to support himself through many years of living with depression whilst building a charity that's brought in millions. He also shares his multiple crashes into burnout and how he lives now to prevent it; and noticing the warning signs of becoming overwhelmed.

Amo lets us know why he kept his depression secret for 30 years. The pressures within familial culture and workplace culture at the time. How fear of being seen as weak was so crushing speaking about his health challenge felt too much of a risk, and like many feeling like a fraud, when actually you can be a super CEO and have health challenges of all kinds.

Amo describes all of this in his amazing book Walk Like A Man available here at Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/23aa2xnp

You can discover more about Amo Raju through the following links:

www.amoraju.com/

www.linkedin.com/in/amo-singh-raju-1253a634/

www.instagram.com/amorajuofficial/

www.facebook.com/AmoRajuOfficial

www.twitter.com/AmoSinghRaju

www.tiktok.com/@amorajuofficial

To watch and listen to more episodes of the My Kinda Leader podcast, and for more information on the MKL Methodology® books, trainings and workshops:

www.mykindalife.org

In this episode Anna Pinkerton shares her experience of domestic abuse trauma, and how this paved the way to the My Kinda Life® methodology and the My Kinda Leader® podcast. She explains how being at rock bottom and in total neurological dissarray she learned so much about what top is. Anna set out to find something that would improve the experience of being human.  She did. This is her story.

Live & Lead With Kindness join the book waiting list! My Kinda Life® - In Leadership

In this episode we take a look at how a leader is better resourced & more resilient if they learn to have all their emotions available to them. There are no positive or negative emotions they're all the same, some just hurt more than others. We all have an emotional template and becoming aware of it gives us a great opportunity to increase it and to move through emotions with greater ease.

The more at ease we are with emotions the more we will move through life with ease.  The more we will lead with ease.

Live & Lead With Kindness join the book waiting list! My Kinda Life® - In Leadership

This episode explores how replacing the inner bully with kindness & companionability to self effects your leadership for the better. How you meet & treat yourself within is your best indicator as to what you can work on to improve your leadership and your enjoyment of it. A cruel, vicious, brutal inner atmosphere is inadvertently wearing you down, and prevents you sustaining yourself.

Live & Lead With Kindness join the book waiting list! My Kinda Life® - In Leadership