Beth Stallwood 00:00:00 - 00:02:20
Welcome to the WorkJoy Jam. Hi from me, I'm Beth Stallwood, your host and in today's episode, I am joined by the fabulous Alice Sheldon. Now, Alice has the most interesting career background of so many people that I meet, having been a school teacher, a barrister and the CEO of an organisation as well. So a really varied career, and I've kind of just given it away because she's going to tell you more about that in just a moment. But she also has this wonderful model around needs understanding, which is revealed in her book ‘Why weren't we taught this at school?’ about relationships and the challenges that we have with them and how we need to look inside ourselves and understand what is it that triggers us about other people's behaviour and what does that mean around the values and the things that we find important? I think this is a great conversation and one that really helps us all and definitely helped me to consider different ways of looking at some of the challenges that we have in life and especially the challenges that are amplified in workplaces and how we might be able to use this model to help us gain some perspective, to help us have some progress, and to help us all with our relationships, with ourselves and with other people. I really hope you enjoy this episode.

Welcome to the WorkJoy Jam. Today I am joined by the wonderful Alice Sheldon and I am really excited for our conversation. But rather than me introduce Alice, can I hand over to you and can you tell us a little bit about you, who you are, what you do, and perhaps a little bit about how you came to do what you do would be fun, too.

Alice Sheldon 00:02:20 - 00:03:48
Thank you very much for having me, Beth. It is a pleasure to be here. So, I have had a very varied career. I started with a psychology and neuroscience degree and then moved through teaching and qualifying as a barrister and then running the bars national pro bono charity. But I think the threads that have been there right the way through, I've always had a real interest in personal development and I've also had an interest in how we can work together to create the kind of world that we want to live in. So those have been the sort of golden threads, I guess, that I followed and the two things that have had the most significant impact on me I think one is sort of deep psychotherapeutic work, but one of the things that jarred me about that is how for most people, that is never going to be available for one reason or another. And I then discovered something called non-violent communication. I don't find it a particularly helpful title, but the body of work, I think, is astonishing. It was all kicked off by a guy called Marshall Rosenberg in the States and from those two kind of pieces of journeying for me, I guess, I've woven together over the last 15 years the work that I now do.

Beth Stallwood 00:03:49 - 00:04:28
Amazing. It's a really interesting journey from psychology and neuroscience to teaching to barrister to running the pro bono to then doing what you do now. That's quite an interesting journey. And I love this. I love it when we talk about people's careers, because I think so often we have the perspective that you start somewhere and there's a really obvious route. And there is nothing obvious about the route that you have taken. I'd love to hear a little bit about those transition points, what made you change from maybe the tradition, the structure, the kind of putting in a box would put you in that version, to where you actually ended up.

Alice Sheldon 00:04:28 - 00:05:08
Thank you, Beth. I mean it fits very beautifully with the word joy. I know some people stumble over the word joy. Personally, I really love it, because at each of those transitions, I didn't have an end plan in mind. I wasn't trying to get to a particular career position or whatever. What I was doing was making choices that were in the path of joy, if you like. That matched where my energy was and what I loved. I do think it’s perhaps worth saying in passing, for me it was very important that I always had an overarching connection with my values and a deep connection with my purpose and what I wanted. So those decisions weren't like, oh, well, I think I'd like to go and do this, this and this today. But it was like, right, okay. I know that I really want to find the Alice shape piece to do in the world, to leave it, you know, a little bit more like I want it to be. And then, what are the choices that I'm going to make along the way that in that context bring me joy.

Beth Stallwood 00:05:50 - 00:06:51
I love this. And so often people come to me and they say, oh, I don't know what I want to do next. And I think sometimes if you just follow the things that bring you joy, you find the thing that is, I love the way you call it Alice shaped. You find the thing that is Alice shaped or Beth shaped or Marjorie shaped or whatever shape it is that you want to be, rather than following a traditional, here's what's laid out for you. It's like, don't follow the yellow brick road if you were Dorothy. It's find the route that works for you. And I love the idea of being deeply connected with your values and your purpose equally, that could be really hard for some people to understand what your values and purpose is. And I don't think we're all born knowing that. And I'd be interested to know because I feel like over time, some things around our purpose can change as well and gets bigger or changes shape or morphs, depending on where we are in our lives. And I'd love to hear a bit more about your values and purpose and how that's informed where you've gone.

Alice Sheldon 00:06:52 - 00:08:54
Thank you. Yeah and I absolutely agree with you. I don't see it at all as a fixed thing. And I do think it's a very different experience for different people. I suppose in a sense, I had a very privileged upbringing in terms of material resource, I guess and I'm not quite sure where the awareness came at a very young age. I remember walking along the road with a sense of, this just is not fair. How this operates is not fair and I've always been, certainly in my young years, felt slightly sort of politically naive and unsure where I could put myself, I suppose. Because in answer to your question, I guess my values were always around, how do we create a world of more equity, of more equality, of opportunity, of more joy for everybody? How can we actually do that? And I couldn't see a place for myself in what I perceived at that time. I didn’t feel like I was bold enough to be an activist, and I didn't feel like I was oratorial and clever enough to be a politician. I didn't really know where I was going and I suppose that's what I mean. I've always known that I've wanted to find my stuff and I'm guessing you will resonate strongly with this. It is a privilege and a delight when you do find, okay, this is actually where I belong and what I can bring.

Beth Stallwood 00:08:55 - 00:09:10
It just made me smile a little bit and I can imagine you in my head as a young child, checking your privilege before anyone actually knew the term check your privilege.

Alice Sheldon 00:09:13 - 00:09:15
Yeah, something like that.

Beth Stallwood 00:09:15 - 00:09:28
Something like going oh, okay, this isn't fair and I don't like it, but not necessarily knowing how to deal with it or what to do with it, because the traditional routes aren't the thing that you want to do.

Alice Sheldon 00:09:28 - 00:09:50
I think that's right and because our identity as children is so wrapped up, isn't it, with the immediate surroundings that we have. It's always going to take a bit of time, I think, to come into that place of actually, that's where I've come from. I'm very grateful for this, this and this and now I'm going to go in this direction.

Beth Stallwood 00:09:51 - 00:10:10
Yeah, yeah, it's amazing and you talked about finding the Alice shaped thing and we'll come to what you do now in a little bit. When you were doing the different parts of your career, so when you were teaching or barristering. Barristering. That's not really a word, is it?

Alice Sheldon 00:10:10 - 00:10:12
A crazy word. I love that. 

Beth Stallwood 00:10:12 - 00:10:13
Barristering. I don't know. I'm just going to go with it. I always think if Shakespeare created new words, I don't see why we can't. He possibly had slightly more skill than me, but we'll give it a go. And then to thinking about the pro bono side, did you manage to find Alice shaped bits of those roles on your journey to where you are now?

Alice Sheldon 00:10:36 - 00:10:54
Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely, I did and each of those experiences, when I look back, has given me invaluable gifts that have gone into the now, if you like.

Beth Stallwood 00:10:56 - 00:11:17
And I think that's also a really interesting thing, is sometimes along the way, we don't always know, do we, why that thing is important. And then ten years later, oh, now I understand that particular part of my career. I understand that bit of my life and how it all pieces together, but sometimes it's only visible in the rear view mirror.

Alice Sheldon 00:11:17 - 00:11:36
Yeah, I think that's absolutely right and especially the bits that are uncomfortable and difficult. I certainly find that, looking back, it's much easier to have some perspective on that than I could ever have done at the time.

Beth Stallwood 00:11:36 - 00:11:57
Sometimes I do want to. Like sometimes the difficult stuff is stuff you have to work through. Sometimes the difficult stuff is the icky stuff, when you realise more deeply what your values are, because you go, oh, this isn't right for what I want to do or who I want to be or where I'm heading and sometimes the difficult stuff is just difficult stuff, because life and work and all the stuff we have to do is difficult.

Alice Sheldon 00:11:58 - 00:12:32
Yeah, absolutely and, I mean, it's that old sort of, you know, give us the wisdom to change the things that we need to. I can't remember the precise wording, but it's that sense of knowing what is stuff to be born, if you like, or to be worked through, or actually, where we do need to be saying, you know what? That's enough now. I need to move. That's the tricky bit, I guess.

Beth Stallwood 00:12:25 - 00:12:33
So tell us a little bit about what you do now. Where has this pathway led you to?

Alice Sheldon 00:12:34 - 00:13:08
So, over the last 15 years, I have developed a way of making sense of the world, which, I hasten to add, builds very heavily on the work of many, many, many people. It's not mine, but it's my formulation of it into something that I hope is going to be more graspable by more people. I could attempt to use fewer words than I usually do.

Beth Stallwood 00:13:11 - 00:13:17
Verbose it up if you need to. We don't mind, have a few words. I'm a fan of the words.

Alice Sheldon 00:13:19 - 00:14:33
So essentially what it is, it's a way of understanding the world through the lens of human needs. Now, when I'm talking about human needs, I'm talking about everything from food and water and whatever through to all the stuff, the really good stuff in life that we don't always talk about. So, you know, knowing that I matter, being seen by other people, having a deep connection with other people, having a purpose in my life. And there's a one sider of these needs, words that cover the things that pretty much every human being in the world needs to have. And the reason that this is powerful for me is that the whole body of work sits around a couple of principles. And the first one is really key, which is that every single thing that I am doing in the world, I am subconsciously, consciously trying to meet those underlying needs. So no matter how obnoxious I am finding someone else's behaviour if I turn to understand what needs that's not meeting for me and what needs they might be trying to meet, it gives me a completely different way of looking at the world. So then all the tools of needs understanding, which are to do with how do we speak so we're more likely to be heard, how do we listen so that someone feels seen, how do we act in a way which really takes care of all the needs that are in the room even if we can't meet them all, how do we distinguish between when we're arguing, often we're arguing about the different strategies that we're choosing to follow. If we start to actually understand what the underlying needs are, we're much more likely to get somewhere because we all understand and have a deep connection with human needs. So it's much easier if I can see that that person who's behaving so horribly is probably looking for belonging, maybe. Or maybe they're looking for recognition. It takes us into a different sort of sphere.

Beth Stallwood 00:15:36 - 00:16:24
It's so interesting when we look at it from the angle of work and what I talk about a lot, which is obviously work joy, in that these things you're talking about, if they're not right they’re a massive source of what I call work gloom. So the stuff that really is frustrating about work or upsetting about work or makes us want to hand our notice in at work and that taking it from that real human level versus all the constructs around organisations which we've just made up to try and get stuff done, takes it right back to, what are we trying as humans to do here? And that's a really interesting way of being, I suppose, in the workplace and beyond.

Alice Sheldon 00:16:25 - 00:17:09
Yeah, absolutely. And I love that because I work in organisations all of the time. That's where I choose to put my energy. And I love seeing the, I've started to think of it recently as a party bag, actually. Often, I'll go in to do a workshop in something, and some of the room won't have realised that they're going to be carrying home a set of tools that they can use then with their parents or with their child or whatever it is. But these are genuinely universal ways, I suppose, of understanding the world.

Beth Stallwood 00:17:10 - 00:18:05
It's really interesting, one of the things you said right back at the beginning, and I won't have the exact notes because I can't write as quickly as most people can talk, but you talked about doing deep psychological, psychotherapeutic work and that this isn't something that everyone has the privilege of being able to work through. And it's one thing I'm interested in with this is we're not taught this stuff right. We don't ever get an education in understanding our basic human needs or understanding what other people's behaviours might be telling us about their basic human needs. Yet it is quite fundamental to the human experience. So, I mean, imagining what you do is to help people educate themselves about this stuff. But, like, why don't we all know this already?

Alice Sheldon 00:18:07 - 00:19:10
That is the most excellent question, Beth. It is a good question and actually the way that I particularly choose to use, what I'm trying to say is this is not the only way. There are obviously other disciplines which have similar kind of wisdom or that people work with in similar ways. And the same is true, I think, for that, we haven't prioritized it through the system that we have created. And I think there are many wonderful things about our school system. And I also think that systemically, there is stuff that is desperately needed and one of those pieces is the emotional education, if you like, the emotional experience that isn't in most schools at the moment.

Beth Stallwood 00:19:10 - 00:19:29
And I'm sitting here as a person who hasn't been to school, you'll be surprised, but I haven't been to school for a very long time. I haven't been to school for a long time and I was sitting here and I don't have kids, and I'm sitting here wondering, is this something that schools do now, or are we still behind in that zone?

Alice Sheldon 00:19:29 - 00:20:28
There’s been massive progress. Massive progress. So just to contextualize, I have a child who's currently doing A levels, so she's finished formal, you know, compulsory education and she's had wonderful schooling, and the system as a whole is still very oriented around success in a way that doesn't equate necessarily to emotional and relational success. And I don't think that's down to individual schools, certainly not down to individual teachers. I think it's at a bigger level that the questions are widely about grades, and grades in a very limited range of subjects, and grades tested academically in a way that only some children will access.

Beth Stallwood 00:20:29 - 00:21:17
So better but maybe not exactly as we'd want it so far in education. And then my brain goes to, okay then when we go into organisations and people start working, there's a responsibility for organisations on the development front and helping people to do their jobs really, really well. I don't think I've seen a job description in the last 20 years that hasn't said the words able to work as a team or able to work in a group or able to collaborate or able to blah, blah, blah. All of those things are in almost every single job description. But being a person who has previously been responsible for the learning and development of organisations, I'm sitting here going, have we ever properly taught that within an organisation as well? Or are we just expecting everyone to get along?

Alice Sheldon 00:21:17 - 00:21:49
Yeah, absolutely. It's not a mistake that we sometimes talk about putting on a mask to go into work. You know, that you have to kind of sit similarly for school, children will need to put on a little bit of armour to go in, they can't fully be themselves because there are rules, spoken or unspoken, that need to be followed. And I think in organisations, you know, it's not really acceptable not to. And what we want to do is build and maintain genuinely supportive relationships. What we don't want is people going around saying exactly how they feel or whatever else. However, what we do want is we want people to have tools so that they don't have to squash large parts of themselves, but they can deal with those parts appropriately and without without sort of blurting it all onto somebody else.

Beth Stallwood 00:22:22 - 00:23:00
So there's a big thing, isn't there, in the world, about bringing your whole self to work and all of that. And I don't fully subscribe to the idea of bringing your whole self to work because I'm not sure that I want to bring all of the bits of me to work. I want to make a choice about that but what I want to do is to not hide bits of me and I don't want to have to not be me as a human. But I think there's something for me about what's the professional filter that you bring to work? And within that professional filter how do I have a toolkit that enables me to do all those things really well at work?

Alice Sheldon 00:23:00 - 00:23:38
Yeah, absolutely. And it might help just to give us a concrete example, which actually, it's a personal one that comes to mind. So I may have mentioned this to you, but anyway, I play a lot of bridge. Absolutely love my bridge and when I was playing bridge recently, there was a guy in the club that I play at, which I love, and he was talking really at high volume whilst the rest of us were trying to play some very low level, competitive bridge. I looked around to see if it was just me who was distracted. It clearly wasn't just me. There are other people looking or whatever and because I know this guy and like him, I kind of at some point made a gesture, just asking him if he'd perhaps lower his voice a bit. Anyway, he responded by sort of loudly, forcefully across the room, saying, I will not be quiet. I'm teaching bridge. And I was a bit like, oh, my goodness. But what was interesting, Beth, was, for me, I, in that moment, crumpled into being about five years old. I felt myself physically get smaller. I felt my insides kind of react. I could see that my partner, who I play with all the time, was slightly laughing at this whole scenario. She was not affected and what I take from this is that, for reasons to do with my history as opposed to her history, I have a bit of a disproportionate, a bit of a large reaction to that. And the danger is that if I don't know how to process that, then either I'm going to just avoid that guy and not really talk to him anymore, or I'm going to go and challenge him in an unconstructive way. And what I want to be able to do is to have that, okay do I want to talk to him about it? Yeah, I think I would like to say something, actually. I found that quite difficult. So that's the kind of middle place that I want to be in. And that's, I think what we're talking about with the professional filter? The professional filter that keeps me doing that processing so I can then go and interact in a way that I, from my adult self, not from my five year old, you know, dissolved child just shouted at me.

Beth Stallwood 00:25:37 - 00:26:05
You've made me feel like I'm a child being shouted at. I don't like it. So it's the tools to keep you in the professional zone and to be able to not. I mean, you might still feel it. So, you know, I was really pleased. I know this sounds awful, so take it as a good thing, please. I'm really pleased that even somebody like you, who knows all this stuff and has spent years researching and developing a thing that you still sometimes don't feel good when things happen.

Alice Sheldon 00:26:05 - 00:26:07
Yeah, for sure.

Beth Stallwood 00:26:08 - 00:26:25
Because I think sometimes, I know I do, we all do this thing, I'm sure lots of people do it. You read a book by someone like, oh, my God, they've got it all nailed. They must have 100%. They never feel any negative emotion about these particular things. They never have, like, childhood things come up. They never have the squiggly, horrible feeling in their tummy, but the fact that you do. But then you can go, okay, how do I deal with this? What do I do with it? And be able to maybe bring some sensible, logical process things into it so that you don't run and hide and never go back to your bridge club, which you love, and you take all the joy out of your life because one person did something you didn't like or go and create a scene.

Alice Sheldon 00:26:48 - 00:26:49
Exactly.

Beth Stallwood 00:26:49 - 00:26:51
But it's going to help nobody.

Alice Sheldon 00:26:51 - 00:27:26
Yeah, that's exactly it, Beth and I do, and I like to talk. Thank you for the way you welcome that. And I like to talk about it because what is absolutely clear is the more that we do this work, the fewer the triggers and the less bad they are when they happen. You know, I didn't burst into tears and run straight to the ladies at that moment, which I really might well have done 15 or 20 years ago, But, you know, there is progress, and I really believe it's always going to be a work in progress.

Beth Stallwood 00:27:27 - 00:28:21
One thing, and I can't remember who told me, it was some kind of psychologist I'm sure it was, who told me that you’ve got to remember that we feel before we think as humans, like, we feel it first. So our immediate emotional reaction isn't always the truth. It's just the immediate thing. And if we can learn as adults, as grown ups with some tools, and it sounds like you've got some of these tools that help you to kind of go, okay, what is the actual best way to deal with this? How do I understand what my needs are in this situation? How do I understand what their needs are? Or maybe even predict or guess what someone else's needs are and see how we can work on everyone getting their needs met? Then we're likely to be in a better position most of the time. But what I'm also hearing from you is that this is a game of progress, not perfection.

Alice Sheldon 00:28:22 - 00:30:37
Thank you. That is exactly it there. That's exactly it. And actually, when I was writing my book, one of the things that I really enjoyed was coming up with metaphors for different things. That's necessarily my way of thinking, but I absolutely loved it when the publisher was like, no, you really need to think about some pictures to put in and we talked a lot about signs to point us towards our needs. And one of those signs is how we feel. So if we've got difficult feelings going on, we used the image of the weather and we developed that a bit. You know, it comes and it goes. It can be very kind of overwhelming at times. It can change very quickly. So that's one kind of clue. But the other one I liked even better, which we called monsters. What was the adjective we used with the mythical monsters? I think we had mythical monsters and the idea that our judgments about ourselves and about other people are also signs to us to get in touch with our needs. So if I'm sitting thinking, oh, I'm so bad at this, I'm sure Beth's last guest or episode was much better than me. I'm sure that, you know, I'm going to not get whatever piece of work it is I bid for or whatever it is that I'm doing to myself. Or I'm thinking, oh my God, that Beth, she's so annoying. Never think that in reality. But all of that, we can then turn back to our needs. So in the first bit, it's, I really long to give back in the world. So there are going to be times when I'm having judgments and that's an indicator that I'm not really feeling like I'm quite getting where I want to in the world. I'm not contributing the way I want to. And that's helpful because then I can refine how to go about getting that need. And I can understand why I might not be feeling the way I want to.

Beth Stallwood 00:30:38 - 00:31:22
Like a little indicator light that comes on. I don't know about anyone else, but I always think if you've got that kind of weird feeling in your tummy, you've got to pay attention to something, haven't you? And it's not always as obvious as that loud person over there who is really annoying. And I'm trying to do something here. Sometimes it's a really subtle thing that somebody has said in a meeting, and you go and ruminate on it for days and weeks and think about it and you're like, does this mean that I'm terrible? Did they mean that? What was going on there? I didn't like what they said. You know, that it can be really subtle, but your body tells you that there's something not quite right.

Alice Sheldon 00:31:23 - 00:33:07
And I'm really glad you said that, Beth. There are two things I want to pick up on from that. One is what's going on in our body. But the second is, why is it that I am affected by the loud man in the bridge club and my friend isn't? You know, what is it that means that some of us are affected by seemingly small things that other people can find funny or ridiculous, and then we can make it even worse for ourselves by judging ourselves for feeling awful because we think we should. But the way that I understand that is that each of us has our own fingerprint pattern of needs which are about somewhere between two and five. Needs which are personal to us and when they're touched upon, we have a big reaction. So one of mine in that situation in the bridge club, which was around the need, is knowing I'm good enough just the way I am, knowing I'm good enough. Now, I did not spend the first 20 years of my life believing that that was the case. I felt like I was always, always falling short. And, you know, that that was around me in my environment, if you like. So whenever someone touches the edge of that need, it's huge for me, because it's not just this evening in the bridge club, which would be absolutely nowhere. This is like, I won't say how old I am, but I also have been many years not at school, but, you know, there's a lot of years back of that need not being met. And so that's why each of us has our different programming. So when we see a coworker, for example, explode over something that we think is tiny, they're not really exploding over whatever the trigger is. It's the stuff that they're holding that has created that.

Beth Stallwood 00:33:08 - 00:33:37
And this is where we could, we won't today, but where you could go into a deep thing about all of your childhood, the trauma, the things that haven't gone right for you, where you've had to develop coping mechanisms and all that stuff. And you're so right, we so often see in other people don't we? The overreaction of what we perceive as an overreaction to a very small trigger versus when we do it ourselves. That feeling of this is the worst thing that's ever happened to me feels genuinely threatening to us.

Alice Sheldon 00:33:37 - 00:34:24
And going right back in our conversation. That's absolutely right. And what I really want is for this stuff not to just belong in the sort of psychotherapeutic, heavy work domain for me. This is for everyone. You know, you don't have to think back over your childhood or do any of that, but you have information in the present directly relating. Here's my experience, here's the need. Okay, this is a big one for me, and here's what I'm therefore going to do about it. It's a really contained way of adding some extra insight, awareness and then of life being easier as a result.

Beth Stallwood 00:34:25 - 00:34:38
And being able to feel more joy because you're accessing more of the stuff that, you know, if, you know, your needs are being met, then joy is much easier to come by.

Alice Sheldon 00:34:38 - 00:35:20
Yeah, absolutely. I mean these days if someone says to me, how are you? And I can't say, do you know what? Life is wonderful. I mean, of course there might be something immediate that's happened. You know, I'm not talking about or an external circumstance, but by and large, that's my measure, is, you know, is life wonderful? Because it is. And again, I feel very lucky to be able to say that now in a way that I certainly could not for many, many, many years.

Beth Stallwood 00:35:21 - 00:35:59
Can I take us off on a little side tangent for a moment? Again, I'm going to go right back to the beginning, I feel like we're coming full circle, one of the things you talked about, and I am ever increasingly fascinated by this, so I have got myself into some hyper focuses on this particular area around non-violent communication because I think it's fascinating and interesting and the rabbit holes of which I could go down. Can you tell everyone what that is? Because I'd love to hear it from your perspective and how it might help us in our quest of maybe understanding each other and doing things a little bit better.

Alice Sheldon 00:35:59 - 00:38:27
Of course I will. So non-violent communication, the birth of it and therefore the bedrock of it which Marshall brought into being, is about how we communicate in a way that invites compassion and that expresses compassion. Compassion is another one of those words which can get in the way, but basically, which is taking care of the needs of the whole, so of each individual and then of the whole. And so Marshall came up with a series of steps for communicating and went around the world and taught them for many, many years and the non-violent communication movement is still huge, and that is my original training, and I'm still a certified NVC trainer. And so the principles that needs understanding, which is how I've put it together, are based on and that NBC are based on, are the same. So NVC has the same understanding of needs, the same understanding of feelings, the same understanding of our judgmental thoughts. The problem that I had with NVC was that I learned it. I could immediately see a huge power to it, but I felt permanently like I was failing at it. It felt like at the times when I most needed it, when I was in a wrangle with my child or my ex or whoever it was, you know, that it wasn't that I didn't know how to access it. And I think that's what I wanted to do when I came to put needs understanding together was to make it so that people could, right from the beginning, start to make changes in how, not just in how they communicated, but in how they were really understanding a situation so that we didn't lose so many people, I guess.

Beth Stallwood 00:38:28 - 00:38:40
It's interesting, isn't it, as well, how you position it might have the same principles, but how you position it and utilize it and use it and understand it can be different.

Alice Sheldon 00:38:40 - 00:38:52
Yeah and I mean, I don't know if this is the moment Beth, but I would be so interested to hear your take on NVC.

Beth Stallwood 00:38:52 - 00:40:35
I mean, I am not qualified. I just get into nerd zones about stuff, and there's so many different bits of it, aren't there, around the communication stuff. And I first heard of it, not on an individual communication side of things, but on removing some of the violence out of our general comms and how we talk on that kind of bigger picture. Thinking about very much in, if you think about a lot of corporate language that we often use, there's a lot of very aggressive, very confrontational, very military almost style language that's used in the corporate world. So I got into it from that angle rather than the individual one to one angle. And how do we take away some of that stuff that makes it sound really combative and, like, we're at war with each other versus we're trying to do some good work and so that's how I started. And then fell into the rabbit hole of trying to work out how does this all work when we're not talking with each other, but how we talk to ourselves as well? Because I don't know about you or anyone else who might be listening to this episode, but I would never, ever, ever speak to a friend the way I speak to myself. I am horrible to myself.Not all the time, but I would like to be a lot nicer to myself. And I was thinking about, one of the things, how do you use this to help yourself talk, and how do you use it to help yourself talk with other people? So I think that's where I'm at with it at the moment.

Alice Sheldon 00:40:36 - 00:40:40
Thank you. That's great to hear. Great to hear.

Beth Stallwood 00:40:41 - 00:40:42
It's really interesting.

Alice Sheldon 00:40:42 - 00:41:01
Yeah, it is really interesting. I think it's got gold in it. There aren't so many things, that I would truly apply the word transformative to, but this, you know, this is one of them.

Beth Stallwood 00:41:01 - 00:42:12
And I have a feeling that I might be going down even more rabbit holes with it at some point. I just thought it was an interesting one to think about. As you said it right at the beginning, I was like, right, let's dig down into that one a little bit further, because it's so fascinating. And I think there are so many different things, aren't there, about as people, how do we understand what it is we need? How do we talk to ourselves? How do we talk to other people? How do we understand what's going on for us? I always talk about how do we not make mountains out of molehills, which usually happens when there's some kind of emotional reaction. That usually happens, I'm imagining, when we're not meeting some of our basic needs. How do we better understand who we are and what we need? How do we know what our values are so we know when things are in conflict or just rubbing up a little bit too closely to some of those things and how all of that can be a real foundation for having a better, not just working life, but really life overall. Because if you have the tools you talk about, then those tools are applicable in work, outside of work, in every situation.

Alice Sheldon 00:42:13 - 00:45:05
They really are the best and that's another thing that I really like about them that I've always found it slightly off putting when I see, like if I'm learning something and there's lots and lots of different things I have to get, I can get a bit overwhelmed. And what I really like about the focus on needs and then everything that sort of springs from that is actually, this is what we need. This is what we need to know that when I'm judging or blaming myself, when I'm judging or blaming someone else, what am I needing? Let me stop. And you talked about connecting with your body. Let me breathe. Let me look at my needs list. What do I need? Of course, when he shouts at me, I'm going to feel like that because I feel not good enough. Okay, got it. Right now we can move on. Of course, when my three year old, as she was, won't put her coat on and I'm feeling like the worst mother in the world because it's triggering me and I just want to yell at her if I know that actually, I have a sense that I don't matter in that moment and what I need doesn't matter. That's not her job, of course, to make me matter. She's three, you know, but if I've got that, then I can take care of that and not dump it in some way on my child. So that simplicity of just what do I need, and if anyone is exploring that, I think it's probably worth saying the thing that most often happens to me when I teach this stuff for a short period and then I see people again. Two things happen. The first is people come back saying, oh, my God, I've had a transformation. I can finally talk to my, you know, whatever, and I'm like, okay, that's very good. That is very good. It is remarkable and it's great every time but the other thing that comes back is that people hang on a sec, completely lost my train, what we're talking about. Yes, I know. Who needs what? So the other thing is that people come back and they've had one of those bridge club instances and they're trying to make sense of it and what often happens is that people think, first of all, about why was he behaving like that? What was going on for him? And if you start with the other person, it's almost like you can't get access to that until you've looked for your own needs. So it's always a case of, this is not selfish or self indulgent. This is necessary for us neuro-scientifically. We need to regulate ourselves and work out, what do I need? Okay. Now I know. Now I can turn and look at you, and then I'm much more likely to be able to repair the connection.

Beth Stallwood 00:45:05 - 00:45:37
And I think we're so very much aligned on this from very different perspectives, is that I'm always big on, you have to take this responsibility for yourself. And we can't be blaming other people for the way that we react to certain things. Now, that behaviour, whatever the behaviour is, the behaviour might be totally inappropriate and wrong but we cannot control other people. We have no control over other people, but we can have some influence over how we respond to it and how we decide to take it. So I love that idea. And I also, if you don't mind, I'm totally going to take some shorthand for myself about, am I having a bridge club moment? Is that what's happening here? That's what I'm going to call it, if you don't mind.

Alice Sheldon 00:45:49 - 00:45:51
I love that, Beth. I love that. And if there's ever a time when you privately want to say to me when you noticed one of those that would always be a delight. A bridge club moment. I love that.

Beth Stallwood 00:45:52 - 00:46:28
And it's quite good for me because it's something totally out of my zone. I've never played bridge. Wouldn't know where to start. Never been to a bridge club. So if I say a bridge club moment, it doesn't have to be related to anything. So I don't know if anyone else might find that useful. A bridge club moment. And it often happens when that big emotional reaction happens, that would be, do I want to cry? Do I want to scream at somebody? Do I want to run away and hide? What is it I want to do? I'd be like, right, bridge club moment. What's going on for me here?

Alice Sheldon 00:46:29 - 00:47:00
Yeah, that's great. What do I need? That would be the one thing that I would, if people want something practical to do and to play with this, then I would say print off a needs list. I've got a downloadable one on my website. You can download the needs list and you just stick it somewhere. Your toaster, your fridge, your back door, your computer at work. It doesn't matter and you can just get curious. So it's like, oh, I just noticed that so and so is behaving in this way and I wonder what they need. Please don't diagnose people like

Beth Stallwood 00:47:15 – 00:47:27
I notice that your behaviour suggests that you need this. Do you think you have a trigger or a problem now from childhood? Probably not a good thing to say to somebody.

Alice Sheldon 00:47:27 - 00:47:40
Exactly. Thank you very much, Beth. But in one's head and then, and as you say, whenever there's a bridge club moment, okay let me just take a moment. What do you know? What do I need?

Beth Stallwood 00:47:40 - 00:48:01
Yeah, what do I need? And I always talk about in these situations, just take a pause. Like a moment. We don't always have to respond immediately. And I suppose there's a, probably a thing about being kind to yourself. If you do respond in a way that is outside of how you would have liked to. Understand that that is actually quite normal, too.

Alice Sheldon 00:48:01 - 00:48:27
Absolutely, 100% and if we go back to the principle that everything we do is an attempt to meet needs, then when we do the piece of behaviour that we don't like, all we were trying to do was to meet some needs. We were trying to meet this, that and the other. We can see what it was we were trying to get. And in doing that, we weren't paying attention to these needs, care for somebody else or contribute or whatever it is. So, yeah, I'm with you.

Beth Stallwood 00:48:27 - 00:48:40
And I always see this stuff as like, it's never perfect, is it? Because one need might actually at some point, contradict another need. And you have to pick. You pick and you probably pick quickly and it just happens. And you're like, oh, yeah, that wasn't helpful.

Alice Sheldon 00:48:41 - 00:49:10
But I do want to just pick up on what you were saying, which is, from different directions, but it’s 100% the case that when we, Beth, my brain is slightly dying. Just give me 1 minute. It was what you were saying about. Yes, that's right, being responsible for our own reaction. So we might not in the moment be able to not feel stuff. And in fact, I wouldn't want people not to feel stuff. But it is that responsibility for what I then do with it. And exactly like you, it's not that I don't want to challenge that behaviour. I mean, I may or may not want to, but if I am going to challenge someone else's behaviour, whether it's by reporting it somewhere or whether it's by dealing with it face on, whatever, I want to be doing that from a place where I'm well resourced, because then I'm going to get, you know, then I'm going to get the best result for me as well as for everybody else.

Beth Stallwood 00:49:53 - 00:50:12
Yeah, definitely. Oh, I feel like we could chat about this and do like a million different things. I can just think of all the bridge club moments right now in my head. Yeah, that is what was going on then. But we can't talk forever. So what I'd love to do is, can I ask you some quick questions, please?

Alice Sheldon 00:50:12 - 00:50:13
Go for it.

Beth Stallwood 00:50:13 - 00:50:22
Okay, so obviously you have a book, and we'll get you to tell us a bit more about that before we finish off but what are you currently reading that is very good?

Alice Sheldon 00:50:22 - 00:50:58
Well, I'd like to again, in my vulnerability, I do not read books pretty much. I listen to things, but I'm not a very good reader. That said, I have got one book which was transformational. It will probably only be of use to people who are in a romantic relationship, although I think the principles can be extracted to work or anywhere else. But it's a book called Getting The Love You Want by Harville Hendricks and Helen McKelley Hunt. Have you come across it, Beth?

Beth Stallwood 00:50:58 - 00:51:00
I have not, no.

Alice Sheldon 00:51:00 - 00:51:34
Okay. For me, this is another one of those transformational books because the principles, it explains in a way that really makes sense to me why we fall in love with people and then why we struggle, why we get into power struggle. And it's very, very aligned with the whole needs based approach to seeing the world. And I read it when I was struggling with a relationship and it was very helpful indeed.

Beth Stallwood 00:51:34 - 00:51:45
Amazing. I have not heard of it. It will go on the list, definitely. It sounds great. For you personally, what is always guaranteed to bring you some work joy?

Alice Sheldon 00:51:45 - 00:52:17
Oh, so I absolutely love the dance of being on a stage or in front of a group where there's a sense that we are all operating together. I love to teach and to lead in those conditions.

Beth Stallwood 00:52:17 - 00:52:27
Love that. What is one piece of advice that you have received in your life that you always find yourself coming back to?

Alice Sheldon 00:52:27 - 00:53:06
Do, you know, it's one that goes a little bit along with my, you know, am I feeling wonderful or not? And it is that someone said to me a long time ago, Alice, life is not a dress rehearsal. And I remember for many, many years I held that and I felt I had a pretty miserable time up until I was 30, 35, and I felt as though I was not living my life fully. And so that's something that comes back to me often. And I think, nope, definitely no dress rehearsals around anymore.

Beth Stallwood 00:53:06 - 00:53:10
The full show goes on. And it must go on.

Alice Sheldon 00:53:10 - 00:53:11
Exactly.

Beth Stallwood 00:53:14 - 00:53:22
My next question, you have actually already answered it, so we'll remind everyone of this one, which is the practical thing, which is, is print off the list. We’ll put a link to your website for the what are your needs and just start noticing what your needs are and being aware of that, which is a fantastic, really practical, really great thing to have. Final question for you is where can people find out more about you and your book and get in contact with you?

Alice Sheldon 00:53:42 - 00:54:30
Oh, thank you, Beth. Lovely question. So my website is definitely the best place to see everything about the book and the services I offer. Also, I am active on LinkedIn, so that is the best. I'm also trying to be active on Instagram, but totally failing because I can't work out any of the formats or anything. But anyway, that may come. And I mean, in terms of the work that I do, I essentially work with groups, so largely organisations you know, other groups as well. And I train in this stuff and I speak about this stuff and I support leaders, so that's all on the website.

Beth Stallwood 00:54:30 - 00:54:41
Brilliant. And we will put the website details, we will put your LinkedIn, and we will put where to find the download for your needs list into the show notes as well, so that people can click straight on through.

Alice Sheldon 00:54:42 - 00:54:46
Can we please put Instagram on there as well? And that will encourage me.

Beth Stallwood 00:54:48 - 00:54:53
Then other people can hold you accountable because they're following you and will say please can you do some Instagram.

Alice Sheldon 00:54:53 - 00:54:55
Exactly. Thank you, my friend.

Beth Stallwood 00:54:55 - 00:55:13
We can totally do that. It has been wonderful chatting to you today. Thank you for going down the rabbit hole. Thank you for giving me a new thing, which is a bridge club moment. And that is in itself, that little bit of language, is going to take so much of the judgment of myself out of it. I think it's just a brilliant.

Alice Sheldon 00:55:13 - 00:55:15
I'm delighted.

Beth Stallwood 00:55:16 - 00:55:22
We all have them. Even somebody who teaches and understands all this stuff at a deep, deep level still has those moments. We are not here for perfection.

Alice Sheldon 00:55:24 - 00:55:38
Absolutely, Beth. It has been a joy. That was what came to me immediately. It has been a joy to converse and yeah, thank you very much indeed for your warmth and holding.

Beth Stallwood 00:55:39 - 00:57:58
A massive thank you to Alice for joining me on the WorkJoy Jam, and for helping me work out some new language for myself around having a bridge club moment. If you skipped to the end to listen to this, you'll probably need to go back and have a little listen about what a bridge club moment is but this understanding of ourselves, helping us to know when things are a challenge, how they might be niggling away at our values or the things that we need, the things that we find important that perhaps other people don't even consider or think about, and how often we place the blame on other people's behaviour. And that's just a normal thing, I think, that we all do. But being able to understand why things are as the way they are is really deeply within ourselves and why some things affect us as individuals that seem to be water of a ducks back to other people, I think is so fascinating. And I love the model of thinking about this and that principle of let's look inside first and understand what's going on here so that we can address it in a more positive, proactive, less combative way, potentially. And I think workplaces get these things in hyper focus, in amplified nature and actually it could help us all in work and outside of work if we all had a little bit more understanding of the things that trigger us, of the things that can help us to have better relationships.

So thank you, Alice, for being a wonderful guest. I'm certainly going to be thinking about those bridge club moments and having a big deep breath and wondering what's going on, rather than reacting to enable me to respond. If you are interested in finding out more, do follow us on socials. We're @createworkjoy and I'd love to hear from you. Do pop me an email with any thoughts, follow ups, questions that you might have. Hello@creatworkjoy.com is the email and I'd love you to think about one thing that you're going to do, do differently, think about, consider, etc, as a result of listening to this podcast today. Have a great rest of your day.