Lee Chambers, Autism & Workplace Wellbeing

Lee Chambers is an award-winning British psychologist, coach and entrepreneur. Featured widely across the media, from the Telegraph to Vogue and the Guardian.

His own  journey has been one of challenges and successes, in Lee's own bio he refers to himself as The Black Autistic Guy.

He is far more than that!

Great British Entrepreneur of the Year 2021 - Top 50 BAME Under 50 - Speaker - Menopause Ally - Gender Equity Advocate - Charity Trustee

At one point Lee completely lost his ability to walk, changing his worldview completely, and propelling him on a journey to understand how we, as humans, can optimise our bodies and our minds.

On this episode we talk about:

• Being autistic
• Building structures that enabled him to operate in the world
• Completely losing the ability to walk
• What is Neurodiversity
• BAME
• Gender equity
• Priviledge
• The issue with Social Media
• Fairness

To find out more about Guy Bloom and his award winning work in Team Coaching, Leadership Development and Executive Coaching click below.

The link to everything CLICK HERE
UK: 07827 953814
Email: guybloom@livingbrave.com
Web: www.livingbrave.com

Transcript

Guy Bloom    00:00 

Welcome to leadership bites with myself, your host, guy bloom. This is a leadership podcast where I have conversations with colleagues, I chat with guests, and sometimes they'll be just me talking. You can connect with me at livingbrave.com and when you enjoy the episode, subscribe and please tell everyone. O Lee, Fantastic to have you on this episode of Leadership Bytes welcome yeah,
 
 

Lee Chambers    00:26 

It's a pleasure to be with you today, guy.
 
 

Guy Bloom    00:30 

Well, we've been looking for, I've been looking forward to this cause I know my diary management has been a bigger issue probably than yours. So I just want to take a few moments just to introduce you to the audience. I know who you are, so Lee, just introduce yourself and tell people who you are and what you're about.
 
 

Lee Chambers    00:46 

Yes, I'm Lee Chambers, founder of a wellbeing and inclusion agency of had quite an interesting pathway and diverse career to get here and a number of different lived experiences which are built into my work and my journey.
 
 

Guy Bloom    01:00 

So listen, I, I, I've, I've got your LinkedIn profile up, which is where I came across you and there's a lot of stuff on there and we were just sort of chatting before we started as to how to best approach this. So I'm going to read a few of them out. Under business psychology and workplace wellbeing, great British Entrepreneur of the Year 2021 top 50 Bane under 50 Speaker, Menopause Ally, gender equity advocate, charity trustee, the Black Autistic Guy. That's that's quite a list and because my little boy is autistic that pulled me towards you to have a conversation. So I thought what do I do you know which what questions do I ask Lee? So I've I've come there and on saying Lee, there's such a lot going on there um. I think maybe there's two things I'm interested in, number one is what does a when somebody's got so many kind of interests and what is your working day, week, month like? Where does your energy go? What is your focus, take take you? And also almost what was that journey to who you are today and what it is that you're doing? So whichever way you want to come at that, I don't mind. But I think those are the two things I'd like to get into.
 
 

Lee Chambers    02:14 

Yeah, so I think a lot of people guy like, whoa. Like you, you cover a lot of bases, you do so many different things and I think the best way to kind of put it into context is I'm only passionate, I'm passionate about quite a number of different things, but everything always boils down to improving the human experience, whether that be through wellbeing and how that's embedded within organisations, whether that's looking at how things intersect in terms of inclusion. And obviously on that journey I've realised that there are things that I can advocate for from a lived. Variance, perspective, you know, such as race, such as neurodiversity, but also things that I can be an ally and push forward given the experience that I've had and how I've kind of delved into those topics. And a lot of that then again surrounds the the kind of the gender challenges that exist within the workplace. And that's where some of the other threads come from because it really, if we're going to look at inclusion inclusive behaviours, we need to actually look across all different intersections and areas of lesser privilege because if we just silar too deeply on one, we actually become rather less inclusive than we imagine we could be.
 
 

Guy Bloom    03:27 

So there's an interconnectivity here for you. Almost, I guess. I'm getting this visualization of jigsaw pieces. They might independently be valid, but actually you have to click them altogether to see a bigger picture. I guess that's going on yeah and I think for me, one of my kind of artistic strengths, so to speak, is joining those dots, finding those interconnections and seeing how things are linked to other people might not see that. Obviously there's a distinction of thinking. That allows me to do that. Sometimes that's beneficial, but it does mean that I can kind of Fred generalist aspects together, but also potentially be specialists in some other areas as well without going so complex that I take the fundamentals for granted.
 
 

Guy Bloom    04:15 

So if you, if I, if I think about um. Well, let's, let's, let's pick pick a couple here. And I think for me, I'm going to start with autism just because for me on a personal level, having a little boy that is autistic, he's more or less non verbal at 7 years old. And for a lot of people, you know that that spectrum of what autism is like anything in life. If you don't know it, you you may be identified as a characterisation of a thing, but when you get to know anything about cooking or cars, you realise there's a there's a huge spectrum of reality. You know not all cars are the same, not all foods the same, not all Organism. Individuals are the same. So just how does that manifest for you and maybe that's, you know, how, how has that been? As it is a journey for you I guess.
 
 

Lee Chambers    05:06 

Yeah, it's been a really interesting journey because obviously, you know, being born and brought up in the eighties and early nineties, kind of the understanding and appreciation for neurodiversity or anything that was different was very much still seen in the medical way of, you know, disorder or condition. But there was so little understanding that I went through mainstream education. Academically gifted, in that I was able to actually apply myself quite well, but also very much always on the cusp of troublesome behaviour because of my lack of appreciation for boundaries with adults, because of my incessant questioning, and because of a very, very strong sense of justice. Which I would then, you know, challenge if I felt wasn't being action in a way that I felt was fair and consistent. So as you can imagine, I was in many ways went for education as as the clever child who was also a handful of trouble and Eva, you know, the star one week or an absolute pain in the backside of the next. But for me, I suppose if I look at it, if I look at my kind of almost profile, I've got strengths in the areas of being able to. Recognise patterns. I've got a lot of comfort handling data and being quite literate with that, but some of the challenges are around more simple time management, organization. There have been times when I've left the house from a clause on the wrong way. As as as comical as it is in some of the avenues that I've kind of worked within, I did find working in corporate structures early in my career very, very difficult. And at almost in some ways say that I'm not necessarily seen as a traditional team player, but more of an interesting collaborator, and within certain structures that's seen as not a particular particularly beneficial option for people to be surrounded with. Also, I'm quite distinct in the way that I think about things sometimes and even down to communication where I do have my challenges socially. Can perform pretty well having kind of masked. And pretended and try to fit in for a long time so I can act quite well. So I can go on stage, I can speak, but then an hour later you'll find me on my own trying to recharge my batteries. So there's this number of different aspects in having used. I've found a comfort in being able to express myself. I've had to work on things such as my voice, eye contacts, want to continually try to develop those skills, to become more emotionally engaging, to become more socially comfortable. So it provides an interesting scenario where you're constantly working on things that you know are quite distinct weaknesses, and you will probably manage to do okay in some aspects, but for every single artistic individual. Is a different expression of neurodiversity across that spectrum, which is a lot more free dimensional than a lot of people imagine. So it does present its own set of challenges, but thankfully we are moving into a world of increased awareness. My son, he's also artistic and he's nine, and one of my biggest dreams is that he will come into a world where awareness is increased. There is the support there for some of the challenges that he will face, but there will also be. Environments, spaces, cultures that appreciate his strengths and can help him amplify and utilise those both as an individual and together to do great things.
 
 

Guy Bloom    08:54 

And that is very interesting, isn't it? Because, um. Yeah having a 9 year old having a A7 year old the the difference a decade has made and social media has got a lot to do with that that ability for people to share that information and to to see that spectrum so that we're definitely you know what a difference a day makes is is definitely is definitely true. So in terms of just out of and this is really one question where I'm just generally personally interested is my little boy became quite obvious that there were certain things going on. So it was, it was identified officially, let's put it last, easiest way of sort of talking about it so. At which which set off a whole load of triggers for us being able to get help and and things like like that. Did you go through that process? Was it something where it was identified as? When you were at school Oregon, and that enabled certain things to be provided for you because I do come across people that go no, it became clear when I was older than I had autism and that's what it was. And I just wonder which how that sort of manifested for you.
 
 

Lee Chambers    10:04 

Yes, I think that provides quite an interesting, interesting conversation to have guy, because for me, I was actually diagnosed after my son. I'm only recently diagnosed, just over a year so.
 
 

Guy Bloom    10:18 

I thought that might be the case from the way you were talking yeah so for me, I've always felt different. I've always felt that distinction from quite a young age. Just the way my just the way I communicated, the way I understood other people. I always knew that there was something different and even down to kind of how I felt within social groups at school, for example. But there was, I mean, I didn't even hear or remember hearing anything about autism until I got to university. And you know, at that point I actually had struggles, you know, with my own kind of self-sufficiency with my self-image with my identity university in in a big way and you know, landed me in a really, really challenging time. But even as I kind of went out into the world, kind of got spat out of the corporate world and then built my own business, the video game business first, I actually built a business around my needs. So it kind of distracted me from really exploring that further because I managed to build structures that actually meant that I could be me and didn't feel like I needed, you know, that diagnosis, that confirmation, but was still and had that awareness. One of my strong interest has always been people. So that is, you know, digging deeper into why people do what they do, why people behave the way that they do, why they interact with others while they interact with the world and basically why people think they're intelligent because there's a race. Sometimes I do wonder. But I suppose that's what it comes back to you guys on the journey to, you know, for my son's diagnosis, we had the parental interviews with an educational psychologist and that same educational psychologist who was writing. The reports to help speed up the process with my own son who was diagnosed at 7, actually said pulled me to the side at the end and said to me the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. And at that point I thought maybe it's time, maybe I need to set off on that journey as well. And when my son received his diagnosis, I set off on mine.
 
 

Guy Bloom    12:37 

And so did you. Did you go and formally get um? And into it, I was going to win intervention there, which is completely the wrong word. But did you formally sort of put yourself into a diagnosis space so somebody could have that conversation with you?
 
 

Lee Chambers    12:51 

Yes, I I suppose I made a conscious decision. But did I necessarily need the levels of support? No, because I'd spent, you know, 37 years working around those things. But for me, it was important to be able to have that diagnosis to help me explore some of the challenges that I had in the past. Maybe even a little bit of the kind of the trauma situations, but also helped me understand why things had happened. Because you're still in a place where I started to, as my awareness grew, especially female son's journey thinking hmm well. These moments on my own journey. If you if I had that clarity of a diagnosis, then it would probably help me to explore those more deeply and help me in some ways be able to see and appreciate and have an acceptance in my own self that that is what that difference that I've always felt was, which, you know, when I did receive that diagnosis guy, it was both liberating and frightening at the same time.
 
 

Guy Bloom    14:00 

I'm gonna be very honest. This is, this is a moment for me because I I when you say the you know the OR somebody said the apple doesn't fall from the tree. That is. I've never had that diagnosis, but you're talking about things that you know literally I could put an aligned set of. Reality is next to what you've just said. And people consistently say to me, um, yeah, like father, like son. Ohh that's of that that's that's very interesting actually so I've I've never had that formal process but you you are triggering I've just written it down actually that does sort of trigger me to say the fact that I accept it probably might be true the fact that I accept that it might be a reality a 53 I've kind of gone it is what it is but you are trick you are triggering a kind of that might be interesting just to understand it that little bit more and and have actually no guy you're just you are just what you are versus no. Actually you clearly you clearly are that, that that that triggers an interesting concept for me. So just looking at you know I I guess that um. Things come as gifts in some respects. So you can, you can. The one thing I've learnt with autism is this great phrase which is comparison is the thief of joy, which is a phrase that you know if you've got a child and you make the comparison then that'll steal from you and it may be in your own life. You look at other people and you go actually if I compare it's a, you know, it takes from me, but in in what it might take it also gives. So you talk about that sort of that focus and that energy and interestingly you say you're fascination or your interest. And people. Which when it might be hard to access those emotional states in some respects. That's probably why I'm doing what I'm doing. I have this absolute fascination with people, but in terms of my ability to sometimes empathise or to actually step into those spaces and some of my learned behaviours. So how come you can do that there but you can't do it here? Well, that's me. That's the workspace. So I can identify it and I've got an algorithm for it and I can demonstrate the behaviour. Ohh, cheated with it, but in terms of personal application, not so much so, but it gives you these gifts to be able to see and view. And I don't know about you, but almost sometimes to be a third party observer, which actually is from a position of the roles that we enter into, can be one of the things that enables us to do the work because we can operate from outside of the ecosystem.
 
 

Lee Chambers    16:45 

That's often talk guy about becoming a supervisor of myself sometimes and being that kind of stepping outside and almost supervising myself, but also sometimes how I'm kind of sat in the audience when I'm on the stage. And I'm kind of observing myself and kind of validating my interaction with someone else as that as I was, you know, sat on the front row and me and the other individuals were sat on the stage. And it's such an interesting kind of thing to try and describe to other people because you can kind of sit there in the audience as you're kind of furred self and almost write the script. And it's, it's very empowering, but it also does mean that sometimes you find yourself sat in the audience for actually supposed to be stood on the stage. And I think that's sometimes when people kind of. Suddenly see you and they and they see that disconnects and it makes them kind of wonder like I feel like over there or are you here and you know having children's help me to work on that presence. And try not to switch out so much, because I think that switching between kind of first and third can be quite tiring if you do it too much. But it does mean that sometimes you get that kind of very distanced insight and that sometimes almost, and I don't really like it so much in terms of the way it's used sometimes, but the kind of the helicopter view where you suddenly frost away from yourself far enough to see all the interconnected aspects that you're impacting. And it makes you more purposeful in your interactions, but also helps you not become this isolated problem solver where you go very, very narrow, straight to solution without considering the interconnected aspects that you then kind of knocked out of sync by horning into deeply. And I think that's what then comes back to why I kind of brought across a wide variety of areas, because I have that ability to step out and walk for a lot of people is a really lazy. Focus Tunnel might becomes a bit more of a holistic funnel, so to speak.
 
 

Guy Bloom    19:01 

So let's because I feel that with a bottle of wine and A and a good steak I could spend the rest of the week on this conversation. So I've gotta be a little bit careful. So which often happens with my guests, I kind of go ohh this is awesome. I just you know it's but I've just gotta respect time and your time, so listen. I'm looking at this list of things that that you do. So maybe I think it would be great to get a sense of what do people ask you to come and talk about? Let's let's get a sense of that. Why would somebody ring up late and go lay, come and speak to us at organization XY and Z because it feels as if, you know, you could add some value. What would they be reaching out to?
 
 

Lee Chambers    19:45 

You for yeah. Well, The thing is I've always tried not to again be that sole focus, but from a business perspective, you need to have. At least one strong identity to attract in a very noisy marketplace. So sports, the things that I'm going to be speaking about in the next quarter. I'm going to be firstly the experience of being autistic, but also of a different race than Caucasian. And that kind of intersectionality of neurodiversity is something that I'm continuing to speak about some of the adversity into challenging to change and whether that's through the kind of the embedding of wellbeing behaviours. So that's quite a big one because eight years ago I lost the ability to walk and had to learn again. And that kind of, I suppose, enables me to speak quite a lot about the post traumatic growth aspects of going through significant adverse lived experiences and how you kind of utilise those as a tool to be able to appreciate what it's like to be in a challenging position, but also then be able to navigate mentally to a place where you can grow. You know, levels of acceptance there and such, but that quite often provides a bit of a story base for some of the more expertise and insight led aspects of speaking about changing organisational cultures, changes in kind of individual behaviours and how that then kind of intertwines with wellbeing and also speaking more in the area of male allyship. Around gender equity in the workplace, you know, what men can potentially do to support, you know, women and looking at different aspects of that across gender health inequalities, but also how organisational structures are built are kind of propagated and the systems that play within that in a world where things are changing and really exploring, you know, how relevant things are at the moment. So I suppose does the kind of free aspects. You know, deep on the wellbeing piece, on the change and looking at organisational cultures, neurodiversity and how companies and organisations can create those spaces for people's strengths to be amplified. How they can build support structures to ensure that the challenges don't become problems and are viewed as problems and how that moves with people being of lesser privileged in other areas. And the final piece really looking at gender equity in the workplace. Looking at male allyship and looking how sometimes we can lose focus on one aspect by focusing too deeply on another. So those are the free topics I'm speaking about most regularly, but we still do stuff around, you know, where my expertise lie in terms of the business psychology aspects or evidence based resilience, psychological safety, and, you know, topics surrounding that as well. But it's it's again, it's a variety guy. It's it's probably probably 5 things that I'm very, very comfortable getting on a stage and providing value insight, making it engaging, making it a little bit humorous, but delivering something at the end where participants can say. I'll remember that in a few moments when I'm going to try and apply it.
 
 

Guy Bloom    23:17 

Well, I think what I'm hearing there as well, there's some and we mentioned before we started, there's some jigsaw pieces that independently are fine but actually form a bigger picture when they're all kind of clicked together. So I'm definitely hearing that and I always, I'm smiling what I'm about to do, what I'm going to do. But I just realised that I heard you say I lost the ability to walk and had to teach myself to do so again. And and you kind of went past that as if it was just like and then I and then I ordered another bottle of wine. So I just need to check in ohh, it's just gets a little bit of um. Because again, when, when it's our experience, we kind of go, yeah. And then this happened and that I was abducted by aliens. That was a funny week. And then you go whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on. You know? So I just wanna go back to that for a second. So pretty well just what you know, how did, how did you talk to me about that?
 
 

Lee Chambers    24:08 

Period yeah, so I'll quickly run through. I was, I've just turned 29 was running my video game business at the time, someone's 18 months old. My wife was pregnant with our daughter. I've always been healthy, always been fine, looked after myself. And then my immune system failed. And out of the blue, over the course of a few days, I went from fully independent, fully mobile, to being in a hospital bed, not able to move, not able to wash myself. Not able to feed myself properly and you know, I had a multitude of tests to try and work out what had caused it, why it had happened. But ultimately, when my immune system reactivated, it attacked all my joints and left me, you know, with short my shoulders up by my ears, my knees, like balloons. And it was very, very painful. And obviously quite humbling in some ways, because suddenly the things I've taken for granted, I've lost very, very quickly. And naturally you kind of lie there after I came down off all the painkillers which floated me off into the clouds. They quickly realised and had that, you know, that human feeling of why me, why now needs to be there for my wife and my children. And always looked after myself, you know, why did this have to happen? But then I started to find a place of realization acceptance, kind of gratitude for all the things that I did have, all the opportunities that are taken advantage of and the fact that I wasn't there, worrying about a lot of different things because I had a support network, you know, I had the financial privilege of not having to worry about things being paid, and even some of the aspects around my business I could still do with one hand. Digitally from a hospital bed. That gratitude became, I suppose, an understanding and a commitment to do everything I could to improve my health outcomes through walking, rehab, through intensive physiotherapy, really driven by desire to take my daughter's first steps with her. And, you know, we'll be massively driven when we're doing something for someone else, especially someone who, you know, we hold a lot of value to awards. And I did manage to actually, after 11 months, walk a mile and aided. And then a month later to take my daughter's first steps with her. But realistically now guy, she's 7 and I haven't beat her at much else since. She's a bit of a whirlwind and she runs rings round me pretty often. So yeah, but you know, through that experience I'm now 70 % physically. Spent five years optimising things and managed to get off the medication which was suppressing my immune system, which was a whole, you know, five year human experiment in itself. But that was. Really powerful timing because it was just before corvid hit and meant that I wasn't in the shielding category and I could actually, you know, continue to live more effectively and still still get out of out and about a little bit more even in the restrictions. So again, there's a lovely gratitude there, but it's one of those things, guys, like you said, your own lived experience becomes quite normalised and the things that you've been through the adversity just becomes. Part of the flow of your journey. And that was, you know, one of the big potholes that I've fallen in over the years. But in every one of those potholes. Having been able to kind of climb up and scale back to the surface, I think there's always learnings there. If we can just detach some of the emotion and then kind of almost dissect it a little bit to find, you know, what should what should I reflect on, what shouldn't I ruminate on? But what can I actually take and how can I take that to empower other people?
 
 

Guy Bloom    28:06 

Can I can I just ask did they have a diagnosis?
 
 

Lee Chambers    28:09 

So I ended up in the generalised category of autoimmune arthritis for any autoimmune condition that is joint lead, so no specific diagnosis, but the treatments are very similar as in the suppression immune system. So it doesn't attack itself and that's pretty much it.
 
 

Guy Bloom    28:31 

So there was no I did A and that triggered B. It was just one of those things that.
 
 

Lee Chambers    28:36 

Was just no answer. No closure in that respect. But sometimes not having closure means you're more compelled to experiment because it's still open. I can still improve and I can still find ways. Still haven't got a definite. So interestingly, if you think about receiving an autism diagnosis is a level of closure. I didn't have a level of closure in the immune system challenges and still don't to this day, but I just took ownership over that that I couldn't have closure, but I could have a level of control. And rarely have used that to try and, you know, do the best I can. And I would say a guy that while I might be 70 % physically in comparison to what I was before that and probably 150 % mentally in terms of my own resilience or my own capacity to be more empathetic because I had a lot of time to reflect in that period. And that's what really became the seed for the business that I run today.
 
 

Guy Bloom    29:40 

So talk to me about, I hear you talk about ownership and control and the lessons learnt and I can see that going through as a form of a theme. Do you have a sense of where that came from, that capacity to see the world like that self reflection led you to that path and outside influence. You read a book, a combination of things. What's what's given you that almost that methodology that I kind of hear you?
 
 

Lee Chambers    30:09 

Peter, yes, two things guy. Firstly, the ability to third person. Thought I literally kind of went and sat across the other side of the world from myself, looking at myself. And justice kind of start to realise, you know, there is, there is this man in a hospital bed, you know, he's got his family and friends visiting him. You know, he's he's sat there looking out of the window across the Moors and the fields that he used to walk across as a kid. And now he's lost the ability to walk. But he's got free healthcare, he's had free education. He's had freedom to set up a business. He lives in the first world. He's never been harmless. He's never been hungry. And it just, it's incredibly humbling if you do that to yourself as a third person. I think secondly guy, I had some adversity prior. I mean, I'd grown up on a Council estate and had a relatively good childhood because my parents were massively supportive and tried to push me through education and to be socially mobile. And I went to the university as the first one of my extended family to go, which was a privilege but a lot of pressure and I actually had significant mental health challenges. In the middle of my degree, which led to me locking myself away in my dorm and then being extracted by security intake and harm, and actually spent a year outside of university having dropped out to rebuild myself. And it was during that kind of rebuilding period that I started to become a bit more emotionally intelligent, a bit more self aware, and I think that played its role. But then I got on to a graduate scheme. In 2007 In financial risk and six months later, that graduate scheme was pulled with all the professional training. The salary at the time. And forced me to go and move back home after my parents had sold up to move somewhere, planning on me not coming back. So I didn't existence where I kind of went from the big dream of you know financial, corporate future, big bonuses, professional training to living in my parents boiler room on a mattress and having a clause rail. And again, those two moments were a faced adversity and it felt like a lot had been taken away. I had to stop and reflect and realise what I had. And that helped me do that again in a more adverse scenario, to actually realise and be able to then focus on instead of looking at the gap. I can't walk anymore, like I've lost it completely. My physicality, my masculinity. I'm not independent. I looked at the game. And lots again that I'd had. And again. And sometimes comparison can be the, you know, the fee for joy. But sometimes comparison can actually show you how much you have gained and how you actually started the rest. 90 metres in front of some other people. And actually, while you try and haul your carcass over that, over that finish line to start the next race, some people are just starting. And again, it's an ability to sometimes step outside of yourself and actually validate the fact that you have more privilege than you often believe. And we do live in a world where, as humans, we've managed to curate this comfortable existence that we have. And actually, you need that discomfort to grow. And if there's one thing that really sticks with me from everything guy, I went into walking rehab with eight other individuals. So there was nine of us. Someone had strokes. Some of them had lower limb injuries, some of them had spinal injuries. But we all were in a place where we started a relatively similar point, trying to, you know, weiber and get our, you know, get ourselves walking again. Free of the 9. Kind of had a level of not positivity but realism and I accepted what had happened, the kind of moved on from the suffering phase and kind of said this is this is it. We've been dealt a pretty, pretty poor hand, but actually this is our recovery period, this is our opportunity and the three of us were the first three to move from walking rehab to intensive physio and it just made me think when you accept. What's happened, and that might not be what you wanted. It might not be fair. It might not be what you imagined. And yet, if you can find a level of acceptance that can then help you and give you a platform and foundation to then see what you can control because you stop rubbing it in and wasting the energy on what you can't, you stop suffering. And suddenly you get a place to be able to, you know, move forward and be able to see what you can achieve. And you also understand it's not going to be easy. And you might actually have days where you take 2 steps forward. And you literally, you know, you fall over and you're back where you started. Um, but even in that kind of period, I started to document my progress, which meant that when I had some setbacks, I could still see how far I was in comparison to where I'd started. So again, it was looking at the gain rather than the gap.
 
 

Guy Bloom    35:40 

That's a great phrase actually, looking at the game, not the gap, and that should be at shirt, so I suggest you trademark that immediately. I'm gonna write it down. Ohh there. But that's and that's a heck of you know it. It is interesting to listen to you talk it. You do pull people in. I, I, you. You know there's a, there's a, there's a kind of. And transparency and integrity about, you know, the the way you offer your thinking and it's clear to me that you've thought it through. So yes, you know, you've had an experience, but I can see that you've. Intellectualised the experience and you're able to offer them a kind of that storyline. I I I've just. I've got 1 interesting. That's an interesting question. I'm really alert to social media. Um, it's something that I have this weird relationship with, I think, as many of us might do, you know there's a part of Maine that thinks it's the devil's tool. And there's another part of it that's fascinated by it. So it's kind of this weird juxtaposition. And what what I notice is, alright, I have a thought about is that what it probably does, it magnifies and it accelerates. So things are inherently true. People like certain things, they don't. And then you take social media and it acts like a magnification. And it magnifies the beautiful things cause you get to see beautiful things and you go, wow, I would never have been exposed to that. And then you get the horrendous sness of just people's attitudes and behaviours and I'd really rather not have seen that. But it, so it just, it gives you it and it and it gives it to you. So when I look at the topics that around gender equity for example is a classic where. I've noticed that there was a period where there was, I mean a 53 I've got, you know, I've, I've not, I'm not talking for the from the Victorian era, but I do, you know. But I, I do remember a set of TV programmes and a set of truths where there was an essence of predominant male dominance. Then I see a massive pendulum swing where? And I'm not even going to get into the rights and wrongs of it, but a recognition that there was, you know, that that those scales were out of sync and that needed to be addressed. And I think probably what generally happens in society is the pendulum never lands in the right place. It almost has to swing past what might be a future status quo, but it almost has to get its arc and then come back and find its balance. But with social media? That seems to be almost an accelerated process that what might have happened over a decade or so seems to happen in a 12 month period where you see people potentially losing their minds because so much information comes at them. And so for me I I noticed this kind of. Push back almost from males, which is this kind of, it's not that that position was right, but actually negating male negating that is also not helpful and I just wonder around. See, um, Morgan Freeman being asked about, and I may have got this wrong, but he was being asked about Black History Month and his reaction to it was I'd rather be without it because I think we've moved on now. I'm not even going to make a judgment call as to you know. What that is I'm Jewish, you know. So if you said well what about the Holocaust for you guys go it was some time ago. I mean I I do get it was true yeah and I just wonder how when you're talking about these things because everybody's reality is look what happened to me to us to them. You know look at the unfairness of it and us or them and I want to support or I actually I feel I've been done by and I just wonder how you keep tabs on. Not getting caught up in the moment of the enthusiasm for a particular topic and recognising possibly where it's going to end U as to as opposed to maybe what everybody's excitement is about. Because I imagine if you jump on a bandwagon to the nth degree, you could get caught out in a in a year or two by the pendulum coming back almost to a stability point if if you were holding ground, you know. On the outer limits of that kind of topic yeah, am I making sense what I'm?
 
 

Lee Chambers    40:31 

Saying no, it makes perfect sense. Guy and I I think firstly, even back to the original point, I have a similar relationship to social media as you do. I actually have always felt he's very anti social. I'm not particularly a fan of the psychological hooks it uses to pull people in and the way the platforms in the algorithms are built are pretty exploitative if would be brutally honest and the way that is designed is to. Expand and amplify the polarity because that creates more content, more engagement, keeps people sticking to the platforms. And ultimately, the more they use them, the more data they have, the more of their attention that you've got, and it's your attention. That's the currency that keeps them going, keeps them growing. From my perspective, I I didn't start being particularly active on social media until 2020 So I spent a good ten years as a complete observer, watching fart bubbles appearing where people would float off towards those poles. And then the echo chambers that I created underneath those that, you know, keep them in place. And especially over the past five years, how invalidating the other side becomes normalised, whether it be. In politics, which has become now, you know, we look at the situations today and there were two politicians going for a position. It's not about what I can do, it's about how bad they are. So for me, it's like I still look at these topics and if we think back to what I said originally, I'm looking at all the interconnected aspects of them. So instead of jumping onto the bandwagon or jumping onto the train, it's actually my job to stick step back and almost commentate on where I see it going, where I see it balancing, and how I actually see it playing out, but then pulling it back into the data and the research. And considering. Actually, is this something that we should be amplifying and if so, how? Because I think for a lot of things that, you know, we've kind of looked at changing from an inclusivity perspective. Firstly, if it becomes just about 1 singular entity in one group. Then it's not inclusive. Because quite often that connects exclude others. In the process of trying to make inclusivity for one. So my job we got to step back and see how can you advance something that needs to become. More consistent, because in itself, the world is never going to be fair. It's just not. Furnace is a difficult concept because it's quite. How should we say in people's minds? Furness is quite subjective, right? And fairness in itself is not something that's easy to measure or to be able to articulate, but consistency. Again, something else that we kind of look at it slightly differently, but how you can stop being. If you drive too much in One Direction. You're going to have to end up driving back because the the point and the pendulum again will swing, swing you to a place where at some point. There should be a level of parity, but it's never going to exist in a stable condition. There's 2-2 dynamic, it's always moving.
 
 

Guy Bloom    44:05 

And I'm really fascinated by that. I've just kind of been thinking about fairness. In some respects we'll have penalties for everybody because if we're going to, if, if you, if all areas are given their position of agreement, then it's got to be affecting somebody else, regardless of what your thoughts are on their position. And that's why the polarity thing works, isn't it? Because if the more right you are, the more polarised you've become. And I remember seeing do you know Doctor Phil? You ever come across him? Yeah, yeah there's yeah. So doctor Phil, right. You know, he was is this incredibly well known US kind of therapy guy and I never forget him talking to a couple and going ohh you're right. Fighters, you're fighting to be right he says so do you want to be divorced and right or do you want to be together and happy? That really stuck with me because I think, yeah, if you're fighting to be right, then it's and we're we all end up, right. We all end up on our own little. Echo Chambers, our own little ecosystems, our own little thief dums. And, you know we'll we'll kind of transact when we need to. But the reality is we're never gonna come together. So I I hear that. And the reason I I just asked you, I guess about how you manage that pendulum. Is that when you read that list of things that you're involved in. I could imagine to an audience they might think oh if if I speak to Lee if he's into all of that's the bit walk. There's a good chance that yeah he's going to be at the extreme end. And and I did wonder you know because I, you know I don't know you know you and I wondered how is this going to go as a conversation on what I've actually experienced is, you know a great level of. Reflection, a great level of intellectualised position which anybody could have at an extreme. But you you obviously are aware of the extremes, but you're holding a midpoint and there's a sense of. I I think connection, which we've we've been speaking about that, says look, there's a balance here. Now that balance is going to be different for different people, but actually you're you're holding that midpoint but understanding the out, the outliers and I and I think that's very powerful to see and and to feel safe with you on that topic, no.
 
 

Guy Bloom    46:33 

One likes the middle really, guy, because firstly, it's not very interesting. Secondly, it's quite, scary, to be in that middle, which is quite fluid and quite floating, and some of the ways that I actually make sure that I'm constantly swimming around in that middle is. Linkedin provides opportunity for debate. And if you put a point across in a way that opens debate rather than pit sides against each other, you can actually learn from other people's perspectives. I think about the the people I spend time with, and they have a diverse range of viewpoints. I sometimes go out there to try and get a little bit triggered by some of the polarity. Cause that's kind of helps me to kind of be more self aware that there are some very, very extreme viewpoints on both sides of pretty much every argument that we have. And if we can try and maybe not try and pull people from one side to the other or try to almost stop them attacking each poll, just get them to see it somewhere in that middle where it's not as interesting. There are people there.
 
 

Guy Bloom    47:38 

And as we start to come to a close, one of the things I've become a massive advocate for is this idea of the one. What's the one thing we can all agree on and. For me, it's preserving and enhancing the quality of the conversation. So if we can all agree, it doesn't matter what the topic is, that we need to protect the quality of the conversation. Which means we need to be, we all need to see the value. In the conversation as being more important than trying to win, regardless of what our topic is and if we can agree on that, then we're golden. But the biggest issue right now seems to be people's willingness to walk away from or break or to take a joy in negating the conversation through cancelling and all these kind of things or using certain words in a conversation. People are scared of ohh you're bigoted. You're this, you're that and you go whoa. So the moment you offer me that, it shuts the other person down. They become scared of being. Kind of seeing through that lens because that the other person doesn't want to protect the quality of the conversation they're trying to win. So I think, I don't know if that is that resonates with you, but that that, that that for me is become the big, the big deal, right? Yeah and ultimately, guy, I think so much it comes down to one with children, we're in educational system, which is about finding the answer, which is about being right, which is about point scoring on your exams. And we entered into our adult lives. We point score against other people. We try and be right. We dig down even more into trying, trying to be right. And if we can't get people to be compelled that way, then we attack the other side. Or we then, you know, put ourselves into a place where we're then the victim. And there is so much of that that plays out in person before. But when you came together as individuals, you start to appreciate some of the humanity there that actually we all. We're all, at the end of the day, human beings trying to work things out. None of us know at all. None of us are always right. The problems on social media. Just behind a keyboard, there's a level of anonymity, there's a level of disconnection and someone's nice shiny avatar of what they look like. It's easy to go in there and look at the words that they've used. No context, nor voice, nor tone, nor body language, nothing. You've just got a few sentences to go off. And you know what? It provides? Accessibility to speak to people across the world. It provides so much in terms of being able to meet people who are like minded. Which is both Nice as a human, but also really, really dangerous as it can pocket people so quickly. But ultimately if we can create places and spaces where people can debate. And appreciate and learn from each other. Is that not what we used to do around campfires? Before we had all these things we used to and we and so often it was true story. And through and through, you know, lived experience that was contextual. And we've got to try and do that in a world where everyone's always connected. People can sort easily just have the confirmation bias of what they believe. Reinforced again and again and again daily through the algorithms and if I'm honest, guy is one with children. If we trust an adult, the more we trust them, the more we will hold their beliefs, because we trust them, so we should listen to them. And there's the same beliefs that we then often take into adulthood in our little backpack, never really turned behind, and consider what we're carrying with us.
 
 

Guy Bloom    51:42 

Sadly, I am going to bring us to a close just because time is a good colleague of mine says time is a cruel mistress. And I just, you know, I just want to keep going, but I'm going to hold myself back. So listen, I'm going to bring this to a close where do people look to locate you and find out more about you?
 
 

Lee Chambers    52:03 

Yeah, the best place to go would be my website whichisleechambers.org Through there you can find out about the companies that are run the services that we offer. Access to all my socials and as alluded to in this episode, I'm active on LinkedIn and find interesting debates and interesting people on there on a daily basis.
 
 

Guy Bloom    52:24 

Well, listen, I'm going to put that in the information that goes with the podcast. So I know you're on LinkedIn, obviously, and Lee chambers.org on that note. Stay on the line with me for a few more moments when we're done. But Lee, just from me, this has been one of the best episodes I've ever recorded. So thank you so much for giving me your time and your heart and your thinking. I really appreciate it thank you again guys for the space.
 
 

Lee Chambers    52:46 

That's it. So I hope you enjoyed the episode. Please share so others get to hear about us and subscribe so you keep up to date. On new episodes, also visit living brave com if you want to connect with me and find out more about executive coaching, team effectiveness and changing culture ohh and of course you can buy my book living Brave leadership on Amazon. So on that note, see you soon.