Welcome to Episode 70. Have you ever experienced feelings of anxiety, overwhelm, or even burnout in your agency job? We all know that working in an agency can be fun and rewarding. But it’s also really fast paced.
Many account managers are juggling lots of different client relationships, multiple projects, and reacting to the inevitable unexpected fires that also need to be put out. And, let’s be honest, some days, weeks, or even months can be constantly busy and feel pretty relentless.
Account managers need a high level of personal resilience, and also a certain degree of resourcefulness, and being able to keep your cool when dealing with problems. I recently had some training myself to help me with my own resilience, called Quality of Mind and it was unlike any other training I’d experienced before, because it was talking about how the mind actually works. It hasn’t only helped me with my resilience, it’s also impacted very positively in all sorts of areas of my life. #
The foundations of this training that I did were based on what’s known as non-duality, the direct path. And since the training three months ago, I’ve been pretty riveted by this topic and I’ve managed to read four books and I’ve watched a couple of documentaries on YouTube. I felt like I was discovering a big secret with this training, but I’ve been surprised to see that it was actually just this world that I knew nothing about, and that these principles that I learned, I have already been adopted by 1000s of individuals, business leaders and organisations.
I’ve been so impacted about what I’ve learned that I wanted Piers Thurston to come on and share these principles of this Quality of Mind training with you.
If my chat with Piers piques your interest and you’re curious to go a bit deeper, or maybe you want to ask questions to see if it might help you or your agency team, then please join us for the free Quality of Mind for Agencies mini training at 1pm on Wednesday 14th of September 2022. Follow this link to register: www.bit.ly/qualityofmind
Transcript:
Jenny 00:03
Well, in today’s episode, I’m super excited about speaking to Piers Thurston. Piers is an organisational change consultant and founder of Quality of Mind. He’s got 20 years of experience in coaching and professional development. The Quality of Mind programme is the foundation of all human potential and it addresses what’s essentially before psychology, i.e., what’s before mindset or behaviour. He’s also the host of the Quality of Mind podcast and having been through Piers’ Quality of Mind programme myself and seen firsthand how transformational it’s been for me, I was desperately keen to get him on to the show, to talk about how we could translate this for those working in the creative industry. And it turns out the Piers already has quite a lot of experience working with other agencies. So, Piers, welcome to the show.
Piers 00:55
Jenny, hello. It’s a pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for inviting me on. I’m really looking forward to our chat.
Jenny 01:01
Me too. So, would you mind starting by just sharing some of your experience and background up to the point where you started Quality of Mind?
Piers 01:12
So, I’ll give a nutshell, the last 25 years. So, I actually read law at university but didn’t find that massively interesting. But I was lucky enough at the time to be sponsored by Guinness, which is a big drinks company and I worked in United Distillers and worked in marketing for them. And I really got interested in brands, innovation, consumers because I’ve always been interested in psychology or how people tick, whether that’s consumer behaviour or why people do what they do when they walk down the street. So, I first of all went into FMCG sales and marketing for a couple of years and then I realised how important the human element of a business was. So, I was working in big corporations like Walker snack foods and Mars and I realised, actually, it doesn’t matter how great your product is or how great your innovation is, it’s all about the human part. And I came across, in about 1999, two things about the same time. One was called coaching, which was a new thing that was coming into the UK. Previously coaching had been all about sport but this is more about personal development coaching and something called NLP, Neuro Linguistic Programming. I put those two things together and thought, ‘Wow, this really makes a difference to people in how they live their life and their goals and their happiness.’ etc., etc. And I went through that for about 8/9/10 years, collecting lots of tools and techniques and approaches, going up the ladder of what you need to be a trainer of this and a coach of that. I was working both with private clients and with organisations big and small around innovation and leadership, team development, visioning. I did a lot of training of other coaches as well, in NLP and in coaching skills and a lot of manager and leader as coach. And then in about 2008, I was lucky enough by one of my mentors in the States, to be pointed in a slightly different direction. Something, which I to start with I thought was the same as I was doing and then I realised it wasn’t, it was something actually called The Three Principles as articulated by Sidney Banks. And that turned everything upside down for me and started me to look at what we are before psychology. And then really over the last 10/12 or so years, I’ve developed further down that and got more what I would describe as ‘Upstream’ and more into what is technically now called, ‘Direct Path, Non-Duality’, which you could call a form of spiritual understanding. But what we do with Quality of Mind is we’ve codified that to work with people in a very practical, organisation way in the workplace and leadership and teamwork and change and all those things. So, it’s sort of bridging spirituality and psychology so we go from the profound to the practical. And the last thing I’ll say in my nutshell ramble, is I feel incredibly grateful. Just what a gift it is that I do what I do. I’ve worked for myself in my own small business for 20/25 years and I love it. I absolutely love it because every day is a learning day and it’s infinite. And I love watching people wake up to this. So that’s me in a nutshell.
Jenny 04:34
And you can see your energy when you do the programme Piers. It kind of oozes from you and how passionate you are. So, I can honestly say that that is the truth. So, you did NLP normal kind of coaching for 10 years, then you changed path. What, for you, was so compelling about the chosen path, the Quality of Mind training, versus what you’ve done in the past?
Piers 04:59
Well, I think it’s realisation based, really. So, I had some realisations, which I’ll describe in a moment, that when I started to see them, I just didn’t see the value in what I was talking about from the more psychological approaches of NLP and coaching and things. And what I started to see was more about the nature of what we are as human beings, the nature of reality of consciousness, of thought, of the mind, of the self and through some realisations of that, for what I saw, it no longer made sense to help people in the way I was. And actually, I couldn’t even help it, my mouth just started moving differently and saying different things and pointing to different directions, going against all of my training as a coach and an NLP’er which is quite a concept and application-based model. And I just started to see more and more of the simplicity really and the power of recognising what we are, the true nature of what we are in the mind and how we’ve innocently, invisibly got caught up in a lot of our psychology. But we can’t tell really. I mean, I couldn’t tell for 30/40 years that that was sort of in the way. I thought it was helpful, but it’s not. But it isn’t till you see it, that you really recognise that. And I know you’ve been through some of that experience very recently, Jenny, so you can probably relate to that. But it is quite hard for someone who hasn’t been through that to recognise it. But it was through realisation and just seeing what I saw is true and always wanting to have the most valuable conversation I could with my client, not give them the old stuff sort of thing.
Jenny 06:45
So, when you were training, the NLP stuff and the coaching stuff, it worked to a certain extent. But how do you describe the difference between what you were doing there and what people told you was the impact? And now the impact of what you’re teaching now? Can you see the two?
Piers 07:05
It’s such a good question because back then I used to get great feedback, people would find what I do very powerful and that was genuine, I don’t think they weren’t making it up and it looked to me like it was doing that. So, what’s the difference to now? I think the difference now is, well, there’s two things really, I think, some of the benefit they were getting back then, which is the sort of transformational shifts, they were getting despite what I was doing, not because of what I was doing. And I’ve actually got more and more elegant in pointing to that now. But the second thing was, some of the changes they were getting were helping them at one level, but it helped them do life better. Definitely. But
what people find now is they have realisations around Quality of Mind is, there really is no doing of life that needs to be done. When we recognise the nature of what we are, life lives us. And there’s a magic in creation, in relating, connecting beauty, love, resilience, imagination, all these things are there. And there’s a more effortlessness about life. And that may, for some people, change what they do in life, but they will sail more than row.
So, you could say in the past, I was good at making people row faster. Good at making them have larger goals and getting over their limitations to getting over themselves. Now, it’s more about helping them recognise that we don’t need to get over ourselves or around ourselves, we just need to fall back into what we truly are. And then the wind just takes us. And there’s a real pervasive, as I mean wide-ranging transformative benefit, and life feels different. So, the one thing I would also say, from people that have been attending Quality of Mind, is they can get more juice out of each moment of life without doing anything. They don’t need bigger or better things. They just see the beauty and the richness in the ordinary. And once people see it, they can lose sight of it in the moment, but it’s always there and they can easily click back into it.
Jenny 07:20
It’s so deep what you’ve just said. Partly I’m asking you the question because I’m sure there are people listening thinking I’m doing NLP, or I’ve done NLP and that’s all I know. So, what is this that Piers is talking about? And the other thing that I wanted to say was the analogy of ‘rowing versus sailing’ was what absolutely got me about the programme because that is exactly what I feel the change has been. But can you, for those listening because I think you’ve done a really good job in setting it all off and getting people’s attention, give us a flavour of how the training actually works?
Piers 10:08
Jenny, you know, because you’ve spent three days doing this, but it’s hard to give a gist, but let me just give a little flavour. So. So I’d say what the training isn’t. We don’t go and tell you behavioural prescriptions – here’s what you should do, 10 top tips to have a better work-life balance. We don’t need prescriptions on mindset and attitude saying, ‘Be authentic, be open-minded’. We don’t do any of that. And we also don’t tell people to analyse their patterns and their traits and their style and their personality type. We don’t do any of that. So, then you’re like, ‘Well, what’s there then if you’re not doing either of those two things? Where does this magic come from?’ What we get people to do is to explore. We call it an inquiry. A direct experience inquiry, which means exploring without your belief system telling you what it thinks. And it’s a very simple, basic thing. And actually, we’ve got a podcast on our show that takes you through the whole process if they want it, but I’ll give you just a taste of it now. We ask people to think, in any moment of experience of being alive, what is actually going on? And we don’t mean reference your neurology or your eyes or all the things you’ve been taught in science. Literally, from the very moment of you being in your day, you will notice perceptions turn up. So, people now might be listening to this or doing what they do. So, perceptions turn up. Sensations of being alive, whatever it might be. Thoughts will come in. That’s going on, that’s just occurring in the moment. Now, if you get curious, you just think well, all of those things come and go. Everything we perceive, think, feel, comes and goes. What is it that is there before that? Now, if you ask someone’s intellect that they will go, ‘Well me. I’m there.’ The self that appears to Jenny or whoever but then it doesn’t take you long to go, ‘Oh, well, that Piers, Jenny, is also a thought.’ Because sometimes it’s not there. And when I’m in what we would call flow state or in the zone, or I’ve lost myself in a book or a movie or conversation or exercise, I’m not there. So, then we start to see that the self is just a thought. And a thought could be, ‘I fancy broccoli for lunch, not tomatoes.’ That’s a thought, but so is the self. But it’s such a compelling thought that we think we are this thing. So, we start to see that the self comes and goes and everything else comes and goes. So that’s not really what we are. So, we’ve got a case of mistaken identity going on. Now, why is this relevant? Is that just a bit of interesting thing philosophically? Well, it’s relevant because
what starts to happen is we realise that 95% of our thinking is that self-protecting or seeking. Not even the visible thought, but a lot of our conditioning and our programming as if that self is the centre of attraction that needs to control and manage the world, like manage the future or protect itself and other people or whatever. And that’s what gets in the way of us being in a beautiful flow state and just ‘sailing’ to go back to the metaphor we used. So really, we go right back to the foundation of understanding that we’ve got a mistaken identity about the self, we’re hoodwinked to think that the world that we perceive and think and feel is true, objectively true.
So, materialism says there’s a world out there that has almost like a causal power. We start to see that that’s illusionary because that world that’s been created has a perceptual rendering, a bit like a virtual reality headset. It’s real, but not true. So, we’ve got some fundamental shifts to look at here. One that the self we think is this thing that’s an entity, that does everything for us, isn’t? It’s not the epicentre, it’s just an appearance. And the reality that we’re perceiving isn’t objectively true, it’s real, as in we can feel it, smell it, sense it, but it’s not true. It has no causal power. And then when both of those two things come together, we find that what’s behind that is in a beautiful, infinite load of resourcefulness, resilience, creativity, imagination, inspiration, love, connection, possibility. That’s all just sitting there within our infinite potential. But we are very innocently, very invisibly, hoodwinked to see that. Now it comes through in moments, people will have it and they then attribute that usually to a thing. I get it when I cook, so I do more cooking. It’s not about cooking, right? That’s just yourself settling down and getting out the way. So, we know it’s sort of there. But we’ve completely misunderstood how to get hold of it or to allow it to reveal itself. And particularly in the workplace, if I just dance to the workplace because the self, this conceptual mind, personal mind self is very active in the workplace. We don’t know it half the time, but it really is. And that’s why people lose their mojo and then they seek to get it back. But they look in weird places for it like in activities, either external ones or even in things like mindfulness and meditation, they seek for it there. But when we realise it’s our true nature, that’s when the needle shifts. So, I’ve given you a very long answer about something quite big there. But I don’t know whether that really did your question justice, Jenny? Please pull me up on it or ask me more or whatever.
Jenny 15:58
Obviously, I’m familiar with what you’re saying. So, if you’re listening to this for the first time, it might feel like, ‘Wow!’ The way I came to this was because many years ago I saw a documentary on quantum physics. And it felt like what you were beginning to talk about – along the same lines, about the nature of reality. But going back to why this is relevant and how this helps in the workplace, tell us a bit more about that disengagement piece. So, someone’s sitting in their job, because I think this is where it could be practical for people because there’s probably someone listening, thinking, ‘God, I’m overwhelmed at work. Hiring is a massive issue at the moment, and we can’t recruit people fast enough. So, I’m overwhelmed with work.’ Thinking about pointing to the nature of reality and the nature of thoughts and perceptions and feelings can you talk to me a bit more about how that can help someone in that kind of state currently?
Piers 17:00
Yes. I work with a lot of businesses, and
I’ve worked with a lot of people in marcomms and things and they have got a lot to do. And it’s always – more, more, more, more, more, less people to do it with, clients wanting more and more and more. So, it’s quite easy to feel overwhelmed, juggling and plate spinning and no time to truly think in an expansive new way. So how does this seemingly philosophical or scientific or highfalutin thing help practically? Well, and this is one of the beauties of it but it’s sort of good news, bad news. The bad news is there’s no tool or technique to help your resilience or your overwhelm or whatever. It’s not like I can give you like in NLP; I could have given you a tool. But the good news is, there’s no tool! Which is great. But instead, it happens through realisation.
And it happens to the system recalibrating. You might think, ‘Well, what does that mean?’ Well, as we mentioned earlier, we have a lot of self-identification going on with the content of our reality. Now, let’s look at little human beings that don’t do that – two or three-year-olds. Now, how quickly do they go from overwhelmed to total peace of mind? Very fast. Why? Because they don’t self-identify with the content of their perceptions. So, what happens with us as we start to see this understanding, and it happens, I’m going to say, by itself. What I mean by that is once you have the realisations, the implications just drip through where they’re needed really, people will find they don’t get stuck down in the overwhelm for so long or it dissolves in the first place and never turns up. So, things that would have maybe triggered them, don’t. Or if it does, it just doesn’t stick. It’s no longer made of Velcro and you’re just in it and then you’re out. And you don’t have to do anything to come out, it’s just a little, ‘Oh! and you start to see it more. And then as this recalibration carries on, things just dissolve. So, the self-mind and a lot of its conditioning that was coming from a protecting or seeking place, just dissolves. So, it just gets better and better the more we recalibrate to the system. So, the short answer is there’s no tool or technique, but the realisations do the heavy lifting. Now, some people find that way of cause and effect doesn’t fit with their world. But it doesn’t take long for people to start to see that it does. Especially when you start to look at, ‘Well, how has realisation happened in the past? Did I do anything to get a realisation and a habit change?’ No, it tends to just sort of turn up. But we’re really helping people understand how to be more fertile to having realisations that allow mindsets to change and dissolve and new ones turn up.
Jenny 19:56
Love that. On the course, you talked about something that personally resonated with me, which was layering. The concept of layering. And I’ll probably butcher this but essentially, thoughts as you just said, pass through you but sometimes we kind of self-sabotage by putting too much emphasis on that thought, rather than letting it pass through you, kind of layering upon it in your own little world. So, you say to yourself, ‘That client’s been really nasty to me. Well, actually, I’m always having trouble with this client. And actually, maybe it’s because I’m not very good at my job. And my performance has really got bad and that’s what they said to me the other day, the boss of mine…’ And all of a sudden, you’re telling yourself this story, layering upon one simple thought that actually was, ‘It felt real but was it really true?’ So, can you talk to me a bit more about this layering concept?
Piers 20:53
So layering is one of the nicknames we give to one of the implications of people having what we would describe as a contracted aperture or an overactive conceptual mind. Most of us have this, by the way, just in case you’re feeling like, ‘Oh, is this just me?’ No, no, we all do this. But it’s one of the implications and there are a few of them and layering is one. And layering, you described it really nicely, Jenny to be honest. So, if we compare it to flow – in flow, perceptions and thoughts just come in and they go out and nothing needs to happen to them from a psychological efforting perspective, it just occurs and we act on them as if nature is just living us. So, there’s nothing to do psychologically. Layering is when the mind, the personal mind has attached itself to a perception or reality and then starts meaning-making with narratives. The two most common layers that we put in are judgement and justification. So, a justification is, ‘Well, no wonder this is difficult because the climb was difficult last time, and other people find it difficult.’ Or justification – the mind likes to justify or a judgement, that the layer would come in and say, ‘That’s because I’m not very good at this.’ Or ‘They’re an idiot.’ It could be a judgement about someone else, it doesn’t have to be a judgement about you. But judgement and justification are the most two common layers that the self puts in, and they will look real and true. Whilst we’re in a contracted aperture. When we’re in a more expanded aperture, we start to see through them and go, ‘Uh? That’s not the case, what’s going on there?’ That sometimes might be the next morning when you re-look at the email from the client and you go, ‘Oh, that bothered me yesterday but doesn’t this morning?’ And nothing’s changed. The client email is still there. And you’re looking at your reply going, ‘Oh, maybe I shouldn’t have replied like that.’ Or maybe you kept it in drafts, and you’re caught on to yourself a little bit. So layering is a nice practical way to see some of the implications of what we’re talking about. now. In NPL days I would have given you a tool to fix your layering, a psychological tool. But we don’t do that with Quality of Mind. We enable people to see through it.
Jenny 23:02
Which is so much more powerful.
Piers 23:04
Which is more powerful. And as you beautifully said the other day, it then eclipses everything else we need. We don’t need anything else, quality of mind is everything we need. So yes, recognise the layering is a psychological implication. But then, the Quality of Mind way of seeing that doesn’t fix it with a tool, which is just a tactical fix. We see through the essence of it.
Jenny 23:26
I think this is so useful. And that’s why I’m keen to share it with more account managers because this is the reality of our day-to-day jobs. It’s tough, it’s hard. And actually, it’s even harder when you are in this kind of mindset and you’re not helping yourself. So, the other day Piers, you very elegantly put something on my post which I want to read out because we were talking about the role of the account manager and how Quality of Mind could be beneficial. And you describe the account manager’s role as a ‘catch-all’ of always being able to find the relevant blend of creativity, resilience, perspective, empathy, inspiration, clarity and balance, whatever the situation, whoever the client. Like a Swiss Army knife of resourcefulness and potential. First of all, that was beautifully said, but specifically, can we talk a little bit more about how learning the Quality of Mind principles could help account managers specifically because you’ve obviously got experience working with agencies?
Piers 24:30
I was just thinking this is quite a nice description, Piers, well done! So, there’s an example of layering where I put a layer in going, ‘Well done me!’ So how did Quality of Mind help that? Well, I think what’s really key to see in that role and roles like that, is you do need that Swiss Army knife. You have to turn your hand to anything from very practical things to very human things. And there’s a base level of attributes that we need to be good at that. So that ability to have clarity and creativity and resilience and connection and inspiration – they’re all the things we need, whatever the context is, or the particulars are, that’s what we need. They’re generally attributes of a high quality of mind what we call a high quality of mind of an open aperture, available to anyone. So, what happens when we understand the principles and the foundations and quality of mind is we find our ratio shifts, if you like. We spend more of our time in that open aperture, that higher quality of mind where those traits that we just described, are more available to us. So, some people might go, ‘Well, about 20% in my day, I’m able to have access to all those things, but 80% I’m not.’ Obviously, it varies in the day in a week. Then we’ll shift that ratio. And the reason we have to shift that ratio is because what’s in the way of that for us, and it may not look like it, is this misunderstanding of the identification of the self-mind and all our layering and our lids and our invisible noise going on. That’s what’s in the way. Because
account managers will know that when they’re in, let’s call it a good space, they can deal with pretty much anything. They might need a little bit of experience, so there is a little bit of learned conceptual experience that comes from knowing the way the Marcomms world works. So, I’m not saying you could come in brand, brand new and completely nail it. But having said that, your ability to learn and assimilate with the industry would get really fast if you’ve got an open aperture. You get more absorbent, I guess. So, when we’re in that ‘sailing’ mode, we just find that stuff more available. It’s not like we’re going to have to manufacture it through psychological efforting which is what I would have taught in NLP, like imagine, you can create this state where you’re feeling more resourceful. That tactically might help, but it’s psychologically intensive and it requires effort and that kind of thing. So those things that the account manager is are natural, emergent, innate superpowers of any human being. And they’ll come forward and present themselves more when we’re at a higher quality of mind which we get from understanding the principles part in Quality of Mind.
Jenny 27:34
This is, I think, the shift I feel I’ve made. As you said, it’s not here’s a step-by-step, here’s a tool you can do, here’s a technique which relies on the fact that you’re going to remember the tool at the time in the moment. This is pointing to, and as you say, a realisation of how the mind works. Which kind of means the Quality of Mind training is redundant after that because once you’ve understood, not redundant completely, you need maybe a refresher or a reminder of these principles, but it’s always going to be with you. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And that’s what makes it for me, such a powerful shift. I have that knowledge now, I have that resourcefulness. I do understand that in an open aperture I’m going to be so much more resilient, resourceful, tapping into this ability to come up with ideas, solutions, naturally and effortlessly. And it’s just noticing when you’re in a contracted aperture or an open aperture. And once you know it, you know it, which I think is phenomenal because you’re not having to keep learning new things. It’s a principle and as you say, you point to it, you have the realisation. And how do, particularly agencies, talk about the impact that Quality of Mind has had on their day-to-day jobs and lives?
Piers 29:11
Just before I answer that question, to echo what you just said, what we’re looking at as a foundation, it’s already there. So, we don’t need to learn it. It’s not additive. If anything, it’s a subtractive, it’s an unlearning because it’s already there. So, the simplicity of what the realisation gives us is, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s already there.’ And things drop off to allow it to emerge, which is why you don’t have to do it. And you can lose sight of it in the moment when we’re in contracted aperture. But deep down is a knowing it’s going to come back, so it doesn’t matter so much. So let me just go to your question about agencies. I’m lucky enough to work with quite a few agencies over the last 5/6/7 years and actually, they’ve found it useful in all sorts of areas. So, one big network group I work with wanted to bring about 10 businesses in different parts of the Marcomms – different disciplines, some overlapping and they wanted to bring them all together to work in a more integrated and collaborative way. But they were all rewarded individually at a P&L level and very, very hard driven on the numbers. They were all ex-owner-managers of those businesses that had been assimilated. So, there were some egos, there was some reward structures that all went against the idea of working in collaboration. Even though long term or medium term there’s probably some value in working together in a more joined up way – synergy and stuff. So, what we did there was we worked with the senior leadership team, to help them see what they couldn’t see around the value of working together and truly working together, not just saying it and then going off and not really doing it. So, there was a dissolving of ego, even though that wasn’t egotistical, but just seeing the bigger picture and being willing to have faith in a direction even if you couldn’t see the tangible benefits and even when it went against some of the short term, tangible benefits, if you like. So that was one thing we did to bring some people together so they could all see things differently. We’ve worked directly with the account teams. There’s one, I won’t mention the name, that had a very, very challenging, big, big, big retail client. So, the creative team, and actually the whole account team and everyone found it really hard. About 120 people in the agency work on this one account and it was helping them with their resilience, being able to see what they could do about that so that they didn’t get so burnt out and so stressed and could service the client in a great way. So, we worked on that. I’ve worked quite a lot on leadership as well, in helping people managing in a way because in agencies, people, leaders, (I’m generalising horribly here), leaders tend to be quite ‘doers’ as well and they kind of like being indispensable. And because of the client relationship they’ve always got to be involved, or they think they have, and that isn’t always great for nurturing talent beneath you because the other person has always got the person sitting on top of them. So, it’s helping leaders be true leaders, rather than just sort of ‘doers’ who might spend half a day a year being a leader. And how do you get the best out of your people, when they’re busy, stressed and got challenging clients because no client wants to speak to a stressed account guy on the phone? They want to come off the phone and feel they’ve got this. I, the client, feel more relaxed and positive about what’s happened because of this phone call I’ve just had. And it’s created solutions coming out of there. And they’re understanding me, they’re on my wavelength. That’s what clients want. And that is quite quality and mind sensitive. Or even just the vibe of that. So how do you lead it and bring that out of people and allow them to have some autonomy? Often agencies don’t like making mistakes because if they make a mistake, then the client might get angry, and they might lose billings. So, there’s quite a lot of control mechanisms in which may make it feel a bit squashed. So, is it okay to empower people to work in a way? I worked with lots of people in lockdown and remote working around that kind of thing, being able to manage with autonomy and lead like that. We’ve also worked with client service teams where they’ve had a very challenging client that sort of pulled the team apart and we put them back together again. So, lots of different ways it turns up, Jenny.
Jenny 34:10
Can I get a little bit granular with you? Only because I know my account managers so well and I’m sure many are going to be very intrigued by this kind of tapping into resources into your natural resilience because one of the questions that always comes up for me is, ‘How do I manage a difficult client?’ Now if we apply the principles of Quality of Mind to that specific scenario, can you give us any glimmers of help in terms of how to approach it differently?
Piers 34:49
So, and this is kind of half an answer if anyone’s expecting a technique or tip, I’m not going to give them that, but I am going to give you the start of a direction to look in.
Jenny 35:01
Great!
Piers 35:01
So, let’s imagine the client rings the mobile or an email comes in and just notice what we would call in Quality of Mind language, the aperture. But just notice what the sensations in the feeling of life does, let’s call it what the body does when that phone rings and you can see the client’s name there or the inbox pings and it’s the client. This is the difficult client. And what you’ll probably notice is there’s a slight tightening or a heaviness or whatever.
Jenny 35:13
We’ve all been there!
Piers 35:38
What that is telling you is not, ‘Oh, my God difficult client incoming, batten down the hatches, how am I going to punch my way out of this?’ That is telling you – my aperture’s slightly contracted which means I don’t want to be believing my narratives too much. I’m seeing the world in a slightly distorted way, I haven’t got full access to resourcefulness to my clarity, my creativity, my synthesis, my inspiration. That’s all on 50% power or even lower and the first thing is just to spot that because what we describe in Quality of Mind is that the aperture we are in at any moment determines two things – the world that we see in render, so the world that we feel and see and our access to our resourcefulness. So, if we can first of all spot that really at one level there’s no such thing as a difficult client -now that might have account execs all around the world going, ‘Yes there is, you haven’t met this one!’ But, at the level of the game of life, there’s a thing we can call difficult client relatively but ‘difficult’ is a layer that we’ve put in and whether we find that lovely creative challenge to how to deal with the thinking of this client, or we think, ‘Oh, my gosh, this is going to catch me out and I’m going to lose my job because of this.’ is down to our own narrative. So, the practical tip is to spot your aperture, which is a felt thing and we’ve got videos about this if you want to look at it, little two-minute videos and just see what that does to the way you see the world and your access to your resourcefulness. And if you can just spot that, it means you’re not as squished up against it and that gives you a bit of space for it to dissolve or something fresh to come in. Now, I don’t know what the right level of granularity for the time we’ve got your audience we’ve got Jenny, but you tell me?
Jenny 37:38
I think that’s fantastic because I think probably everyone, to a certain extent listening, can identify with exactly the experience that you’ve just described because a lot of it is about anticipation, isn’t it? I had a missed phone call from a client and actually, I was being coached at the time, obviously not Quality of Mind – this was many years ago and all of a sudden, I said, ‘I know what he’s going to say, he’s going to say this and then he’s going to say that and I think it might be about this.’ and before you know it, my whole body and sensation was in a level of anxiety and stress. Now, that was me generating all of that from one missed phone call! And actually, it was completely the opposite. When I called him back, it was about something completely unrelated. So, I think what I’m saying with this, I think there is this ‘noticing’ of what kind of aperture do I have, what kind of state am I in versus knowing that you have this ability to tap into something so much more abundant? And I think that’s what excites me about learning the Quality of Mind principles, is that it’s there, you just need to tap into it.
Piers 38:52
Yes, and if I take your little example there a bit further, what’s lovely about it, let’s say that you had phoned the client back and it was something they were angry about or annoyed about, rightly or wrongly, it doesn’t matter, but they weren’t actually being nice? Even if it was that, our ability to deal with that – be resourceful find solutions, listen deeply, be empathetic, whatever it is and how much we will let it get to us, if you want to call it that, will be determined by our aperture in the moment.
So, we’re not saying, ‘Oh, don’t believe the universe because things bad things don’t happen?’ Yes, they do. Yes, you’ll get grumpy clients, whatever. But your ability to let that affect you and your resourcefulness to deal with that is all down to the mind. And that’s why we’re always better at solving someone else’s problems than our own. Or, when you come back from holiday after a couple of weeks, you’re like, ‘I’ve got this. I’ve got it.’ You pointed to it just a minute ago Jenny, that we really have no idea as to the resourcefulness that we have, the infinite resourcefulness that we have and the magic of creation and what happens. And we also deeply underappreciate the fact that the presenting reality can’t damage what we are. Not at the true level. It doesn’t matter how bad it gets; it doesn’t damage us. It might damage our presenting psychology for a while, it doesn’t damage what we truly are. That’s ring-fenced. And that’s so useful to know because it takes the sting out of everything.
Jenny 40:38
You mentioned earlier that you’ve dealt with a lot of leaders. I would imagine that if you’re going to fundamentally change the whole organisation, you have to start there? And from a really practical commercial perspective, I’m thinking of maybe independent agency owners who are listening to this, what would you say from your experience of doing this for over 13 years or so, has been the financial impact of Quality of Mind? Can you give us some flavour of, of how that’s affected outcomes?
Piers 41:13
I’m very lucky that they see it as invaluable. I’m talking now about working with small organisations where the leaders have done it and they’ve cascaded it down. You did the training with some of them, they’ve put it in there, new starters come and do it. I think, for any business, it’s invaluable because it’s about the human factor but in an agency world where your product is your people, even if you’ve got a 10% increase in the way your people turned up, that’s going to have a ripple effect across everything on the P&L on the money they save because they’re not ill and taking time off, the business they bring in at a tangible level, on the value they add to those clients, on the talent that you’re attracting and you won’t lose in the great resignation. Just on that, you get your money back. So really, because the benefit is so pervasive across so many levels, you’ll get a tiny increase, it will be worth it. But some people would say things like, ‘I’m five times more productive now.’ And that’s just on productivity, let alone how much they’re enjoying their family and their kids and their health. I mean, the benefits for home?
Jenny 42:46
I’ll add to that because you’re right. When I came to your programme, there were three new staff members for a company that had adopted this. And I was fascinated, and I was interviewing all of them, asking them questions, ‘How is it? How has it changed the organisation?’ And they were adding additional thoughts such as the communication between departments, the fact that (I think the company is events based and it’s frantic doing events, isn’t it?) but she said, there’s a calmness that goes throughout. And the department leads are very present, very thoughtful, there’s lots of respect for one another. So, there were all these additional benefits as well as the increased productivity, it was just the whole way the organisation worked together with a shared understanding and language.
Piers 43:38
It’s lovely and it goes wider than that. They get a real sense of oneness. This will sound trite to some people, but that the heart of their business, I know it’s about love. And that’s the word I think they might have even used on the workshop. Now, you’ve got people talking about love! What? No way? But not love a trite way, what they mean is that at our essence, we are all one. Yes, we’re going to get caught in our psychology and judge each other, blah, blah, blah, but let’s bring it back to that oneness that we all are. All trying to do our best we possibly can as a team, especially when things get frantic. And we support each other. And one thing I notice in their business is they’re very supportive of each other. They talk about it will be one family in the organisation, but these guys don’t have just a nice idea about that, but you really feel like they get that – they are one system and that is flavoured with love that system. And when you get out your own way, it comes through and it sorts you out.
Jenny 44:46
Hugely powerful and not only in the work context but they were also giving reports of how it was already affecting them in their private lives and personal life. So, all around, I think it’s beneficial. I just would encourage anyone that’s slightly curious, to follow through with this. So, Piers, final question because I’m respectful of your time, what do you see as the future of corporate training?
Piers 45:10
It’s such a good question. I have what I think might happen and I hope might happen, but who knows? The world is an interesting place. But I think there’s going to be a paradigm shift, we’ll go along with science, who’s going through the same thing where they’re realising physicalism materialism just doesn’t stack up anymore. So, the consciousness first view of science is growing. And I think that will, at the same time, because the universe is entangled, start to see in organisations that this idea about layering people up with lots of tools and techniques and psychological efforting, here’s how to be the best leader, do this, understand people etc., this dedication of the self, if I can say that, which is a society broad thing, not just organisational but it means that the self gets protected a lot in the organization’s psychological safety, mental health, love initiatives but they’re all based on misunderstandings. They’re all based on misunderstandings. So, what you’ll start to see is that people will start to have their own insights and realisations around the nature of what we are as a system, consciousness, reality. And that will then dribble down into how you develop people. And that, of course, will turn up in businesses. You might find it happens in some businesses earlier and you’ll probably find you’ll get patches of businesses that stick in the old and the other ones will just get further and further more innovative, more creative, more resilient, more attracting the talent and you might get a divergence in what the corporate world is offering as some go with it more and some stick to their guns more. So, I would love to see that in the future, what we talk about at Quality of Mind, is actually taught in schools because this is a human thing, nothing to do with business at one level. Now what we do at Quality of Mind is make it relevant for the workplace and the business context. We add that flavour on to it. But really the core of it should be like they teach hygiene in schools – how to brush your teeth, wash your hands, don’t pick your nose and that kind of thing. They teach you that. They should, will, maybe, hopefully, be teaching the basics of what we’re talking about at Quality of Mind. And then in businesses, we would just add the contextual reference of the implications for that on. That’d be my wish. And actually, what I would say is a friend of mine, a futurist who came on the programme four or five years ago, is predicting that this sort of thing will be in the workplace a lot more in 5/10 years’ time.
Jenny 45:20
I can’t imagine that it wouldn’t, let’s put it like that. I went on your course a few months ago. Already, I’ve read four books on the topic. I had no idea there was this whole movement going on. There were scientists, philosophers, psychologists, psychiatrists, all talking about this and a couple of documentaries on YouTube as well. And I cannot believe that it’s kind of been hidden from my view, personally, for so long. And to that point, I’m so keen to share it with those who are also open-minded to exploring further. And that’s why we’re both going to do a webinar for the creative industry, aren’t we?
Piers 48:21
Yes, looking forward to that Jenny, I really am.
Jenny 48:27
For anyone listening to this that’s thinking, you’ve got me intrigued, come along to this webinar. We’re going to be doing it on Wednesday 14th of September at one o’clock – so it’s at lunchtime and we’ll give you more of a flavour of what we’re talking about here. So, if anything has resonated with you, I’d highly recommend you come along, listen to Piers a little bit further and ask any questions that you want to ask.
Piers 48:52
And you’re right, this is all about getting intrigued and getting curious. Curious is a word I probably overuse according to a lot of people but it’s just about getting that intrigue and curiosity to see a little more. So, if something’s resonated in what we’ve said in the last half hour, don’t just dismiss it, tune into that resonance. What occurs to you about what we said? Play it back a couple of times, even send us over some questions before the webinar on the 14th September. You can start now, just get that curiosity. There are other resources we could send you but all you need with this, it’s so simple, it’s too simple, it’s just some curiosity and intrigue. The mind does the rest because this is about being a human being which you are, right? So, this is bound to be relevant.
Jenny 49:44
Great. And Piers, who would you like to be contacted by and where’s the best place for them to do that?
Piers 49:53
I’m quite active on LinkedIn. So, Piers Thurston on LinkedIn, the website is qualityofmind.biz, the podcast is called Quality of Mind and YouTube is called Quality of Mind. Email me piers@makingchangework.co.uk I’m fairly Googleable because luckily my name is Piers, a little bit unusual, so you can Google me or Quality of Mind. I’d love to hear from anyone – as you can tell, I can’t shut up about this! So, anyone who’s genuinely curious and interested, I will try and give time to.
Jenny 50:24
Amazing and I know that we’ve already got some intrigue – a couple of people that have contacted me to speak to you. So, I’m really excited about this. And Piers, thank you so, so much for spending time and explaining because it is a topic that is just above any of the other training that I’ve ever been on. So, thank you so much.
Piers 50:46
Very kind of you to say and I really appreciate you giving me a bit of a platform to talk more about it because I love it. So, thank you, Jenny. Appreciate it.
