 So, welcome everyone, Diavonu, Konichiwa, and Haitai, as we say in Okinawa. Thank you so, so much for joining us, and thank you to the Science Summit at the UN General Assembly 77 for having us participate. And we also wish to thank OIST, the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, and the permanent mission of Japan to the United Nations for co-hosting this session. We appreciate all your support. So, we have about 90 minutes together, so let's get started. My name is Heather Young. I'm the very, very proud Vice President of Communications and Public Relations at OIST. We are a top research and graduate university located in Okinawa, Japan. I won't tell you what time it is here right now. I am Canadian in case you don't recognize or in case you do recognize my accident, my accent. I first saw Betsy Reed in a webinar put on by ABC in the UK. That's the International Association of Business Communicators. It's our professional association, and it was early on in the pandemic when webinars had a bit more novelty. I was immediately struck by Betsy's passion, her expertise, just how she presented communicating on social issues. I'm so thrilled that she's agreed to be here with us today. So, Betsy, could you please introduce yourself? Right, taking myself off mute. First of all, thank you so much for the invitation. I was really honored, absolutely chuffed, as we say in the UK, to hear from you, Heather. After that webinar, as you mentioned, early on in the pandemic, I looked back at my emails and my calendar. It was November 2020, and oh, how much have we all lived since then, right? We live in a very different world now, but we didn't know what was coming. So, just to introduce myself very briefly, I have a lot of background in communications, but always focused on social and environmental issues. I started young, and you might have guessed, my accent is also not British. So, I was born and raised in Wyoming, in the United States, which is kind of a unique element of my personal story and why I've always sort of felt like my path was to stand out and kind of be a disruptor. It's the least populated state in the US, and just for comparison, geographically, it's the size of the UK and has 500,000 people, half a million people. So, there aren't a lot of people. It's a very wild place, and it's a sort of celebrated pioneer. My family's been there before it was a state, and so I was always raised with this pioneering mentality, and then I got involved very early on, 10 years old actually, in politics, and volunteering on political campaigns and passing out flyers for local community activism. I knew that I wanted to grow up to be a lobbyist, because sort of at that stage, I was still in love with politics, and I still had a lot of optimism about what politics could mean to the world. And I was very optimistic and political, 10-year-old, and then sort of into a high school on university where I studied politics. And then I just knew, I'd always known that my path was to live in other countries, and so I did my master's degree in Edinburgh, Scotland, at the University of Edinburgh, in politics, more specifically in nationalism studies, which was about studying identity and identity construction, and why people think of themselves as who they are and where they're from. And that was a really interesting lens into others that I really enjoyed, because it also put me permanently in this position of always seeking to understand why people think they are who they are and what matters to them, and where that comes from, the history of that, the influences on that. So that really set me up, I think, to then hopefully be a match with some natural empathy to be passionate about really engaging other people and engaging them in making the world a better place by getting involved in understanding that place in society, understanding the positive impact we get how on the environment, rather than sort of looking into the dark abyss of climate change, which you could do for a long time, and I have for 15 years of my career. So that kind of led me into a correct search through sectors. I've been the head of campaigns for Zero Way Scotland and set up the national recycling campaign in Scotland. I've run a national fair trade body. I've worked for, wait for it, Nestle, the world's largest food company working on their public affairs program, and also worked for communications agencies, but quite often in leadership roles. So I found myself in leadership roles quite early in my career. So I was the CEO of an NGO by the age of 28, and I'm a little older than that now. So I've spent my career sort of surfing sectors, and I say collecting all the Pokemon cards. So when anyone says, oh, my sector is different, I can say, no, I worked in your sector. And I know there is a commonality to all of them. And that commonality to me is people. And the fact that humans are human and everybody really wants to do a good job, nobody shows up at work to do a bad job. And if you give people the opportunity to connect to purpose and each other and collaboration quite often they're up for it. But sometimes they've been in physicians or cultures that have allowed them or forced them to forget their humanity, to forget their connection. And so a lot of my work now, I've gone from being really a sustainability consultant and having to explain to people that sustainability is both social and environmental issues, it's not just environment. The pandemic really put that to rest because so many people were working from home, they really fully realized that their work life and their personal life are not separate or they didn't want them to be. And their values shouldn't be separate and they didn't want them to be. So now I'm increasingly asked to do work on resilience and well-being. And most of my work is in leadership while drawing on all of those things, communications, social and environmental issues, connection, because I'm also a mindfulness teacher. I teach meditation and yoga on occasion still. So bringing all of those things together is where the pandemic has landed me. And I'm having a ball. I'm having the time of my life working online and not having to fly for work because now I live in Barcelona, Spain and have for six years. I'm just spending 14 years living in the UK. So I've sort of got this interesting collection of perspectives and it feels like we're having a moment collectively. And that's why I'm really happy to be here because I feel like whoever is here today in the audience, you're probably drawn by the idea of allies and partnerships and community and being human and connection. So I find those are real hunger for that. And obviously the basis of a lot of that is communication and how we engage each other and how we engage around really important issues that can either stress us out or inspire us. We're talking social inequality, conflict, environmental degradation, species, all of these things that we see in the news. How do we find hope? How do we connect? How do we innovate? And how do we go forward in a way that helps us all to thrive? So that's where I am now and hopefully it hasn't been too rambling. And I also produce a podcast which is called the Discomfort Practice because I'm kind of obsessed with the productive role of discomfort in shaking up our comfort zones under status quo. And so I interview people from all sectors on how discomfort is shaped, who they are and what they do in the world. And it's currently my favorite thing to do. Excellent. Excellent. There might just be a couple of questions later on on that. Okay, it's a couple of few things during your intro there. First of all, I thought, oh my goodness, I think we need to arrange a few other webinars to get through some of this awesome content. But what struck me being an Okinawan now is you said people are people. And I completely agree. People ask me, how have you managed there? How do you pitch to media or work with media? I don't speak the language and I don't do the actual pitching. But yeah, when I sit down across from the publisher or the editor-in-chief, some things come through. I mean, not just smiles, but genuine authenticity. People know if you really are connected, if you want to be connected. So that, yeah, that really, that really resonates with me. Thanks. Okay, let's get started. First, a bit of background in context. And this is sort of a little level setting for our audience. We know that social and environmental issues among decision makers and the general public have escalated the pandemic, but politics, I mean, just so many reasons there. So, and we know it's important to the organization's reputations, political platforms, and I'll add in their people and that connectedness, as you just said. So we're here today just to let our audience know, because we believe really now is the time to make the most of opportunities to communicate effectively, to really engage with those who can create and change facts and figures, but also solutions. I know you've said, because I have your book, oops, it's hard with the, oh goodness, look at my, oh, there it is. Okay, so thank you. Yes, I know you've said communications has the power to transform the world. I underline that with a big scribble in the book. If that's not a call to action, I don't know what is. And it's a reminder. And I mean, I don't just mean, and I don't think you did big C communications my field, but I think just as leaders, as leadership, we have this obligation to communicate. Small C then. Okay, so let's get to it. So we'll start with your book because you know, I'm a big, big fan. And I did give it a little plug, but okay, if you can't see the title, it's called Communicating Social and Environmental Issues Effectively. So I have a few questions to start with the book. So I won't hold it the whole time. By the way, I think your book is more relevant today. Anyway, let me start with the question first. I want to know how it, I want to know how it came about. So it was published in 2020, you wrote it pre pandemic. And yeah, I think the concepts and the ideas are just as relevant. I think they're more relevant today and our new normal. So can you tell me about the book? Why did you write it? How did it come about? Well, it came out of the blue because, man, magical things happen in my life. So I believe if you really follow your path, if you're clear on your purpose, the right opportunities just come to you. And so I'd always thought I would really like to write a book someday, but I don't know what it would be on. And so I just sort of put it out to the universe and left it. And I do that. I'm a bit, we'll put it out to the universe manifestation or having a vision. It's like Babe Ruth in baseball. He would point at the fences before he hit a home run. Point where you want to go and just let it happen. So I remember I was about to teach a workshop on a Saturday and I had gotten a really seemingly random message on LinkedIn from a publisher saying we have a gap in our portfolio. We don't have any books on what you do because I had was a member of the PRCA, the PR Communications Association in the UK. And something that I noticed at the time, this was probably around 2014, 2015 was that as sustainability issues became a lot more mainstream with businesses, the communication sector and agencies in particular were being asked to deliver on these briefs without having the expertise to do it well. And what that meant was that they were then the chief propagators of greenwash and purpose wash. In other words, putting out communications that were not necessarily verifiable or true. And it was just creating this immense reputational risk, but also just misinforming out of ignorance rather than malice. And so I started to do trainings for the PRCA on communicating social and environmental issues effectively. So this publisher approached me because of those trainings I was doing and asked me to write a book. And I said, well, I'm sure you're interviewing a few other authors and they were like, no, just you. So of course you say yes when someone asked you to write a book. And then I spent the next two years starting it and then having to put it on pause because I had I got divorced in there, not to be too personal, but I just my life changed immensely. But what that turned out to be was perfect timing, because I ended up setting aside a couple of months to just write this book in 2019, the end of 2019. And by the time I finished it, the world had already changed to the point where I didn't have to sell the idea that climate change was a reality. I got to talk about it as a crisis, because people had arrived at that point where it was no longer in doubt, where sort of mainstream communication sector and businesses had changed their narrative about it. And so it came out, as you said, summer of 2020, which was, you know, we didn't know there was a pandemic coming. And so like I said, I think timing is always perfect. If you let it be, if you just take your hands off the wheel and let your life kind of drive you where you need to go when you need to be there. And I wrote it with the intention of it to be very digestible, very practical, obsessed with impact. And I don't like to talk about things that like to help people figure out how to do things. And so each chapter is standalone, it could be dip in, and I need to think about how to engage stakeholders, I need to learn about consultation, or you can use it as a framework to work through chapter by chapter team a team meeting if you wanted to. So as you as you can see when she held it up, it's not a big book, it's part of a practical guide, a practice guide series by the PRCA. And the idea is that it's very digestible and very practical and you can use it as a workbook. So it was just, I won't say it was joy to write, it was like being in labor for nine months, it was one of the hardest things I've ever done. If anybody's ever written a book, you know, it's not easy, but rewarding. And it's so, so rewarding to know that people are finding it useful. So thank you for that, Heather. Oh, no, no, absolutely. It's a little jaw dropping is overstating it, but to think that PR agencies were perpetuating or starting with greenwashing and, and you think, how could that, how could that be? I mean, I understand, but it's a little like, oh, it kind of gets me deep in there. I mean, I always talk to my team and, you know, other folks about we have to figure out what we're going to do. And then we're going to figure out how to say it. You know, we can't figure out what we're going to say. And then I think we might do it. I mean, not that we can't be aspirational. Of course we can, but there's, there's a difference there. If you don't know what you don't know. So like I said, there was no mallet. It's just, I mean, agencies are always up against budgets and time. So if there's money involved, they'll probably say yes to a brief and figure out how to do it later. And they don't know that they don't know how to do it because these issues are so gone left. You really do need to do your homework on it and, you know, be able to communicate in more expert fashion, which I think has become more the case as social media has become such a factor. And the public are quite wise about a lot of these issues. And we'll react quickly and just clobber you reputationally if they see holes in your argument. So this sector has had to catch up fast, which I find a really good thing because it was just so like forehead smack because, you know, like I said, I've been working in climate change in particular for 15 years. And it just felt like playing the fiddle while Roan burned until a certain point. So it's good to have everybody sort of been the same, the same place with their understanding of the urgency and the need to communicate these things accurately. Yeah, let it be a reminder again, as communicators as leaders. I mean, of course, we never know what we don't know, we don't know. So how can we always make sure we're asking the right questions and always digging a little deeper? That's a really good question. It's interesting because one of my other roles is I work for the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership. And we talk a lot about because these are people mid-level senior professionals from a range of sectors who are really keen to communicate better and have better influence and impacts. And a lot of them don't work in sustainability or social issues. So they're having to get up to speed on these things. And we talk about sources of information because obviously we live in a sea of misinformation or not fact-checked. And it's hard to know who to believe. But I would say it's our responsibility as anyone, not just communicators, to really start to filter what we get as information, but also to seek sources of information that trigger us. Because quite often we get in our echo chambers and algorithms and social media put us there further and further and further. But I think being uncomfortable can be quite sharpening. So I would say if you're just wondering, how do you get informed on good sources of information? If it's just general consumption of the news, always seek out like three sources and make sure one of them is from a viewpoint that is very different to you. Because it will challenge you and you might learn something. But as a communicator, with a capital safety work and communication, it really is your responsibility to become more expert on particularly controversial issues and complex issues. Because it's just an upstilling that we all need to do because these are common issues. They're not niche. Yeah. I love how you work the discomfort in there. Let's come back up a little further. Let's talk about the importance of establishing social value and purpose. And you've hinted at purpose instead of on the edge of my tongue a couple of times. So in other words, how can we understand the value of our work, the impact of our work, whether we're in leadership positions or not? We've talked about communicators. We've talked about leadership. But leadership isn't just about the title, right? So can we talk about, talk to me a little bit about value and purpose and why they're important? Oh man. That little question. Yeah. Because I mean, you could tackle that from a personal standpoint or from an organizational standpoint. So I think I'll start with the personal because I'm going to assume that some or a lot of people here are not professional communicators. Your job title isn't in communications. So I really do subscribe to the idea that everyone can and shouldn't be a leader, whether or not it's in your job title, whether or not you have a job. But that what we need right now in the world is for everyone to see that they can be doing something. And maybe it's just leading yourself. Maybe it's leading people in your team from the middle. Maybe it is really sticking to your values and leading a culture, even if you're at the bottom of the rung. So being clear on your values is super important. And I keep remembering all these things that I do that I didn't mention. I also am a professor of leadership, but a university in Barcelona where it keeps leadership to fourth year students. So they're 20, 21 years old and they're in a course called Global Communications Management. We've just gone back to class last week and we hit them with the idea that they are leaders and they don't quite know what to do with that yet because they think of leadership as something that is by somebody in a hierarchy with a certain job title. And so what we do is help them to unpack what are your values, what really matters to you, and then what is your purpose? Maybe it's related to work, maybe it's in general, and to just be really clear on what your purpose is. And if you're wondering what the heck I'm talking about, I would encourage you to sort of take a moment, there are plenty of resources online and this is something that I do with my corporate clients. It's interesting to blow up a senior leadership team's collective brain and be like, what are your individual purposes? And then what's your collective purpose? And a lot of them realize they don't know. These are people who are 30 years into their career. So being clear on what your purpose is makes you human as well. It means you're not just a worker bee. You're not a piece of machinery. You are human and you have some special sauce that you add to whatever blend you're in and it's really valuable to understand and value what that is. And I think once you're in touch with that, it gets harder and harder to just do things without being conscious of the impact. So it brings us into impact because professionally I believe you can measure anything. And a lot of people in cons I know struggle. How do you measure the impact of communications? There's always a way. Now they worked in the public sector where I had to justify everything I did and everything I spent because I was spending taxpayers money on it. You get very good at measuring things to justify what you're doing. So it might be that you measure a change in attitude if you know a change in awareness, a change in what people understand. Behavior? Yeah, behavior changes, I wouldn't say easy. So you ask people, do you understand this thing? And then after you've done your piece of work, you ask them again, do you understand this thing? And you get to measure the change in awareness or understanding or behavior. But if you're trying to measure the impact of your personal purpose, you can get creative on that. You could actually measure how much more conscious you are of your purpose when making decisions at work or making decisions in your home life or reacting. So like I said, I'm a big fan of measuring things because it creates a consciousness and becoming more conscious of how you live, how you operate, the impact that you have. If we all did that as how many million people are on this planet, what would the world look like? How different would it be if we were conscious of our impact with whatever metric works for you? So I'm teaching a mindfulness workshop here in Barcelona tomorrow. And we're going to talk about that. But how do you become more conscious of the impact you have around you? Because that's also the stuff that creates your work culture and your family life. How do you contribute to psychological safety around you? How do you create a more inclusive environment? How do you create a more compassionate place of energy around you? So you can really take all those macro things that you can see in corporate speak or whatever and make it personal. And I think that that's really important. I wasn't writing those questions down, but there were about 10 or 20 that I need to write down and have a little reflection on, which just reminds me, this session is being recorded. Everyone will be able to go to back in. And also for folks who this isn't a good time, we'll be able to access. So I can go back in and write some of those questions for my own reflection. Pause, reflect, breathe, write things down. Yeah. Okay. I'm just sorry, just the thought of measuring purpose. Yeah. How? Like that feels pretty deep. So speaking of, that's it, that purpose in thinking about it in such a meaningful, almost intimate, because it's a personal way. In your book, you talk about the importance of bringing my own, your own humanity and values to our work, how that's so important. That they can really make our approach to communications, well, social issues, authentic, strategic, less risky, more effective. But that's a pretty awesome list. What did I say? Authentic, strategic, less risky, more effective. Yes, I'll take all of those. I mean, this really resonates with me personally. I mean, I just find it so compelling and so meaningful that my humanity can be an asset. And when we talk about superpowers, I mean, what a beautiful thought. So how can I, how can I do that? How can we do that? But without bringing, like my biases or subjectivity, or like elements that might get away in the strategic approach. So in other words, I'll be a bit more clear and concise. I'll get there. How do strategy and humanity come together in the best way possible? Oh my gosh, that is such a good question. How do strategy and humanity come together in the best way possible? Well, first of all, it's acceptance that you are human and what you said about biases is really useful because we all have biases. We all have unconscious biases. And if people don't know, there's a really wonderful project by Harvard where you can just find them online and do unconscious biases tests to find out where yours lie. And it might be based on color or gender or sexual orientation or whatever, but just accept we all have unconscious biases and it doesn't make you a bad person. It just makes you human. So I think in really embracing being human means embracing that you do have your own set of biases and background and weaknesses, but also on the other side of that is strengths. And whenever you shine a light on something that you were formerly unconscious of, you can then work with it. It's like trying to measure purpose. Once you're conscious that you can measure purpose, you can find a way to do it. So once you're conscious of the things that could get in your way of being strategic or engaging others and just simply accept that you are human and you do have those things, you can deal with them. You can make sure that you're operating your eyes wide open and an understanding of what you're really driving around with you. And then you can also hopefully transform some of them. But in terms of how humanity, being human and strategic match, how inspiring is it to work with a leader who is fully human, who allows you to be human because they admit that they have flaws. They admit that they don't get things right. But then the other thing is we have so much intelligence that isn't just in our brains and reminding ourselves that we aren't robots. We actually have gut instinct. We actually have that little knowing that we've often untrained ourselves to listen to. So actually doing maybe something that we call it somatic work, bodywork that just gives you a chance and you can do this anytime. I do this with a lot of my clients and my meditation students, a lot of leaders, closing your eyes and just breathing and starting to ask yourself what you feel in your body where because a lot of people don't know the answer to that because we have not created a connection between our body and our brain. So those neural pathways have to be built by asking the question over and over again. And then you start to notice you do have a gut instinct. Your body does tell you when something is unsafe or unwise or when you're about to do something that creates a reputational risk. And therefore listening to that allows you to be more strategic and hopefully coupled with maybe an awareness of your purpose to be courageous in listening to that because you're like, no, no, my instinct knows. We call our gut our second brain. That's actually true. And we have an awful lot of intelligence there that we just tamp down because we have this thing about our brains being absolutely everything when we have a lot more intelligence to access that we've kind of forgotten. And I think that's why we're seeing a lot of more popularity things like breath work, the Wim Hof method. And a lot of things that you wouldn't consider sort of woo woo, but just, you know, the common sense where you're actually drawing on all of your body, all of your intelligence. But final thing on this is believing that you can be strategic and that your role, if you are on communications, or even not in a leadership position, you can play a role and should play a role as a gatekeeper. If something doesn't feel right to you, you have intelligence and probably expertise that will be valuable in ensuring that you don't do something that's not going to land right. Listen to yourself. And a lot of that is around building trust in yourself and building the habits of listening to yourself. So a lot of it's habitual as well. Practice. So humanity and strategy are already overlapping. We don't have to think about how to make them overlap. We don't have to do just be, embrace that, get more familiar with what it is to actually you are human. So what does that mean? How can you be in that in your strategy session, basically? Yeah. And I hadn't, I mean, unless I hadn't really thought about it in connection to strategy, I thought about it a lot in relation to leadership because I really lean in to the humanity, the genuineness of leadership that feels really comfortable to me. I think it's important. I hadn't thought about leaning in to strategy in the same, in the same way. It feels a little nerve wracking, you know, like, what if, what if, but wow, thank you. But also, I'm just thinking about, I think it's 80% of our communications is unspoken. It's body language and it's the energy that we emanate, which is actually really good reminder that so much goes on that isn't about our words, that isn't about proving a point. It's about who we are and what energy we show up in, whether we're stressed, whether we're connected to ourselves or disconnected, whether we're empathetic. So just remember how much is communicated that you're ever consciously saying anything. Yeah. It reminds me of ideas of appreciative inquiry, like really leaning into your strengths to that humanity. So, you know, we talk about like, I'll go after improve my weaknesses. Okay, sure. But what about really understanding our strengths and leaning into those strengths and allowing those strengths to become even, even, even better, even richer, even more part of what we do. I would compliment that by saying also, what about leaning into our weaknesses or owning them? You know, it goes back to being human and also allowing yourself to be human. So I think we are taught, particularly in the Western societies, we come from to be quite competitive and invulnerable and tough and, you know, just move fast and break things, but actually leaning into being still and empathetic and admitting your weaknesses can be quite strong as well. So I think both are a good approach. I think we need both to be fully human. Yeah. Absolutely. I love that you mentioned what's the deep, the breathing, the wim-huff. So I love cold water. I love cold water swimming. So we didn't know that connection beforehand. I've certainly done, I don't follow him, I haven't practiced with him, but I've certainly brought my own version to a few so Canadian new heather. We've got cold water. What am I going to do with it? Swimming it. Yeah, I fit in on myself, but I do like the breathing. Yeah. I actually have been craving cold water since being here, and I never did that. It was just a pandemic thing. The pools are closed. Oh, geez. Why don't I go jump in the lake? It's a great reset for your nervous system, actually. And we live in such a state of heightened stress quite often because of work, because if we live in cities, and actually just giving yourself that reset where your body knows where to shut off stress quite efficiently, and that's actually part of the point of the ice baths that he does. Well, that was a very, very civilian explanation of the neuroscience behind it, but yeah, yeah, it's a really, it's a good thing to do. Very good. Okay, let's shift a little from, so the personal, a bit more to the outward facing. So to audience, to stakeholders. It's back to the book a little. You talk about working with allies, advocates, and partners. Let's again, like level set, can you talk to us about how you define them and their value? Well, I think the clue is usually in the name, allies, advocates, and partners, allies of the people who are alongside you. And those are the organizations or the specific stakeholders within your own organization who you know are allied with whatever you're trying to do. And we're talking about social and environmental issues in particular. So maybe you're working on diversity and inclusion or supply chain, working about having more sustainable supply chains and not exploiting the farmers down the way in your supply chain or whatever. So obviously allies are the people who they're probably a natural fit. And I really encourage people to map. And even if this is not your job, it's kind of useful to see who are your allies still to map, you know, do a little sphere with a few circles in it. Who's in the closest one? Who are those people or organizations? And then the next is partners is the next one, because it's who then can do the same thing who can it's it's ally but more active. So it's the people who will run a campaign with you or sponsor something or put out the message to their own followers or whatever. So they're not just allies, they're more active. And then advocates are super active in all of that. They're the people who are going to champion. They're the evangelists. They're the ones who are going to go to go to war for you. So it might be your boss who sells it to the CEO or it might be somebody on if you're an influencer or you're on social media or somebody who will really get out there and make it their own cause. So kind of subtle differences, but it helps. The reason I differentiated between them in that way was thinking from a communicator perspective, when you come up with a communications plan or a campaign, mapping who's in which of those buckets, and there's always overlap. So there might be somebody who is an advocate and ally and a partner or there might be somebody who's just a partner and they're not going to say much about it, but they'll put the money in or give some resources or whatever or expertise and then they're allies and that's your gang of other people who or organizations who will help you to either think about it better or they might then become partners who help you deliver it or then they might go all the way to becoming advocates and get the word out. So think of those as very interchangeable categories. There's definitely a flow between them, but it's just an interesting lens to use to start thinking of how you can have an impact when you communicate something in particular. Yeah, absolutely. So all those different groups are in your corner. Let's talk to me then about why innovation and diverse thinking is crucial and how it connects to those groups, how we can use it to go further in our communications or in addressing any challenges. Well, if you think of basically the part and definition of innovation is about doing things differently and how can you do things differently if you all see things the same way? I mean you can, but you're going to have a very homogeneous perspective, which means there are going to be things that you don't know, you don't know that you don't have a lived experience or the perspective to bring and so therefore having a more diverse range of perspectives in the room or involved in a project is going to make a more well-rounded solution. But there's a discomfort that comes with that because when you invite true diversity, when you create true diversity, it means you're going to be working with, communicating with, trying to collaborate with people who don't see things the way you see things. And so then you have to become an even more expert communicator, even more consciously empathetic, even more conscious about your own unconscious biases in order to engage them productively and empower them and enable them and create an environment in which everyone is safe to bring their perspective to what will eventually be a really good solution. I'm going to use a controversial example that I can't put in writing because I don't want to get sued, but anybody remembers, don't worry Heather, I'm not going to get in trouble. If anyone remembers there was a Pepsi advert a few years ago where it was Kendall Jenner with a bunch of Black Lives Matter protesters and she was drinking a Pepsi and loving the police and loving the protesters and it was just so tone deaf to what was actually going on. To use sort of a very privileged white woman and selling a product on the back of a social movement that was, it's a pretty hot topic, it's a heated topic. And the creative team who did that, they won awards for it and they thought they did a fantastic job, but to be so unable to read the room, read the wider room to that level actually I think points to probably not necessarily diversity of the makeup of the group but just a complete lack of perspective on what was going on in the outside world. You also see that with like I have acquaintances who worked in major newsrooms in the UK, I had a Brexit vote and they had to have a real moment of reckoning after Brexit happened because I've had a couple of friends say we did not see it coming. We thought this will never happen but then we realized we totally missed so much because we didn't realize how similar we all are in our perspective in the news we consume and make and so they realized that actually going, you know, creating a more diverse workforce isn't just about because they have to because of policy or they have to because of public opinion, they have to because it makes them better at what they do. It makes them better at what they deliver to the world's communicators and so it's one of those things that it can kind of be brushed aside as being very politically correct or political and it's unfortunate because it actually misses the point that diversity makes us better. We talk about diversity in the gene pool and it makes us more robust and able to, you know, evolve past certain diseases and it makes us stronger as human beings. So why would we not seek to replicate that in the environment around us and our ability to create innovative solutions to things that are really making life uncomfortable for a lot of people? So yeah, that's my kind of long-winded and passionate answer about that but... It's a reminder, yes for communicators but for other leaders too, about this idea of being toned deaf and well not knowing what we, you know, not knowing what we don't know, you know, links back to that and a reminder to reach out to ask people for feedback to get ideas on your work and I know you talk so much about consultation, true consultation. So I want to ask about consulting but before I do let's just, I'll just talk to the room for a sec about social license because that may be a term that not everyone uses so really it's an ongoing acceptance or approval from our community and not in the face of different opinions. I don't mean that but approval from stakeholders so consulting them to involve them even when we have differences which we want. So I know the idea of consulting stakeholders is good in theory but I mean in practice I think many of us or some of us are thinking it can be hard, it can be time-consuming, expensive, nerve-wracking, what if it doesn't yield meaningful results, what if I forget someone and then they're even more upset with me and I don't want, not that I know but I don't want to think consulting just to tick the box and that's not help, that's not what you mean and that's not helpful to anyone too so can you, can you chew on this a little bit with us like talk to us about effective, meaningful, effective, meaningful consultations but again not just for the sake of consultation so how, how can, how, how is this doable, talk to us about that but where the rubber hits the road. Oh yeah this is why I have basically an entire chapter in the book about consultation because I've heard that so many times, working with NGOs who never have enough budget to do everything they need to do or, yes, comms agencies who are always on the tight budget so it's one of those things gets tossed out the window quite easily and, and it is possibly the most important thing to have a long-term impact so for me consultation doesn't have to be scary, it doesn't have to be hard and it's also about what you then do with it. Like you said if you're just consulting to consult because you have to, tick, moving on but people want to know what you've done with what they told you and that's what truly engages them in a stronger solution so I really like the concept of co-creation and I know it's a word you know it's probably one people use a lot but genuinely doing it, co-creating is a magical thing to do not only for creating a solution or an approach that actually works for the people you're trying to reach or engage or work with it gets them bought into it and it also creates a better, a better approach so for me not consulting is just kind of dumb. It's a wasted opportunity because why would you leave it to just you or your team to create a campaign or a solution with just your brains when you could ask a bunch of brains and behavior change work schooled me in this because you when you consult and you ask people would this actually work to help you change your behavior to do the thing that I need you to do which is you know maybe it's recycling more or wasting less or being conscious about their water use or whatever environmental behavior it's trying to change and you can count on it they will say no I hate that I hate that messaging I hate that approach but then they will tell you what does work so you don't have to be all knowing you don't have to be a magician it's as easy as just asking and people who work in marketing quite often are very good at this they market test everything because then you know that the result will be they buy more of what you're trying to sell them which is the entire point so I would say think more like marketing people and you can't afford not to consult because you are creating risk or you're missing real opportunities or you're going to come up with a solution that might work for you might not work for them because I always remember you are most likely not your audience so you don't truly understand them ask them and some methods I'll just quickly name a few of my favorite methods because if you've ever worked at a communications agency they're really good at doing this on the cheap when I worked for one in London we would just go send one of the juniors on the team to stand in front of the supermarket with a clipboard and ask people questions you know sort of be like all right we think our target demographic is probably in this area so go stand outside look for people we think fit that profile that we're trying to reach or like mums between 30 and 45 or whatever and just take them through a set of questions ask 20 people and it's not a representative sample but it will give you some insight so that's actually a really good cheap way to do it we live in a digital age google surveys are incredibly easy to do and then you can analyze them quite easily there are a lot of people you can google how to write a good survey because asking the right question is important but it's free google surveys are free so I would encourage you to look at what you have access to now or you can do what I do which is at the beginning of any session I run on say resilience or well-being or managing stress or managing your energy you always ask people at the start of a session to go onto a platform like Slido or will clap or one of these many platforms you can use to poll people and just have them take five minutes use their phone answer a set of questions about how do you feel today what's your stress level from one to five what do you what's your impression of this concept we're looking at do you know much about it and then you ask the same questions at the end and even within a session you can consult you can measure you can also gather feedback and ask them what do you want us to do differently next time what do you think we did well this time and you get immense insight and then you build your own insight because don't forget this is also about you as a communicator making your insight better you're becoming more expert in knowing your audiences and you start to gain more of an instinct so I would say thinking that you can't consult it's really it's a hard argument to make these days because we have so many really great and free online resources you just have to change your thinking and think always building consultant early and it's going to benefit you in the longer yeah I wrote down a couple notes as you were sharing those ideas and one that I literally I wrote this down when you're talking about standing in front of the supermarket with a clipboard there's elegance and simplicity you know some of these solutions don't have to be so complex there's something really beautiful about solutions that yeah don't use every gadget and every every 25 different options in front of us so so yeah what a what a reminder also I wrote down put your ego away so I remember speaking at a conference in the UK for environmental communicators a few years back and it was largely environmental NGOs and I stood on stage at like nine in the morning the second day of this conference and said don't get married to your message because what works for you probably won't work for your target audience and they're going to tell you that they hate it but then they'll tell you what works and people will just like because we have to stop caring why people do things if we want people to do the things that we think are the ultimate aim in terms of behavior change or listening to a message you have to stop caring about why they do it let them do it for whatever reason they want to do it for and then find a way to appeal to that reason so for example my family are very conservative religious republican in the United States they don't believe in climate change and they voted for he who my shall not name twice and I grew up having to learn because obviously I'm very different from them that my parents are actually learned mentalists but don't you dare call them that call them stewards of God's creation and they don't run the water when they're brushing their teeth they do try to recycle as much as possible they take care of their neighbors you know they have this idea of they're they have very good behaviors but it's for a reason that sort of environmental lobbyists and NGOs wouldn't present it to them as being they would want them to have to sign up to these behaviors for the same reasons they sign up so I'd also say like don't get married to your message let people join in however they need to join in and that also comes back to diversity of perspective diversity of messaging maybe because appreciate that it's okay that people have different reasons to do things as long as it's you know we're aligned on some things let go of the why let go of why they're there let go let go yeah um this reminded me of we're redoing our website right now after many many years we're redoing our website and when I was giving them the necessary presentation to the executive about what's coming I was explaining to them that we don't tell people how to use our website people use their website how they use our website people just do it so if they don't get somewhere they're not clicking where you want it's because that's how they're using the website you know it's like coming to people where they're at it's not them it's you know exactly so that I mean people are going to do what they're going to do is so you know especially on and on a website where you're not there you know I don't know telling them exactly everything to do not that you're anywhere you know in a store telling people to buy something or where to vote or anything else you're nowhere so well it's it's based on sort of well yeah let their behaviors lead you because certain sectors are really good at this so if you know any UX designers users designers they map and you're probably going through all of this with your website you know use your service where do people want to click and you sort of realize every time somebody has to scroll you lose 25 percent of the people who are looking at that page or people read in a certain shape and therefore you need to put things where they need to see them where they will follow them rather than thinking why aren't you using the website the way so sort of back to front and it is about just kind of laughing at yourself and realizing how I did it again I'm trying to get them you know to do it my way so do it their way and see how the impact changes right yes season let's measure the difference okay speaking of yes going out to our audience connecting communicating with the audience how well we're in this era of you know fake news and and this sort of stuff how can we tell stories how can we cut through that and I don't just need from the facts point of view but like with stories that are more inspiring and more engaging you know with stories that are you know really authentic and have an impact you know so again the sort of I guess I'm asking about fake news not like oh this is the fact that's not the fact but just stuff that sort of cuts about it because I mean kind of like who cares about some of the stats right I mean how can we inspire people I'll do water too good idea thank you well I remember we had discussed originally calling this session something like whoever tells the best story wins yes talking about science in particular this is the united nation science summit so having really killer facts and figures is great but it's how you tell the story so I also think it's useful to understand how humans work so we have a natural negative bias and that is human biology that is kind of an evolutionary design flaw but it's down to survival so we see fear we sense fear so a story that triggers fear of others of situations of catastrophe and the logical parts of our brain shut off because we get into a fight or flight mode so we're basically in kind of our our more primal parts of our brain and it's much harder to reach people who are operating in fear or who are stuck in doom and gloom which of course there is a verifiable researched negative bias in the media sorry if there are any journalists here but the reality is we react more strongly to negative stories and fear and so we have to work harder to reach people with inspiration but it's possible so when we're in fight or flight we are pumping cortisol all of those great old stress hormones and we stay in that this is another evolutionary design flaw because animals they switch that on they run away from the predator and then they shake and they turn it off we stay in that heightened state of stress and that's why we have a lot of hypertension stress related diseases so the way to counteract that is to be able to trigger positive emotion in people to counter that negative emotion and so like I said it doesn't matter how good your stats are if you can't tell a story that inspires people you're not going to cut through the fear that's out there so that is about mastering it it's a skill and it's not something you either have or don't have it's a skill I teach it the people in my Cambridge course are there on a course called communicating for influence and impact we have an entire module on storytelling we spend weeks on storytelling practice it use anecdotes be personal use language that is understandable and particularly for those of you let me begin communicating scientific facts or engineering or technical stuff of any kind don't worry that you're dumbing it down by making it understandable you need to if you're going to reach people and obviously there are certain audiences who you will need to get very technical with so consider your audience is the main thing here but also remember everyone is human at the end of the day so even if you're you have to be quite complex and technical how can you inspire them how can you structure it in a way that it is a good story there's an arc in a story you know it's storytelling is as old as humans so is there a good beginning are there clear points is there a clear call to action or appeal to something and then a conclusion can you signpost to people where they are in the story as you go and also can you do it briefly so for example if you're making videos or if you're doing things online we know two minutes is optimal for our attention days so can you provide a killer story killer points in a punchline that is aimed directly a specific audience in the language they need and appealing to what motivates them how can you give them what they need but can you do it in two minutes that is masterful and it only happens from practice which is why we make our students make a bunch of videos and I've done the same anybody else's here has ever um had to watch themselves back on a recording and knows how crucially painful that is yes it's painful but it's discomfort that's well worth experiencing because it would be better yes how can you use anecdotes colorful language paint a picture for people so just kind of take those away and chew on them but also maybe take a communications course or do a workshop online or watch some youtube videos about effective storytelling there are a million ted talks if you want to see masterful storytelling watch so much practice goes into that I've helped people prepare to give ted talks and there's months and months and months of scripting and back and forth with the tedx team or whatever and then there's this masterfully told story but it's because there's been hours and hours and hours of practice behind it so watch take notes figure out what works what is good storytelling analyze it and then see how you can you can make that a skill set that you have or build or practice yeah and I think that applies to so so many of us I mean we're all trying to communicate every day in all different ways I mean you know the folks that give awesome ted talks come from all walks of life so I think I think these things apply to absolutely everyone if you're at a if you're at a science conference and you're delivering something how can you do it in the most effective way how can you really inspire your your audience um okay so we're talking about the inspiring the storytelling the bringing people in how um so my pen um how do we um at the same time build trust in facts and data and I don't like to do the fact heavy facts and data but of course sometimes it's absolutely needed and can be compelling so how do we um how do we build trust in facts and data and inspire people to embrace um discomfort which you which you brought in again there and and really to redesign our systems our societies the comfort zones like how how can we sort of evolve together oh heather there are so many questions I know choose what you like we should go on retreat and take a few days to unpack this one I'll start with the truth the facts and figures and then we can move on to how do we okay thank you okay so somebody I know who is quite often a speaker from a game which course Matt peacock he used to be director of corporate communications from Vodafone group and like he's he used to be the work for the BBC quite a half but he said something recently which was it's never been harder to get away with wrongdoing or more difficult to convince people of the truth so that's the context we're in where nobody knows who to believe and distrust I know one of your speakers at the summit is from Edelman in Japan and the Edelman trust barometer comes out every year and the headline for the most recent one was that trust is at an all-time low so people's default is distrust which of course makes it very hard to move forward as a society when you don't know who or what to trust so it is a tricky question and I don't have a lot of answers we're working on that one collectively but I think I mean it kind of goes back to being able to tell a good story people will trust you if they like you so also building relationships with people you need to communicate with being human and also being really robust there isn't a lot of room for error and even if you get everything right remember there will be people who don't believe you if your your facts don't match the facts they want to believe so we kind of just have to do our best and also keep trying to connect with each other as human I think it's not the answer but therein lies unanswer because something I'm seeing and I don't know about those in the session if you agree with this or if you're feeling this but I've just seen a real craving for connection and people really seem to build community in a new way because we've been so brutally and suddenly isolated during this pandemic and so I think the answer lies partly in connection to other people and building community and recognizing a great term interbeing that all things all people the planet we are connected so I think while we're talking about communications and you know I choose not to get bogged down in the swamp of misinformation and who's right and media sources because it is an endless debate but if you connect with others also you need to question your unconscious biases as you do so because the people you like the people you want to believe might be people who are just very like you and that's not necessarily going to be a robust answer so I go back to one of my earlier answers about seek out different sources of information and seek what makes you uncomfortable which also ties into true diversity but also seeks to connect with other people as human beings and again step back and remember most people aren't seeking to be evil most people aren't proactively or consciously seeking to be deceptive or to do a bad job people are often just reacting in their own biases they're often reacting in fear which is such a powerful driver we've talked about that so if you can bring empathy calm really active listening and the ability to truly listen you're going to bring a lot to communications because most people are seeking to just they're just thinking about the thing i'm going to say in response to what someone's saying to them they're not actually listening so learning to just take a breath and calm your own nervous system because if if you start to become conscious of how much stress you probably operate in every day as we all do and practice calming it just take three breaths breathe into your belly because then you're literally signaling to your nervous system in your brain that you don't need to be ready to run away from oh you know like a sabertooth tiger that's trying to kill you or a tribe in the next village it's going to take you as a slave because that's not going to happen frankly unless you live in context and you're probably not on this webinar but take time to calm yourself and come back to being human rather than reacting in that animal brain that stress and listen and be able to see the scene and this also plays into being strategic you have to be able to take that wider sort of helicopter hovering view and you can't do that if you're stressed because you're in a reactive mode so the less reactive you can be the better you're going to be at listening the better you're going to be communicating and better you're going to be at connecting with other people you've made so many connections back to different things we've already talked about i noted down a few well first of all thank you for mentioning the trust barometer it's next week please join us it was a good barometer every year yeah so that'll be next week thank you thanks for that plug um i mean we've used the word connection or words that are synonyms a few times and um it reminds me of um early in the pandemic i was running town halls not unlike this conversation um for the organization where i was at um all the staff were invited it was really good asking questions of leadership um of all different sorts and um when we surveyed folks after a few and then periodically about different topics you know um oh goodness yeah like strategy how strategy going to change how a target's going to change um so that set of elements um there were a lot of work from home questions you know so we did a survey about what people want to hear about what they want to get out at the town hall and town halls traditionally it could be a little um tense sometimes um depending what's going on in your culture and we did some periodic surveying and guess what came to the top but what people want i mean yes people wanted to know if they could buy a chair at home okay fine but beyond that they could buy a chair a new screen connection yeah people showed up to the town halls every friday for connection i mean you know when you think of town halls people don't traditionally think of connection they think of kind of animosity sometimes or like and there were tense moments it's not that it's not that it was all roses but you know once um i saw the results okay well then how can we build that in around some of the nitty gritty that we had to do um i love you know i hate saying sort of silver linings but you know silver lining pandemic that connection has we're just at the top we realize the important because it's something that i appreciate so yeah silver lining there is um we've had a wonderful moment to reset and it's it's been the positive impact of a really difficult period collectively because nobody's nobody's missed this moment it's been so universal and so isolating it's been interesting starting to travel again and just noticing there's joy people are joyful to have tourists back people are joyful to be tourists and it's just there's a there's a real yeah there's a connection there's a reconnection because you don't realize what you've had to it's gone quite often yes it's smelling the roses yeah so it is a new appreciation of something that we just didn't realize we had until it was gone right yeah absolutely i mean it's a little like your health you know as soon as you um i don't know sprain your ankle or set something all of a sudden you realize how much you appreciate your your health and you appreciate movement and your body gets you around everywhere i recently sprained my ankle so i'm still home oh i'm sorry no but i can really relate it's just like i was thinking that the other day of oh my gosh i took it so for granted that i could just run or just walk fast somewhere and it's yeah it's amazing so actually i would say it's a really good moment to reflect on what we realize fresh we didn't know we had and and i think connecting to that and realizing that's universal is another point of connection with others of just you know you can you can shoot the breeze with people on the the metro now about whatever people okay i live in Barcelona which is kind of notoriously unfriendly to be perfectly honest so what i have enjoyed is now i know my neighbors i've lived in the same building for six years and they was just ignored me in the hallway as the foreigner in the building and now like we chat we have a whatsapp group and it's really broken the ice uh or the icy exterior in some places i would be interested in hearing if anybody in this um this session has found the same but people smile at each other on the street now more than they ever did before so yeah i think there's been a real appreciation rather than guardedness we realize really alone we're not together and that actually just being able to be collectively out in the open together it feels closer it feels more human so yeah i'm really grateful and it makes communicating easier like it makes it a lot easier yeah absolutely um okay well speaking of humanity which has been this um nice red thread that we've had come through um talk to us more about discomfort and by the way i'm dying to use the word discomfort which i know is not a word i know but you know you see discomfort i mean it just is almost like to be of your tongue to talk to us about this important topic how did it come into your world like what i mean you've given us some hints along the way we've heard it come different ways but um so talk to us about sort of your journey in thinking about finding discomfort and that if we could sort of lead that into like okay how can i make it work for me it sounds kind of scary well the scary is the point really but yeah i i'm someone who discomfort is kind of my comfort zone so because of my background because i am so incredibly different from my family different from the place i'm from i'm from a place that nobody really understands or knows much of that so i was always getting to explain myself or define myself and you know most people just don't they can't picture where i'm from or who i am so i've become very good at feeding in and letting people think i'm like them until i break the news that i'm from a slightly different background or you know whatever and also because i'm really passionate about systems change and social justice and treating the earth in a way that you know means we can all thrive in the future it's uncomfortable because it means questioning the way that our systems have been structured in an understanding at the time they were created i'm talking about capitalism you know where they're based on the idea that we could endlessly use resources that humans are resources to create things that the earth has natural resources that we can use to make things sort of endlessly and and essentially exploitation is baked into the system it's not that the system is broken the system is working just fine we've created yes that exploits people and that in order to have things made cheaply that we can consume we have had to be programmed to be consumers to then work to buy the things that we've been programmed to consume and that somebody along the way somewhere has to be exploited and lower on the food chain than us in order to provide that enjoyment of the system that's it before you go on can i just insert a teeny tiny thing here and use this as a plug for another session we're doing next week this is around decolonizing science and the image that the the organizer of that gave me to put into the program it's a meme and it says um the system's not broken it was built this way for yeah exactly it's yeah the system is not broken the system's fine it's just the wrong system yeah okay thanks for that a very narrow band of people and and i'm here to admit it benefits me i'm you know i am a white woman with two very powerful passports and i had access to education and you know whatever my background i i am privileged the the system benefits me but actually what i have felt quite passionate about doing since i was very young literally like seven eight years old is using my privilege to open the doors to other people to to readjust the system or create new ones and i quite enjoy that role and i think part of it is personality but also i just was never bred to fit in and so i like that role with disruptor it fits me quite well and i figured out where it doesn't work and have ended up creating a life and a role that embraces that people hire me to be disruptive people hire me to be the external person they brief to say the things they can't say to their CEO and so it is it's it's a fun role to be in but discomfort like i said i i walk in a room and it makes people uncomfortable i've worked for certain companies where i look like this and i just walk in as myself and people just look scared of me and i'm like i'm really nice i'm actually really nice so it kind of hurts my feelings but i'm also quite tall so i think that just that combination just made people who want to just you know ride the gravy train to to retirements and just don't disrupt the system because it works for them i can be a little scary but i also then of course trained as a yoga teacher and the type of yoga that i teach predominantly these days is called yin yoga and it's about being very still it's certainly sorry a good moderator has an alarm sorry you also have my bells but it's about sitting i i say on the edge do you find your edge comfortable and then you sit there and even when it starts to get you might be sitting in a hip opener for a minute and think this is a breeze and then something changes and you just think how do i leave how do i leave how do i leave and rather than moving and making yourself more comfortable you breathe and you let go instead and you let yourself sink into this comfort and then you watch your comfort zone expand so that has become a beautiful metaphor for what i've stepped into more and more professionally which is that your comfort zone isn't necessarily good for you it's just what is comfortable for you and that on the other side of your comfort zone is a bigger comfort zone but you have to get uncomfortable first you have to challenge systems you have to challenge your biases you have to challenge yourself to grow and if you go to the gym you know you don't build new muscle until you break down the old muscle so expansion only comes from breaking down your comfort zone from breaking down what kind of work for you or maybe didn't really work for you so i say at the beginning of my podcast that on the other side of discomfort like your superpowers because it's true it's sort of like the concept of if you're not afraid of hearing no you can ask for anything and quite often you'll get a yes so it's about towing up to the line figuring out where the algebra comfort zone is getting there and it might mean getting more activists it might be questioning your own beliefs it might be questioning your own comfort zone and why it's comfortable for you and what privilege that entails but challenging it and recognizing that actually only good things can come from that and that pain is not to be avoided pain is just part of life it's part of being being brought into this world you know your mother had to go through pain to bring you into this world but what a great thing that was right so it's not something to be avoided and we spend so much time with good vibes only or trying to avoid discomfort trying to avoid difficult conversations or making ourselves uncomfortable by saying something that actually aligns with our values when we see something at work happening that isn't or we say this is going to create a risk if we communicate it this way or this story is not going to land with people that's uncomfortable but what ultimately can happen from that discomfort is going to probably be positive so I'm a bit of an evangelist for the idea that discomfort is not to be avoided it's to be sought out because I think I said this earlier something along the lines of what would the world be like if we were always constantly trying to grow and not avoid discomfort if we were questioning things if we were having difficult conversations fearlessly but with empathy and compassion because you don't have to be a jerk to be out of your comfort zone you don't have to be confrontational to be having a difficult conversation so it's about actually also being kind to yourself because there are some days when it's okay to be in your comfort zone that's where you need to be to recover or you're just you don't have the energy to be always pushed in your envelope and this is I'm talking to myself here so the days when you take your foot off the gas and take care of yourself and just maybe thank you paddle in place and recover for the next round of training of challenging of growing because it's ultimately if you do it based on values and purpose and curiosity then it will get you to interesting places and I would say good places I heard a quote recently and I'm trying to remember who said it somebody very well known and I can't remember but the idea that fear and curiosity cannot coexist and I love that concept particularly when you think about discomfort because if you enter everything with curiosity that powerful fear that keeps us from expanding or thinking strategically it can't exist there's not space for it so how can you enter difficult conversations with curiosity how can you enter strategy with curiosity how can you enter things that you're a little afraid of with curiosity things you don't know with curiosity because it takes us a very different place and I think it it brings a very different energy and also that's infectious because if you are making yourself uncomfortable if anybody's a fan of Brené Brown she talks so much about the power of vulnerability you're making yourself vulnerable but actually what that does is inspires other people to also be safe to be vulnerable so it also goes back to helping to create an environment in which people can be fully human and when you can be fully human you can be fully yourself you can make mistakes and come up with brilliant solutions you can be in your truth in integrity aligned with your values at work and that's a really beautiful thing so being seeking out discomfort with curiosity and being unnecessarily unafraid to be vulnerable but just doing it anyway is really powerful for the world around you whether it's your immediate world your workplace your family or the wider world. It reminds me of a book title I think it was a book title um you know feel the fear and do it anyway. Yeah it's a great book actually and also the gift of fear have you heard of that one? No it's Gavin Tobekker it was an Oprah's book club book and I read it when I was in my early 20s before I went traveling by myself around Europe for a few months and it also talks about your gut instinct and like the gift of fear but knowing when fear is trying to really give you a useful message so really listening to like your gut instinct but then also recognizing when fear is just kind of this metaphysical comfort zone thing so I think it's useful to know the difference between the two comfort zones here and primal you really need to not get on an elevator with that person here. Yes yes absolutely absolutely we don't have too too much time left I do have a couple of wrap up sort of type things but before I get to those is there anything that else that you would like to talk about today? I would love a lot of time for questions if people have a need to be honest I think I think we have covered a lot Heather and we have covered a lot okay let me just we have okay folks open the chat function please if you don't have it open and type in your questions we'll give you just a quick sec to do that while people are thinking of questions and typing their questions I will ask you Betsy about gratitude because that's a subject that I really love can you tell me something that you're feeling gratitude for something that you're grateful for right now? Gratitude is so powerful I am so grateful that I get to sit in my home office and talk to people all over the world and connect hopefully with people all over the world this is such a gift and this is the pandemic I've been working remotely for eight years and I used to have to not tell people that I didn't live with they did so that they would still hire me and I'm just so grateful that we now get to live in places we want to live and still connect with each other so that's a good one yeah um oh geez okay well let me respond to that first I um I lived on one side of Canada my family was on the other side of the country and the pandemic speaking of silver linings everybody using zoom including people who aren't really tech savvy having that connection was amazing talk about a gift and then it made moving then to the other side of the world easier because you know the technology was already there and we could still it's so easy to connect what am I grateful for um I'm so grateful I found you because I when I when the science summit was coming together and the ideas were flowing you were on my wish list and I was like no I need to I need to inquire about this and it took me a little bit to connect with you and um you know talk about fear or sort of that you know when we think about ourselves I was like oh maybe she doesn't want to do it maybe she doesn't like me and I'm scared I am so glad you've already gotten some great so you once once I sort of tracked down we you know someone in common it was actually the person who'd put on the webinar um and I I've been to a few webinars from um IBC um UK so reached out to that person and she made the intro so I was grateful that I persevered a little bit and that you were so gracious as well so thank you for the pleasure it's been a pleasure and thank you to everybody who's been here because I'm realizing we are quickly marching toward the end but people who've stayed I'm so grateful that you stayed from all over the world it is it is late here so we do have one comment from Aya um Aya is a social media coordinator um she said I agree okay I can't remember what she was agreeing with but she agrees with something um being able to curate our own social media feeds also helps us oh reinforce our biases this from a social media expert Aya knows what she's talking about but yeah we it's our comfort zone again so add a few few sources in there that make you uncomfortable listen to some podcasts by people that you're just like whoa but it's sharpening and it does keep us from forgetting it's so easy to just get in our comfort zone with social media in particular and we've got a question we do have another okay these are wise words some of which I have learned from aging that says how can we spread the word to children who would benefit from these ideas greatly oh but we all probably have contact with children in our own our own spheres and actually my book is dedicated to my god children who I dedicate as they will inherit the world that we create but also they're smarter than us I teach 2021 year olds and also like around children quite regularly and I think they know more than we do about these things so maybe I'd flip that I think we can we can facilitate space for them to share with us what they know because they speak truth they haven't been programmed out of the truth of speaking the truth knowing what matters to them knowing they know what kind of world they're growing up in you know I have was with a friend's seven and five year old last weekend and they know the news they know about climate change they know about black lives matter they know about all these things so maybe it's our job to learn from them and to benefit from how they see the world and then work on doing what we can with the power that we have as adults maybe people in leadership positions to help create the world that they know is possible that's that's a wonderful that's a wonderful coming down from this narrative endpoint thank you I appreciate that these two comments that we we have a span of generations with us today and that's really really wonderful I think we should just wrap up I do have a few thank you thank you I think we should wrap up because we were very very close to time and we can't go over the time has flown by Betsy it's been an absolute privilege speaking with you as I said I mean you're on my my wish list right from the beginning thank you so so much for sharing your perspective your positive energy and your passion with us and from both of us to all of you watching thank you so much for spending this time with us I know time is valuable we know time is valuable thank you for thank you for spending it with us please connect if I can invite people Betsy is that okay please connect with us both online Betsy I know is really active on Instagram I'm really active on LinkedIn also there is a little ask there's a little bit of homework here please be sure to give us feedback through the science summit program so if you go back into this session which should be in your own schedule there it's a very nice little simple feedback different faces with different emotions which is nice because it transcends language culture so it's very easy and we would appreciate it but I would love to provide some perfect summary wrap up of everything we heard today but I'm still in the digesting mode I'm still in the processing mode and I suspect I'm not alone oh excellent thank you for the push there your podcast is the discomfort practice also Betsy you have a very unique name so I do know if you google your name that you come right to the top so so please please find Betsy Betsy it's been an absolute treat getting to know you a little bit leading up to this a lot more today I think I speak for everyone and just saying thank you for being so generous thank you for being so generous thank you so much for holding space for this conversation I really just hope that something today has landed I hope that people feel inspired about themselves and about the world we can create together and more connected I hope you feel more connected knowing that there are a lot of people out there seeking the same things care about the same things who want to connect so thank you so much other for the invitation and thank you to everyone who's here today please do get in touch thank you and goodbye everyone