In this episode, I sit down with Karen Aitchison, Global Head of Wellbeing and Partner at ERM, who brings heart, humour and honesty to the centre of the workplace conversation. From tackling imposter syndrome to rethinking how curiosity can drive stronger connections, Karen shares deeply personal insights and practical tools for creating cultures where people feel safe to show up as themselves. We explore how understanding the brain and human behaviour can shift leadership from reactive to reflective, and why wellbeing is no longer a nice-to-have but a vital governance issue.
Whether you’re navigating fear-based decision making or striving to lead with authenticity, this episode will leave you inspired to act with greater intention. Tune in to hear how engineers can apply the same curiosity they have for problems to the people around them, and why being remembered as an authentic soul who helped others grow is the ultimate legacy.
Read the Transcript
Mark McBride-Wright 0:04
Mark, hello. Welcome to the next Podcast, episode of the safe leader podcast. I am your host, Mark McBride Wright, and I am delighted to be joined by Karen hsson, Global Head of wellbeing and a partner at erm. So Karen is senior partner erm and brings extensive clinical and educational expertise in mental health and psychosocial risk. She leads erm internal efforts focused on health and well being of its employees with strong experience as a group facilitator. Karen partners with erm clients on a wide range of psychosocial risk areas, including leadership development, organizational change, culture and diversity equity, inclusion and belonging. She is the lead developer of erms security to thrive program, which won the 2024 this can happen award for the best new workplace approach to mental wellbeing, and has also been nominated for the wellbeing Leader Award at the upcoming inside out awards recognizing her contributions to workplace mental health and wellbeing. Karen, hello, hello. It’s been just absolutely years hasn’t I’ve not seen you in such a long time. I
Karen Aitchison 1:24
know, I know I do fall. I follow you a lot, and I’m abreast with your kind of career evolution and very proud of what you’ve achieved. Mark so I don’t feel like, I feel like we’ve not spoken in a long time, but it doesn’t feel like we’ve not connected for a while. So thank you for having me.
Mark McBride-Wright 1:40
I remember leaving my PhD in January 2013 and being welcomed into the family at Environmental Resources Management erm and it was such a great place to start out my career. You know, pre anything on diversity. The business was doing anything on diversity back then, it wasn’t really a thing. I guess, actually, 12 years ago, you know, it wasn’t as much of a thing in business as it is now. So it’s been by reciprocity. So beautiful to see your career haven’t evolved in in that way as well. So if we, if we go back to the early days, then let’s, let’s go back to the young Karen. You know, are you doing now what you thought you would be doing back in your younger years?
Karen Aitchison 2:44
Gosh, probably not. But if I reflect on my younger years, it makes a lot of sense that I am doing it, if that makes so i i started my career as a lawyer in a big commercial firm in Scotland. And, I mean, I loved it, and I think it’s what took me into sustainability. I was an environmental lawyer and but I think the thing that the red thread through my whole career has been people. And I came to a point in my career subsequent to there, but probably right about erm time when I met you, where I was really drawn to understanding how people thrive in the workplace. Because I was working in a in a very fast paced part of our business, in the M A team, and I was leading that team, and I was recognizing people were going through different stages of their life. You know, there was a, there was a kind of analogy of work, hard, play, hard, of M and A, and then people started having kids, since people started trying to get on the property ladder, and people started to get married. And, you know, life was sort of unfolding, and the pressure that then came from sustaining that kind of role, and that focus, client focus, is a demanding space to be in. I realized that people really needed a little bit more support around work life balance.
Mark McBride-Wright 4:17
That’s fascinating, that’s fascinating, that to and so then the so you could see then, as the culture of the company was changing based on the the workforce that was in, as they were moving through years, you could see a need for the culture of the company to flex, to adapt, To change, otherwise, there was a risk of a tranche of people who were building this fast moving the business. It’s a business risk to not support it almost. Thanks.
Karen Aitchison 4:51
So, yeah, I think I was looking to see how we could bring more balance in and recognizing that life events don’t always. Go smoothly and very sadly. You know, people struggle with fertility. People you know, sadly go through miscarriages. People go through events as we mature. I mean, obviously we go through events, potentially all through our life, but I was acutely aware of some of the more immediate challenges I was supporting in my team, and thinking, Gosh, how do we accommodate the space for humans to go through these events and deliver to a high performance in the workplace? So yeah, I felt like that was something that we needed to dig into. There
Mark McBride-Wright 5:35
must have been that trust, though, from the foundation beforehand for your colleagues to even be sharing those things you know, for you to then build upon. And did that happen organically? Do you feel does that happen organically in leadership? How you how you build relationships with your people? And do you think some leaders are better than others at that,
Karen Aitchison 6:02
I definitely think some are better than others. I think you work with what you’ve got, and I mean, I was very blessed to have a team who, I think during that work hard, play hard period, had built a lot of trust and what I’d call psychological safety. For me as a leader, it was more about, how can I complement that existing sense of safety that exists? How can I create more of it through my presence and through my ability to listen and yeah, I think, I think, if I’m honest, some leaders really struggle with that part. I think there’s generational differences. And you and I are both Scottish, and I don’t know about you, but there’s a sort of Presbyterian part in us that sort of we quite stoic, or can be quite stoic. It’s sort of seen as a bit of a badge of honor and to be vulnerable in some respects. For me, the Scottish person sits in opposition to what I’ve been raised to do. So it can be challenging to tap into that more emotional side of your leadership,
Mark McBride-Wright 7:13
totally the hardened highlands of the rain and the stone. Yeah, it’s, maybe it’s the reputation we have on the international stage, like
Karen Aitchison 7:26
I’m
Mark McBride-Wright 7:28
living in New York now. So, you know, everyone has got some sort of connection to some Celtic background, you know, whether it be or Scottish, and they’re always really interested in their in their ancestry. So I think we give ourselves a bad rep. Maybe, you know, we do, we do have quite a strong international reputation. So how, how do you think your Scottish roots then have affected the kind of leader that you’ve become?
Karen Aitchison 7:59
I mean, there’s pros and cons. I think to that for me, the pros. I mean, I definitely think humor has been a kind of consistent thread throughout and my God, when you’re working on deals at two in the morning, you know, and you’ve got to get over the line. If you don’t have a sense of humor, you’re a bit doomed. I think there’s something about there is a, I’ve just recently moved back to the east coast of Scotland, and I’m surrounded by incredible beaches, and there’s something very grounding for me, literally, about my feet in the sand and and that’s a privilege that I have. So there’s a there’s an earthiness, there’s a there’s a groundedness, I think, to the Scots, because we do, I think we do have a strong connection to the landscape and to our environment. So there’s a hardiness to that, that I think, you know, resilience, maybe it’s the work that I’m looking for. There’s a resilient part in me, and I do still challenge, sometimes the idea that that resilience, for me, is not just an individual quality, it’s a systemic kind of piece as well. I think that, you know, well being is is often, and maybe in the last 10 years or so, has been quite focused on the individual and individual resilience, and, you know, building that and investing in self care and all of that. But I think that if we were to go back to the roots of our heritage mark, we’re missing an opportunity to think about the real power of community. Yes, and you know, they say this, and you’ll know this with young children, it takes a village to raise a child, and I think that applies to organizations now that we are not we’re not biologically designed to be so independent and so individualistic in the way that we show up. I think that building community and building teams, as you would say, in an organization, is fundamental. All to our ability to thrive. No man is an island, as they say. And I feel like, you know, I’m seeing that in safety, I’m seeing that in culture transformation, that we need each other more than ever. And I think you know, given what’s going on in the world right now, geopolitically, we’ve never needed each other more and finding our people and finding that ability to rely and to share some of the load is also really good for our well being, because we’re running a lot of us are running on a lot of cortisol. You know, stress is high, and when we share the load of our stress, something shifts for us, I think, and it dilutes a little bit some of the pressure,
Mark McBride-Wright 10:41
and also helps then increase trust, build trust when it’s then received, well by someone else, that sharing of whatever the root cause that may have been that led to that cortisol spike, there might be then a welcome ear in the person that hears it, and an element of relatability, and all of a sudden you’re then Connecting on something that you had no idea that you had this as a shared experience or dilemma.
Karen Aitchison 11:06
Yeah, I can’t. I mean, I really agree. And to give you an example of that, something I struggled with for much of my career was imposter syndrome, and in the last year or so, I’ve been running some workshops on that topic with a bunch of different people, so with women who traditionally are seen to suffer from this more than others, but working with LGBTQ, plus working with our Latin American colleagues, and understanding that this sense of imposter syndrome presents where we don’t conform to the majority kind of norm. And it’s been fascinating to really expand that understanding of that feeling of not being good enough, or not being part of the group, if that makes sense. And so that sort of thing, I find sharing and bringing some vulnerability to that conversation has allowed people to say, Oh, my God, it’s not just me that feels this way. And something shifts for them because they see in themselves in others, and the conversation then becomes a lot, a lot richer. And I feel that people then feel less shame around reaching out for support because they recognize other people feel the same way as they do,
Mark McBride-Wright 12:26
and how are you inverting that experience for then the majority group to similarly?
Karen Aitchison 12:38
Yeah, that’s that’s always a challenge, isn’t it? Really trying to challenge the idea of allyship and kind of turning things on its head a little bit and asking the majority to step in more. So, you know, I’m a woman, obviously White, a white woman in business. I’m a gay woman, so I have some understanding of of discrimination. And I, what I found really works as well for me, is some of the, some of the people who have really taken the time to get to know me and and ask be curious about my journey. Be curious about where I’ve met with resistance or met with challenges. The more that I’ve been able to explore that with them, the more I’ve seen them step in. And so what we’re trying, I think, to do now is, and I’m encouraged by in our own organization, the number of allies that join our employee, resource group, sessions, etc, with a view to learning how they can begin to advocate more, how they can step in more, so that the group that’s underrepresented is not doing all the heavy lifting themselves. And I think we’re on a journey, and I think most organizations are probably on a journey with that, but I am encouraged to see a lot more people with the privilege, sort of, you know, or privilege, maybe wrong word, but the kind of, maybe sitting in the majority position in the organization, stepping into those uncomfortable situations and speaking up,
Mark McBride-Wright 14:15
yeah, and it’s amazing to hear about the learning that’s happening from within. And then when you bring that to the because it can be a force for bonding as well, with business development, with clients, you know, and I read your introduction there, it sounds like it’s actually become it’s not just an internal focus, your role, it’s also external, your your working clients, doing leadership development, team, building, culture transformation work. So, how, how, how, how, how is, how is that going like? What’s that sort of typical project that you might work on, for example, with, with a client?
Karen Aitchison 14:56
So, so that, so that program that you referenced at the. Security to thrive is sort of based on three pillars and and what the first one is neuroscience. I’m a great believer in understanding how our brain our physiological responses, play a part in how we show up, how they impact our behavior. The second pillar of that is, is really looking applying more of a systemic lens to challenges that we find in organizations. So if we don’t really get to root cause analysis and understand the intricate web of the organization, we’ll probably only solve part of the problem, and the third pillar is on de and I, and for me, we cannot work with clients on any safety, culture, transformation, leadership development, if we don’t address that piece and recognizing that the more global the organization, and most of the organizations I work with are global, the more likely it is to have a demographic that’s pretty diverse. So the work that I do often sort of centers de and I in it, even if it’s not, it’s not overtly in it, it will always be in it. For me, examples of the kind of work I do are supporting teams who are in conflict. For example, maybe they’re going through a transformation or a change. And what we know about that is quite often, certain people find that a fearful experience, or they get a little bit paralyzed in it. They find that they start to be fearful of the impact that transformation may have on them, from an economic point of view, from a status point of view, from job security, whatever. And then you’ve got people who are like gung ho, and they’re up for change. And so how do we help the enablers of change work with the ones who are a little bit distracting from it and using the neuroscience to really create a roadmap of understanding about the core emotions that we all carry within us as human beings, and why some of us are activated more into fear, whereas some of us are activated more into kind of we can do this and also recognizing the difference that we all have through lived experience. You know, for example, if I’m someone who’s experienced a lot of change in my childhood, you know, maybe I my parents worked overseas, and every two years I got moved around, and it created a degree of anxiety for me, that’s not going to change, because I’ve moved into an organization. Carry that with me potentially, and so something like a transformation process could be quite triggering for me. It could be something that might set me into a bit of a spiral. So how do we help leaders of these teams going through these transformations to understand all the natural responses that we’re going to have as human beings, to change and then work through them and process them. Yeah,
Mark McBride-Wright 17:48
I can imagine a lot of people don’t then just take this, learn and apply it, just within their work frame of reference. They’re in some soul searching on, you know what? What’s their trigger points? How were they brought up? What? And they apply it then to their own history, but also their own personal life, like their relationship with our children, bringing their kids. It’s very, it’s very self discovery, isn’t it?
Karen Aitchison 18:19
It is. And I mean, look, I’m I trained in London for five years as a psychotherapist, and I’m very aware of the boundaries of that versus the role that I’m in now. So I probably should caveat by saying we’re not taking people down some deep, dark therapeutic process, but neuroscience allows us to, yeah, to just lean in a bit more into our own human experience without going into a place that could be challenging or difficult, but even just knowing that we all have these core, core circuitry in our brain around panic and fear, but also joy. You know, play is a circuit in our brain. Care is a circuit. So that’s what prompts us to be empathic. Knowing that we all have this available to us, I think, is a great framework to kind of hang some of this on. And yeah, we’ve had some aha moments that have been really beautiful to witness. And people, yeah, absolutely taking it away and thinking about it in the context of family and community and, you know, parenting, etc, and that’s been wonderful to see them kind of a, kind of apply the learning to that, but we are bound to read around it. It’s not, we’re not doing personal therapy by any stretch, or group therapy,
Mark McBride-Wright 19:34
absolutely, and so and so. So you’re, you’re, you’ve had experience in environmental sustainability now in well being so well, I mean, well being in environmental social governance, or sometimes spoken about separately. But how do you intersecting and is it? Is it coming up still in board level conversations?
Karen Aitchison 19:59
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think you’re absolutely right mark that they have historically been kind of treated as almost separate conversations. But as you know, they’re deeply interconnected, and especially, I think, when we talk about sustainable performance and long term value creation. So I mean, the E often gets the spotlights. There’s a lot of talk right now about climate and emissions and reporting and this stuff. But I think that what I’m seeing certainly is investors and stakeholders increasingly making that connection between well being, employee, well being to risk, productivity, reputation. And I think that, you know, sadly, some organizations have been exposed to the risks that come from a burnt out, disengaged workforce, and they now recognize that as a material business risk. So we’re seeing wellbeing becoming more of a governance issue, rather than nice to have. And for those organizations that I am lucky enough to work with who are progressive, they’re really seeing this integration of wellbeing and TSG is non negotiable. It’s not an option. It’s more a part of how do we deliver resilient, responsible, high performance. And so it’s been great to see the shift, and I think that probably I’ve seen more of a turning towards that since COVID. I think, I think as human beings in organizational life, we really stepped into quite a special place in COVID. Now, don’t get me wrong, it was horrendous, but we started to really humanize ourselves. You know, I feel like we were really checking in on each other. Everything was being done online, and I don’t think I was privy to any meetings where people didn’t say, How are you all, yeah, you know. And something shifted a little bit, I think, in terms of humanizing the workplace and humanizing our clients and our, you know, our colleagues, in a way that perhaps we’d lost sight of prior to the pandemic. And so, yeah, and I think that because we’re seeing phenomenon such as burnout, which is a fully attributable phenomenon to work, the who has made that very clear, it’s not burnout. It’s not something that happens to us in our private life. It’s something that can happen to us and work, and also the shift towards systemic understanding of the hazards that exist in the workplace that can give rise to psychological harm. We’re seeing also shift in legislation and in regulatory frameworks that’s driving some of this discussion as well. If you,
Mark McBride-Wright 22:31
if you have a client, the engineer or, you know, they’ve made their way up and they just want hard numbers, metrics. They want something to that they can see a change on and well being is you can’t measure that. Can you are there some metrics, hard metrics, that you can set that are tracked, and if so, what are they?
Karen Aitchison 22:53
Yeah, I mean, I think, I mean, Deloitte has been banging on about this for quite some time, that, you know, you can measure absenteeism, presenteeism rates. You can drill down into some of the data. I think organizations are now looking at doing, you know, back in the day mark, we would have had, like, a survey, if we’re lucky, every couple of years, and that’s a snapshot in time of how are you doing? You’re seeing a lot more pulse survey kind of activity, which is really taking, you know, stock of what’s happening more in real time. I think it’s still an evolving space. We can look at things like the take up for the employee assistance program, you know, HR function is playing more of a role in tracking data. Is it as mature as we would like it to be at this stage, probably not, but I do think we’re seeing a lot more organizations sort of flooding the market with the technology to do that. You can you’ve got to measure. I don’t have a problem with measure, but the idea that wellbeing isn’t a major factor. I think you only need to look at the generation coming into the workplace now, and looking at what some of the demands, if you like that, they have of an employer. I mean, you and I, I think probably were just pleased to get a job back in certainly, I’m older than you, but in the 90s, I was like, I’ve got a job. Great. I didn’t think about well being or anything to do. But now there’s, you know, a much more educated generation coming through. They recognize the long term health impacts of stress. They understand that work life balance is something that they they they prioritize. And so as an employer of choice, it’s important that you’re not well being washing, that you are legitimately offering meaningful interventions that support sustainable, you know, careers in your in your organization. So the demand, I think, is driving also the supply that’s coming from the from the organizations themselves.
Mark McBride-Wright 24:59
Interesting. Yeah, interesting. I think it’s knowing the top track to give, internally or externally to whoever it is you’re trying to influence. Like, what is the thing that’s going to influence them? Is it this? Is it the is it the metric side? Is it the hard nose, cash, like, return on, like, value? Is it the talent, risk of not not attracting the best talent. And for some it’s just the experiential element, like they just need to experience it themselves. And then when they see they’ve been neglecting their well being, and it’s then showed up in their performance, or they’ve been at the risk of burnout, all of a sudden, it’s like, oh my goodness, I need to now re recalibrate here, and thankfully, I’m in an organization that has the structures.
Karen Aitchison 25:50
Something that I learned in my training that has stayed with me is that, and it’s linked to, I think you’ve been talking a lot, I’ve noticed on LinkedIn about psychological safety and the importance of that. What I learned is that when we operate at work from a place of social engagement, connection, collaboration, and we feel psychologically safe, we free our brain up to to really come through with innovative solutions, and we’re much better at problem solving, and we’re just more we’re just more engaged when we’re operating out of stress or from prolonged periods of stress. Isn’t in itself, bad thing. It’s just that prolonged periods are not so great. We start to conserve our oxygen into the body, and we go into a fight flight response, which we don’t actually control. But the minute we move into fight flight, the blood and oxygen sort of moving to the limbs, literally ready to fight or flight, and we taking it away from up here, this part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, which we need to be online if we’re going to be innovative and creative. So what I always say is, if we are operating our business from a place of fear about the metrics, or fear of you know, whatever the fear may be, we’re actually taking money off the table. Yes, our people are our brains are compromised. Our brains are not working at full tilt. And if we’re not rested as well, if we’re not eating and hydrating and all those kind of things, the likelihood is that we might be sat in front of our desk for eight hours straight, but we’re producing low quality outputs, yeah, whereas if we are able to build rest and repair into our life and our day, if we’re able To take that lunch hour walk or go and chat with a friend or whatever it might be, the likelihood is the productivity rate will go up. Our ability to access really good ideas and thoughts will emerge. And so it’s in business’s interest to actually care about the wellbeing of their people if they want to stay at the forefront of their field. You know, they want to have the edge, then the edges keep your people. Well,
Mark McBride-Wright 28:05
yeah, no, totally, totally, um, so with, with well being then, and where do you see? Where do you see the future? Where is the sector heading?
Karen Aitchison 28:23
Well, I think it’s it’s leaving behind. This idea of mental health is something that only certain people have to deal with. The rest of us are just fine. I think it’s moving away from, if you are struggling with your mental health, use the EAP, or here’s HR, to a place where we’re looking at, how do we create thriving environments for people, and what are the barriers to those thriving environments that we as the workforce or the or the work or the employer are actually inadvertently creating. So when we look at the, for example, what’s happening in Australia, they have quite progressive legislation around what they call psychosocial hazards. They’re looking at things like demands of work. You know, are they too high? They too low? Autonomy in our roles? You know, do we have too much autonomy, too little interpersonal conflict? You know, do the line manager relationship? Is that healthy, or is that problematic? And I think when we start to understand that these hazards do exist, and back to de and I that some of them exist more for certain groups than others, we can start to look at ways to mitigate and eliminate them, and that that will start to create more of a preventative response to mental health problems than a reactive one. Yeah, yeah. So I think, I think that’s where I’m hopeful we’re moving across the spectrum of reactivity to preventative and I think the other piece is that we’re really understanding the importance. Systemic lens, rather than just individual kind of heal yourself type thing. Yes, and look at the ways in which the structure of the organization lends itself towards thriving or surviving mentality in the workplace.
Mark McBride-Wright 30:16
And so I guess a leader or a team’s stepping stones to that world is a combination, then, of the tools, the tech that you referred to, that’s now coming out in the marketplace. What’s available? How are we using? Are we using? How are we then operational in that? What’s the data we’re getting from that, how are we then feeding it our it’s almost like looking at the system that is our workplace, and the envelope that you draw around. What you’re considering could be the business itself, but then also the business and its supply chain relationships. It could be as narrow down as an office, like a singular office a site so office manager, take taking this on, you know, for the culture locally, and then all these people thinking in this way, and then sharing what they’re learning, getting it all out with what all the thing like the reactive responses that we’ve been having, what Can we shouldn’t lift to be then be proactive, and then address these measures and well, there’s always going to be things that we can anticipate or they might show up. So what’s our pro reactive measures for for that stuff?
Karen Aitchison 31:35
Yeah. I mean, look, I think it’s important to say that I am not suggesting that there will not be people who legitimately struggle with their mental health in the workplace for reasons that we don’t need to necessarily go into, and I would never want them to to not be able to access the support and help that they need. So I’m not saying that we can prevent all mental health decline in the workplace. Of course we can’t. That would be naive of me, I do think it’s important that we look at the stigma that still exists in certain pockets, certain jurisdictions, and certain demographics around mental health, and that that that psycho education continues. But I think there’s a there’s an element of the workforce, again, post COVID, where we kind of went in, we’ve kind of gone into overdrive, in a way. I mean, I just listening to my clients, I hear this tension of productivity, demand going up and, you know, overwhelm and whatnot. So there is this component of, okay, if there is a way to use what science tells us what’s sort of particularly for me, Neuroscience tells us about how to create these more thriving workplaces, and you’re touching into that when you look at psychological safety, we can build more resilient workplaces where people you know when We can come into a place and feel authentic and be who we are like I know a lot of DNI work is around bring your authentic self to work. It has a physiological positive response when we are able to bring our authentic self to work, because we’re not trying to edit who we are. We’re not trying to keep that under wraps, because it’s exhausting. As you I don’t know your story, but I know mine and certainly as a lawyer, if I had come out, it would have been in the early 90s, it would have been career limiting for me, and I was so grateful when I moved into consultancy that they just seemed to be much more comfortable with with it. But I was running on a lot of stress of being outed at work, so just me as an example tells you that you know, I wasn’t working optimally. I was probably pretty stressed, and there’s a lot worse stories than mine out there. So if we can create that safe, safer place to show up at work, then that will also reduce some of the challenges that people encounter and perhaps some of the reasons they don’t always come to work or they struggle
Mark McBride-Wright 34:02
Absolutely. I am I very much nowadays as a practitioner, have brought my learnings that I got from erm and then subsequently grant Hern when I moved to after erm, when I did a good five, or six years as practicing as a process safety engineer, learning all the risk management, helping create physically safe working environments. You know, mitigation, preventative barriers, mitigation barriers. You know this is the language of technical safety, of process safety. So retooling that therefore and speaking to engineers who are oftentimes in the majority group as well, because we’ve got a massive gender imbalance in engineering, it’s a way to speak to them then about these who. More like less tangible elements of identity, mental health, well being, and so that’s really been the arc of my career since I left Dr REM. I’ve built on that foundation. We’ve done research on masculinity and engineering and felt that and found that men also find it hard to challenge the hyper masculine norms that’s expected of them in the workplace environment. So even the ability to be vulnerable and to show up and to share about anything that’s going on beneath our water line, that might be the root cause that drives a high instant rate of suicidal ideation and self harm, that affects the extreme end that affects men. You know, this this, again, this is like a risk management strategy. You know, it’s likelihood, it’s probability. Where does this happen? And you know, in erm, we would be helping clients design out risk, eradicate risk, and it’s so heartening, therefore, to hear that you’re now helping clients focus on that psychological safety element, to be tabling like the cultural side of things, because they’re both, they’re both important. But for technically wired people who want to focus on the technical, technical stuff, they think that that’s more important than the than the, you know, the cultural, interpersonal element, and it actually all needs to be addressed. I think,
Karen Aitchison 36:26
I think you’re absolutely right. And I, you know, I hope I don’t offend anyone at your end, but you know, the technical brilliance at your end is a massive asset. And of course it is. And leadership is about, is also about how we create the conditions for other people to succeed. So sometimes, when I’m working with engineers, I’ll say to them, get curious about people the same way you are about problems. Because you know you’re you’re trying see the relationships around you as part of the system that you’re leading, and maybe use terminology that’s a little bit more resonant for them. But when we connect with people as leaders, it’s, I think there’s a maybe an old school thinking. It’s very much about charisma and stuff, but for me, it’s really about intention, and I think you can connect with technical, technical leaders in a way that allows them to flourish as people leaders as well. And sometimes I find explaining the reasoning, and this is why I find neuroscience actually very powerful, because neuroscience is engendered, and it also isn’t. It isn’t following the the old school way of thinking that you’re, you’re a left brain, or you’re a right brain, or you’re a blue or a purple or whatever it’s saying. Well, we all have this sort of circuitry in common. Male or female, doesn’t matter, or anything in between. It’s it so it sort of, it kind of takes the heat out of
Mark McBride-Wright 38:06
some, Yeah, completely. It makes it, it de identifies it. It makes it, it makes it rational, you know, it makes it neutral. It makes it fact based, you know, yeah,
Karen Aitchison 38:23
yeah. And it reduces a little bit of the defensiveness that sometimes can come up. And I love it as well, because there are certain sort of psychometric tests that are still widely used, and people often will take great pride in telling you what color they are or what whatever quadrant or whatever. And I think that that can create a fixedness in us, that and also a kind of justification for why we’re not doing the people side well, I’m not the emotion. I don’t have the emotional brain. And you kind of can call them on that when you introduce much more contemporary neuroscience and say, well, actually, that’s not true. And we all have access to a care circuit in our brain that that is what triggers empathy. It’s just how do you want to? Do you want to activate it and see what happens? Rather than that? Part of me sort of, it’s not, not accessible. So I enjoy neuroscience as a challenging tool as much as anything else, but it certainly has been wonderful to see. I mean, I worked recently with the financial director on this stuff. And, you know, I probably went into that group thinking the finance director’s gonna be the hardest sell here. And he was blown away by it. And he was like this. This has changed how I think about metrics, you know, not not to the extent that he’s thrown them out, but just really opened his eyes to there’s other ways that we can engage people on the numbers.
Mark McBride-Wright 39:53
Yeah, oh, I love that. I love that. So what kind of legacy then would you love to leave? At erm and across the wider consultancy industry.
Karen Aitchison 40:06
Good question. I’m getting there in age. I mean, I think I’m in my last decade of my career. What legacy I was
Mark McBride-Wright 40:17
working till any age there is no I know.
Karen Aitchison 40:22
Well, traditionally, I’m in the last decade, then maybe I would love people. I would love to have made a difference. And I’m not entirely sure I could articulate what my legacy would what would I want it to be. I would really like people to say that person is was an authentic soul, and I learned a lot. I felt like she was an advocate, that she was an ally, that she stepped in. I would really like people to remember me as a mentor in so far as you know, it’s often, it’s interesting. Your question earlier around you know, how did you kind of navigate being a woman in the workplace and and I think that that as a white woman as I understand that I’m one of the biggest beneficiaries of the D and I movement, and therefore is incumbent upon me to amplify the voices of women who are not white and women who and I’m very proud of some of the work that I’ve done in erm, and I’m very proud of erm for having the programs available. But I don’t know if you remember, we had an Aspire program, but we also now have a lead program, and lead is all about elevating underrepresented voices and underrepresented groups, if that makes sense. So I help deliver some training around psychological safety for the sponsors, but also for the people being sponsored to understand what that means for them in that journey they go on together. So yeah, I feel like the legacy would be that, in some shape or form, I’ve helped to support and develop the generation that will take over a year I am after I’m long gone
Mark McBride-Wright 42:11
i i don’t i remember the activation points for me on my journey to discovering diversity and speaking to you. I do remember, yeah, starting to look like trying to find more LGBT role models that were in the business. And I remember some programming that we did. It was pre diversity strategy, though, of erm, there was nothing like concrete and part of the business strategy in that. But I do remember then graduate, because I think I had just gotten married, actually, or it was a few years married. Yeah, it was like way, way before we had kids, and way before I did any diversity work, I hadn’t co founded inter engineering at that point. It was about three years before that, but I think, like the initial things I started doing at erm, or maybe some of the initial conversation, or even just that hunt to try and find the other the others of me in the in the office was a bit telling in and of itself. You know, within a group, I think we had some, we had an event once, actually, didn’t we in the we had some drinks office. And then that was so that that really was like, Oh, wow, great. There are people like me that are here. You know, I even noticed, actually, that your MS changed its logo on LinkedIn with the with the progress flag colors. I thought that was That’s brilliant. That’s cool to see organization, an organization, actually doing that this month.
Karen Aitchison 43:57
This month is obviously Pride Month and
Mark McBride-Wright 44:00
force. Think I’m one of those people that you have, like, started an interest in this stuff for like, I remember, I do remember, some of the conversations that we had, like, earlier, you know. And it really, like, opened my eyes to, like, you know, the needs for doing work in this area. It was, it’s definitely been one of the experiences on the journey of where I’m at now that was, you’re like, an early influencer, and my shift in trajectory as I went on in my technical years under my belt, so I could get my chartership and all that when I when I then discovered my love for more cultural based work. I My experiences at erm are sort of one of my reference points, you know. And you know when, like, just erm embracing flexible working before it was a thing proper thing, you know. So you need to go up to the Manchester office to see Suzanne. And everyone felt really included being able to go up to Edinburgh on a Thursday evening and work remotely from the beautiful office that we had at the time right the castle, and like not have to take a day’s leave or holiday to do that. Just was there to do it. It was, you know, it was really, it was it was, it was inspiring and empowering. So, yeah, I owe a lot to those, those early days in my office is still there,
Karen Aitchison 45:36
and it’s a beautiful location. And I do, you know, I think what you’re leaning into a bit here is representation and the importance for those of us who identify as being slightly different to the majority. And erm, I think you’d be pretty proud of the journey that we’ve been on and that we continue to invest in and the you know that that representation is moving to a much healthier place for me. I mean, you talk about engineering and it being a male dominated environment. Yeah, I’m really proud. I think if you were to come back and visit, you’d say, Okay, this, there’s some good stuff happening here. And, yeah, I mean, I think those of us who maybe are at the pioneering end of it are are looking for our people. We’re just looking to know we’re not the only one. And it’s amazing what grassroots movements do in that regard. And I think, you know, proud of erm in the sense that there’s a very there’s sponsorship from the top, and there’s this real investment in the grassroot, you know, employer resource groups, etc, and and the move to allyship and advocacy and amplification that we must have, because if people in underrepresented groups only have one another, then nothing really changed in the system, and the system has to respond. So I’d say we’re on that. You know, we’re moving along the maturity curve there really well, and I think there’s more people willing to name their difference.
Mark McBride-Wright 47:12
Wonderful, wonderful. Well, I’ll have to come back for a visit, definitely. Okay, quick fire questions. You’re not getting off the hook. Okay, what’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
Karen Aitchison 47:26
Um, I mean, wow, I’ve received a lot, but I think for the purpose of this conversation, um, it’s, it’s probably something along the lines of, in in life, and probably in leadership, it’s the quieter, more intuitive part of us, rather than the analytical voice that sees the bigger picture and trusting that intuition has changed, I think, how I’ve led teams, how I’ve listened and probably how I’ve kind of grown as a person leaning into that more, yeah,
Mark McBride-Wright 48:09
what’s the proud, most, proudest moment in your career so far,
Karen Aitchison 48:16
being asked to do this role and winning the award Because security to thrive, which is the program that I’ve kind of LED on. I’m immensely proud of that
Mark McBride-Wright 48:27
what’s one skill every leader should learn,
Karen Aitchison 48:34
that they’ve got two ears and one mouth,
Mark McBride-Wright 48:38
coffee or tea,
Karen Aitchison 48:39
neither never had it either in my life, neither. Yep,
Mark McBride-Wright 48:45
what’s your go to? Well being? Practice the beach. If you if you could have dinner with any Scottish leader or thinker. Who would it
Karen Aitchison 48:59
be? It would be a man called Ian McGilchrist, who is a neuro science expert. I think he’s a psychiatrist as well. And he wrote a book called The master and his emissary, and it talks about the two hemispheres of our brain and what they what they do. He lives on the Isle of sky now,
Mark McBride-Wright 49:21
okay, what’s the one thing you do to reset when things feel overwhelming, breathe. What’s one book or podcast you’d always recommend,
Karen Aitchison 49:36
Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl,
Mark McBride-Wright 49:39
what’s a lesson you think more people should learn earlier in their careers.
Karen Aitchison 49:46
I think they should learn to expose themselves to the leadership styles of as many people as possible, so that they don’t just become a clone of the one that they tend to work with the most and. They also help form their own identity through that process, rather than kind of just falling into a kind of pattern of, this is the way we do things around here.
Mark McBride-Wright 50:11
Wow. Great advice. Finally, then, what advice would you give to your younger self walking into first boardroom? I
Karen Aitchison 50:25
to to be intentional about when I did open my mouth, and to not worry that what was going to come out my mouth wasn’t going to make sense.
Mark McBride-Wright 50:41
That’s great advice. That is great advice for all of us at any point in life, actually. Thank you so much, Karen. If people want to get in touch with you, if they want to find out more about your work, some of the programs that you’ve mentioned, how you do that.
Karen Aitchison 50:57
So I’m on LinkedIn, and I can send you my work. I think you have that. My email is Karen dot HSN, a, i, T, C, H, I, S O, n@erm.com, that’s probably the easiest, easiest way.
Mark McBride-Wright 51:13
Fabulous. Well, thank you very much. It’s been an absolute pleasure, and it’s been a little trip. There many memories. Well, I’ve really enjoyed it. Thank
Karen Aitchison 51:25
you so much for having me pleasure.
E027: Leading with Curiosity, Courage and an Authentic Soul
Podcast Description
Read the Transcript
Mark McBride-Wright 0:04
Mark, hello. Welcome to the next Podcast, episode of the safe leader podcast. I am your host, Mark McBride Wright, and I am delighted to be joined by Karen hsson, Global Head of wellbeing and a partner at erm. So Karen is senior partner erm and brings extensive clinical and educational expertise in mental health and psychosocial risk. She leads erm internal efforts focused on health and well being of its employees with strong experience as a group facilitator. Karen partners with erm clients on a wide range of psychosocial risk areas, including leadership development, organizational change, culture and diversity equity, inclusion and belonging. She is the lead developer of erms security to thrive program, which won the 2024 this can happen award for the best new workplace approach to mental wellbeing, and has also been nominated for the wellbeing Leader Award at the upcoming inside out awards recognizing her contributions to workplace mental health and wellbeing. Karen, hello, hello. It’s been just absolutely years hasn’t I’ve not seen you in such a long time. I
Karen Aitchison 1:24
know, I know I do fall. I follow you a lot, and I’m abreast with your kind of career evolution and very proud of what you’ve achieved. Mark so I don’t feel like, I feel like we’ve not spoken in a long time, but it doesn’t feel like we’ve not connected for a while. So thank you for having me.
Mark McBride-Wright 1:40
I remember leaving my PhD in January 2013 and being welcomed into the family at Environmental Resources Management erm and it was such a great place to start out my career. You know, pre anything on diversity. The business was doing anything on diversity back then, it wasn’t really a thing. I guess, actually, 12 years ago, you know, it wasn’t as much of a thing in business as it is now. So it’s been by reciprocity. So beautiful to see your career haven’t evolved in in that way as well. So if we, if we go back to the early days, then let’s, let’s go back to the young Karen. You know, are you doing now what you thought you would be doing back in your younger years?
Karen Aitchison 2:44
Gosh, probably not. But if I reflect on my younger years, it makes a lot of sense that I am doing it, if that makes so i i started my career as a lawyer in a big commercial firm in Scotland. And, I mean, I loved it, and I think it’s what took me into sustainability. I was an environmental lawyer and but I think the thing that the red thread through my whole career has been people. And I came to a point in my career subsequent to there, but probably right about erm time when I met you, where I was really drawn to understanding how people thrive in the workplace. Because I was working in a in a very fast paced part of our business, in the M A team, and I was leading that team, and I was recognizing people were going through different stages of their life. You know, there was a, there was a kind of analogy of work, hard, play, hard, of M and A, and then people started having kids, since people started trying to get on the property ladder, and people started to get married. And, you know, life was sort of unfolding, and the pressure that then came from sustaining that kind of role, and that focus, client focus, is a demanding space to be in. I realized that people really needed a little bit more support around work life balance.
Mark McBride-Wright 4:17
That’s fascinating, that’s fascinating, that to and so then the so you could see then, as the culture of the company was changing based on the the workforce that was in, as they were moving through years, you could see a need for the culture of the company to flex, to adapt, To change, otherwise, there was a risk of a tranche of people who were building this fast moving the business. It’s a business risk to not support it almost. Thanks.
Karen Aitchison 4:51
So, yeah, I think I was looking to see how we could bring more balance in and recognizing that life events don’t always. Go smoothly and very sadly. You know, people struggle with fertility. People you know, sadly go through miscarriages. People go through events as we mature. I mean, obviously we go through events, potentially all through our life, but I was acutely aware of some of the more immediate challenges I was supporting in my team, and thinking, Gosh, how do we accommodate the space for humans to go through these events and deliver to a high performance in the workplace? So yeah, I felt like that was something that we needed to dig into. There
Mark McBride-Wright 5:35
must have been that trust, though, from the foundation beforehand for your colleagues to even be sharing those things you know, for you to then build upon. And did that happen organically? Do you feel does that happen organically in leadership? How you how you build relationships with your people? And do you think some leaders are better than others at that,
Karen Aitchison 6:02
I definitely think some are better than others. I think you work with what you’ve got, and I mean, I was very blessed to have a team who, I think during that work hard, play hard period, had built a lot of trust and what I’d call psychological safety. For me as a leader, it was more about, how can I complement that existing sense of safety that exists? How can I create more of it through my presence and through my ability to listen and yeah, I think, I think, if I’m honest, some leaders really struggle with that part. I think there’s generational differences. And you and I are both Scottish, and I don’t know about you, but there’s a sort of Presbyterian part in us that sort of we quite stoic, or can be quite stoic. It’s sort of seen as a bit of a badge of honor and to be vulnerable in some respects. For me, the Scottish person sits in opposition to what I’ve been raised to do. So it can be challenging to tap into that more emotional side of your leadership,
Mark McBride-Wright 7:13
totally the hardened highlands of the rain and the stone. Yeah, it’s, maybe it’s the reputation we have on the international stage, like
Karen Aitchison 7:26
I’m
Mark McBride-Wright 7:28
living in New York now. So, you know, everyone has got some sort of connection to some Celtic background, you know, whether it be or Scottish, and they’re always really interested in their in their ancestry. So I think we give ourselves a bad rep. Maybe, you know, we do, we do have quite a strong international reputation. So how, how do you think your Scottish roots then have affected the kind of leader that you’ve become?
Karen Aitchison 7:59
I mean, there’s pros and cons. I think to that for me, the pros. I mean, I definitely think humor has been a kind of consistent thread throughout and my God, when you’re working on deals at two in the morning, you know, and you’ve got to get over the line. If you don’t have a sense of humor, you’re a bit doomed. I think there’s something about there is a, I’ve just recently moved back to the east coast of Scotland, and I’m surrounded by incredible beaches, and there’s something very grounding for me, literally, about my feet in the sand and and that’s a privilege that I have. So there’s a there’s an earthiness, there’s a there’s a groundedness, I think, to the Scots, because we do, I think we do have a strong connection to the landscape and to our environment. So there’s a hardiness to that, that I think, you know, resilience, maybe it’s the work that I’m looking for. There’s a resilient part in me, and I do still challenge, sometimes the idea that that resilience, for me, is not just an individual quality, it’s a systemic kind of piece as well. I think that, you know, well being is is often, and maybe in the last 10 years or so, has been quite focused on the individual and individual resilience, and, you know, building that and investing in self care and all of that. But I think that if we were to go back to the roots of our heritage mark, we’re missing an opportunity to think about the real power of community. Yes, and you know, they say this, and you’ll know this with young children, it takes a village to raise a child, and I think that applies to organizations now that we are not we’re not biologically designed to be so independent and so individualistic in the way that we show up. I think that building community and building teams, as you would say, in an organization, is fundamental. All to our ability to thrive. No man is an island, as they say. And I feel like, you know, I’m seeing that in safety, I’m seeing that in culture transformation, that we need each other more than ever. And I think you know, given what’s going on in the world right now, geopolitically, we’ve never needed each other more and finding our people and finding that ability to rely and to share some of the load is also really good for our well being, because we’re running a lot of us are running on a lot of cortisol. You know, stress is high, and when we share the load of our stress, something shifts for us, I think, and it dilutes a little bit some of the pressure,
Mark McBride-Wright 10:41
and also helps then increase trust, build trust when it’s then received, well by someone else, that sharing of whatever the root cause that may have been that led to that cortisol spike, there might be then a welcome ear in the person that hears it, and an element of relatability, and all of a sudden you’re then Connecting on something that you had no idea that you had this as a shared experience or dilemma.
Karen Aitchison 11:06
Yeah, I can’t. I mean, I really agree. And to give you an example of that, something I struggled with for much of my career was imposter syndrome, and in the last year or so, I’ve been running some workshops on that topic with a bunch of different people, so with women who traditionally are seen to suffer from this more than others, but working with LGBTQ, plus working with our Latin American colleagues, and understanding that this sense of imposter syndrome presents where we don’t conform to the majority kind of norm. And it’s been fascinating to really expand that understanding of that feeling of not being good enough, or not being part of the group, if that makes sense. And so that sort of thing, I find sharing and bringing some vulnerability to that conversation has allowed people to say, Oh, my God, it’s not just me that feels this way. And something shifts for them because they see in themselves in others, and the conversation then becomes a lot, a lot richer. And I feel that people then feel less shame around reaching out for support because they recognize other people feel the same way as they do,
Mark McBride-Wright 12:26
and how are you inverting that experience for then the majority group to similarly?
Karen Aitchison 12:38
Yeah, that’s that’s always a challenge, isn’t it? Really trying to challenge the idea of allyship and kind of turning things on its head a little bit and asking the majority to step in more. So, you know, I’m a woman, obviously White, a white woman in business. I’m a gay woman, so I have some understanding of of discrimination. And I, what I found really works as well for me, is some of the, some of the people who have really taken the time to get to know me and and ask be curious about my journey. Be curious about where I’ve met with resistance or met with challenges. The more that I’ve been able to explore that with them, the more I’ve seen them step in. And so what we’re trying, I think, to do now is, and I’m encouraged by in our own organization, the number of allies that join our employee, resource group, sessions, etc, with a view to learning how they can begin to advocate more, how they can step in more, so that the group that’s underrepresented is not doing all the heavy lifting themselves. And I think we’re on a journey, and I think most organizations are probably on a journey with that, but I am encouraged to see a lot more people with the privilege, sort of, you know, or privilege, maybe wrong word, but the kind of, maybe sitting in the majority position in the organization, stepping into those uncomfortable situations and speaking up,
Mark McBride-Wright 14:15
yeah, and it’s amazing to hear about the learning that’s happening from within. And then when you bring that to the because it can be a force for bonding as well, with business development, with clients, you know, and I read your introduction there, it sounds like it’s actually become it’s not just an internal focus, your role, it’s also external, your your working clients, doing leadership development, team, building, culture transformation work. So, how, how, how, how, how is, how is that going like? What’s that sort of typical project that you might work on, for example, with, with a client?
Karen Aitchison 14:56
So, so that, so that program that you referenced at the. Security to thrive is sort of based on three pillars and and what the first one is neuroscience. I’m a great believer in understanding how our brain our physiological responses, play a part in how we show up, how they impact our behavior. The second pillar of that is, is really looking applying more of a systemic lens to challenges that we find in organizations. So if we don’t really get to root cause analysis and understand the intricate web of the organization, we’ll probably only solve part of the problem, and the third pillar is on de and I, and for me, we cannot work with clients on any safety, culture, transformation, leadership development, if we don’t address that piece and recognizing that the more global the organization, and most of the organizations I work with are global, the more likely it is to have a demographic that’s pretty diverse. So the work that I do often sort of centers de and I in it, even if it’s not, it’s not overtly in it, it will always be in it. For me, examples of the kind of work I do are supporting teams who are in conflict. For example, maybe they’re going through a transformation or a change. And what we know about that is quite often, certain people find that a fearful experience, or they get a little bit paralyzed in it. They find that they start to be fearful of the impact that transformation may have on them, from an economic point of view, from a status point of view, from job security, whatever. And then you’ve got people who are like gung ho, and they’re up for change. And so how do we help the enablers of change work with the ones who are a little bit distracting from it and using the neuroscience to really create a roadmap of understanding about the core emotions that we all carry within us as human beings, and why some of us are activated more into fear, whereas some of us are activated more into kind of we can do this and also recognizing the difference that we all have through lived experience. You know, for example, if I’m someone who’s experienced a lot of change in my childhood, you know, maybe I my parents worked overseas, and every two years I got moved around, and it created a degree of anxiety for me, that’s not going to change, because I’ve moved into an organization. Carry that with me potentially, and so something like a transformation process could be quite triggering for me. It could be something that might set me into a bit of a spiral. So how do we help leaders of these teams going through these transformations to understand all the natural responses that we’re going to have as human beings, to change and then work through them and process them. Yeah,
Mark McBride-Wright 17:48
I can imagine a lot of people don’t then just take this, learn and apply it, just within their work frame of reference. They’re in some soul searching on, you know what? What’s their trigger points? How were they brought up? What? And they apply it then to their own history, but also their own personal life, like their relationship with our children, bringing their kids. It’s very, it’s very self discovery, isn’t it?
Karen Aitchison 18:19
It is. And I mean, look, I’m I trained in London for five years as a psychotherapist, and I’m very aware of the boundaries of that versus the role that I’m in now. So I probably should caveat by saying we’re not taking people down some deep, dark therapeutic process, but neuroscience allows us to, yeah, to just lean in a bit more into our own human experience without going into a place that could be challenging or difficult, but even just knowing that we all have these core, core circuitry in our brain around panic and fear, but also joy. You know, play is a circuit in our brain. Care is a circuit. So that’s what prompts us to be empathic. Knowing that we all have this available to us, I think, is a great framework to kind of hang some of this on. And yeah, we’ve had some aha moments that have been really beautiful to witness. And people, yeah, absolutely taking it away and thinking about it in the context of family and community and, you know, parenting, etc, and that’s been wonderful to see them kind of a, kind of apply the learning to that, but we are bound to read around it. It’s not, we’re not doing personal therapy by any stretch, or group therapy,
Mark McBride-Wright 19:34
absolutely, and so and so. So you’re, you’re, you’ve had experience in environmental sustainability now in well being so well, I mean, well being in environmental social governance, or sometimes spoken about separately. But how do you intersecting and is it? Is it coming up still in board level conversations?
Karen Aitchison 19:59
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think you’re absolutely right mark that they have historically been kind of treated as almost separate conversations. But as you know, they’re deeply interconnected, and especially, I think, when we talk about sustainable performance and long term value creation. So I mean, the E often gets the spotlights. There’s a lot of talk right now about climate and emissions and reporting and this stuff. But I think that what I’m seeing certainly is investors and stakeholders increasingly making that connection between well being, employee, well being to risk, productivity, reputation. And I think that, you know, sadly, some organizations have been exposed to the risks that come from a burnt out, disengaged workforce, and they now recognize that as a material business risk. So we’re seeing wellbeing becoming more of a governance issue, rather than nice to have. And for those organizations that I am lucky enough to work with who are progressive, they’re really seeing this integration of wellbeing and TSG is non negotiable. It’s not an option. It’s more a part of how do we deliver resilient, responsible, high performance. And so it’s been great to see the shift, and I think that probably I’ve seen more of a turning towards that since COVID. I think, I think as human beings in organizational life, we really stepped into quite a special place in COVID. Now, don’t get me wrong, it was horrendous, but we started to really humanize ourselves. You know, I feel like we were really checking in on each other. Everything was being done online, and I don’t think I was privy to any meetings where people didn’t say, How are you all, yeah, you know. And something shifted a little bit, I think, in terms of humanizing the workplace and humanizing our clients and our, you know, our colleagues, in a way that perhaps we’d lost sight of prior to the pandemic. And so, yeah, and I think that because we’re seeing phenomenon such as burnout, which is a fully attributable phenomenon to work, the who has made that very clear, it’s not burnout. It’s not something that happens to us in our private life. It’s something that can happen to us and work, and also the shift towards systemic understanding of the hazards that exist in the workplace that can give rise to psychological harm. We’re seeing also shift in legislation and in regulatory frameworks that’s driving some of this discussion as well. If you,
Mark McBride-Wright 22:31
if you have a client, the engineer or, you know, they’ve made their way up and they just want hard numbers, metrics. They want something to that they can see a change on and well being is you can’t measure that. Can you are there some metrics, hard metrics, that you can set that are tracked, and if so, what are they?
Karen Aitchison 22:53
Yeah, I mean, I think, I mean, Deloitte has been banging on about this for quite some time, that, you know, you can measure absenteeism, presenteeism rates. You can drill down into some of the data. I think organizations are now looking at doing, you know, back in the day mark, we would have had, like, a survey, if we’re lucky, every couple of years, and that’s a snapshot in time of how are you doing? You’re seeing a lot more pulse survey kind of activity, which is really taking, you know, stock of what’s happening more in real time. I think it’s still an evolving space. We can look at things like the take up for the employee assistance program, you know, HR function is playing more of a role in tracking data. Is it as mature as we would like it to be at this stage, probably not, but I do think we’re seeing a lot more organizations sort of flooding the market with the technology to do that. You can you’ve got to measure. I don’t have a problem with measure, but the idea that wellbeing isn’t a major factor. I think you only need to look at the generation coming into the workplace now, and looking at what some of the demands, if you like that, they have of an employer. I mean, you and I, I think probably were just pleased to get a job back in certainly, I’m older than you, but in the 90s, I was like, I’ve got a job. Great. I didn’t think about well being or anything to do. But now there’s, you know, a much more educated generation coming through. They recognize the long term health impacts of stress. They understand that work life balance is something that they they they prioritize. And so as an employer of choice, it’s important that you’re not well being washing, that you are legitimately offering meaningful interventions that support sustainable, you know, careers in your in your organization. So the demand, I think, is driving also the supply that’s coming from the from the organizations themselves.
Mark McBride-Wright 24:59
Interesting. Yeah, interesting. I think it’s knowing the top track to give, internally or externally to whoever it is you’re trying to influence. Like, what is the thing that’s going to influence them? Is it this? Is it the is it the metric side? Is it the hard nose, cash, like, return on, like, value? Is it the talent, risk of not not attracting the best talent. And for some it’s just the experiential element, like they just need to experience it themselves. And then when they see they’ve been neglecting their well being, and it’s then showed up in their performance, or they’ve been at the risk of burnout, all of a sudden, it’s like, oh my goodness, I need to now re recalibrate here, and thankfully, I’m in an organization that has the structures.
Karen Aitchison 25:50
Something that I learned in my training that has stayed with me is that, and it’s linked to, I think you’ve been talking a lot, I’ve noticed on LinkedIn about psychological safety and the importance of that. What I learned is that when we operate at work from a place of social engagement, connection, collaboration, and we feel psychologically safe, we free our brain up to to really come through with innovative solutions, and we’re much better at problem solving, and we’re just more we’re just more engaged when we’re operating out of stress or from prolonged periods of stress. Isn’t in itself, bad thing. It’s just that prolonged periods are not so great. We start to conserve our oxygen into the body, and we go into a fight flight response, which we don’t actually control. But the minute we move into fight flight, the blood and oxygen sort of moving to the limbs, literally ready to fight or flight, and we taking it away from up here, this part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, which we need to be online if we’re going to be innovative and creative. So what I always say is, if we are operating our business from a place of fear about the metrics, or fear of you know, whatever the fear may be, we’re actually taking money off the table. Yes, our people are our brains are compromised. Our brains are not working at full tilt. And if we’re not rested as well, if we’re not eating and hydrating and all those kind of things, the likelihood is that we might be sat in front of our desk for eight hours straight, but we’re producing low quality outputs, yeah, whereas if we are able to build rest and repair into our life and our day, if we’re able To take that lunch hour walk or go and chat with a friend or whatever it might be, the likelihood is the productivity rate will go up. Our ability to access really good ideas and thoughts will emerge. And so it’s in business’s interest to actually care about the wellbeing of their people if they want to stay at the forefront of their field. You know, they want to have the edge, then the edges keep your people. Well,
Mark McBride-Wright 28:05
yeah, no, totally, totally, um, so with, with well being then, and where do you see? Where do you see the future? Where is the sector heading?
Karen Aitchison 28:23
Well, I think it’s it’s leaving behind. This idea of mental health is something that only certain people have to deal with. The rest of us are just fine. I think it’s moving away from, if you are struggling with your mental health, use the EAP, or here’s HR, to a place where we’re looking at, how do we create thriving environments for people, and what are the barriers to those thriving environments that we as the workforce or the or the work or the employer are actually inadvertently creating. So when we look at the, for example, what’s happening in Australia, they have quite progressive legislation around what they call psychosocial hazards. They’re looking at things like demands of work. You know, are they too high? They too low? Autonomy in our roles? You know, do we have too much autonomy, too little interpersonal conflict? You know, do the line manager relationship? Is that healthy, or is that problematic? And I think when we start to understand that these hazards do exist, and back to de and I that some of them exist more for certain groups than others, we can start to look at ways to mitigate and eliminate them, and that that will start to create more of a preventative response to mental health problems than a reactive one. Yeah, yeah. So I think, I think that’s where I’m hopeful we’re moving across the spectrum of reactivity to preventative and I think the other piece is that we’re really understanding the importance. Systemic lens, rather than just individual kind of heal yourself type thing. Yes, and look at the ways in which the structure of the organization lends itself towards thriving or surviving mentality in the workplace.
Mark McBride-Wright 30:16
And so I guess a leader or a team’s stepping stones to that world is a combination, then, of the tools, the tech that you referred to, that’s now coming out in the marketplace. What’s available? How are we using? Are we using? How are we then operational in that? What’s the data we’re getting from that, how are we then feeding it our it’s almost like looking at the system that is our workplace, and the envelope that you draw around. What you’re considering could be the business itself, but then also the business and its supply chain relationships. It could be as narrow down as an office, like a singular office a site so office manager, take taking this on, you know, for the culture locally, and then all these people thinking in this way, and then sharing what they’re learning, getting it all out with what all the thing like the reactive responses that we’ve been having, what Can we shouldn’t lift to be then be proactive, and then address these measures and well, there’s always going to be things that we can anticipate or they might show up. So what’s our pro reactive measures for for that stuff?
Karen Aitchison 31:35
Yeah. I mean, look, I think it’s important to say that I am not suggesting that there will not be people who legitimately struggle with their mental health in the workplace for reasons that we don’t need to necessarily go into, and I would never want them to to not be able to access the support and help that they need. So I’m not saying that we can prevent all mental health decline in the workplace. Of course we can’t. That would be naive of me, I do think it’s important that we look at the stigma that still exists in certain pockets, certain jurisdictions, and certain demographics around mental health, and that that that psycho education continues. But I think there’s a there’s an element of the workforce, again, post COVID, where we kind of went in, we’ve kind of gone into overdrive, in a way. I mean, I just listening to my clients, I hear this tension of productivity, demand going up and, you know, overwhelm and whatnot. So there is this component of, okay, if there is a way to use what science tells us what’s sort of particularly for me, Neuroscience tells us about how to create these more thriving workplaces, and you’re touching into that when you look at psychological safety, we can build more resilient workplaces where people you know when We can come into a place and feel authentic and be who we are like I know a lot of DNI work is around bring your authentic self to work. It has a physiological positive response when we are able to bring our authentic self to work, because we’re not trying to edit who we are. We’re not trying to keep that under wraps, because it’s exhausting. As you I don’t know your story, but I know mine and certainly as a lawyer, if I had come out, it would have been in the early 90s, it would have been career limiting for me, and I was so grateful when I moved into consultancy that they just seemed to be much more comfortable with with it. But I was running on a lot of stress of being outed at work, so just me as an example tells you that you know, I wasn’t working optimally. I was probably pretty stressed, and there’s a lot worse stories than mine out there. So if we can create that safe, safer place to show up at work, then that will also reduce some of the challenges that people encounter and perhaps some of the reasons they don’t always come to work or they struggle
Mark McBride-Wright 34:02
Absolutely. I am I very much nowadays as a practitioner, have brought my learnings that I got from erm and then subsequently grant Hern when I moved to after erm, when I did a good five, or six years as practicing as a process safety engineer, learning all the risk management, helping create physically safe working environments. You know, mitigation, preventative barriers, mitigation barriers. You know this is the language of technical safety, of process safety. So retooling that therefore and speaking to engineers who are oftentimes in the majority group as well, because we’ve got a massive gender imbalance in engineering, it’s a way to speak to them then about these who. More like less tangible elements of identity, mental health, well being, and so that’s really been the arc of my career since I left Dr REM. I’ve built on that foundation. We’ve done research on masculinity and engineering and felt that and found that men also find it hard to challenge the hyper masculine norms that’s expected of them in the workplace environment. So even the ability to be vulnerable and to show up and to share about anything that’s going on beneath our water line, that might be the root cause that drives a high instant rate of suicidal ideation and self harm, that affects the extreme end that affects men. You know, this this, again, this is like a risk management strategy. You know, it’s likelihood, it’s probability. Where does this happen? And you know, in erm, we would be helping clients design out risk, eradicate risk, and it’s so heartening, therefore, to hear that you’re now helping clients focus on that psychological safety element, to be tabling like the cultural side of things, because they’re both, they’re both important. But for technically wired people who want to focus on the technical, technical stuff, they think that that’s more important than the than the, you know, the cultural, interpersonal element, and it actually all needs to be addressed. I think,
Karen Aitchison 36:26
I think you’re absolutely right. And I, you know, I hope I don’t offend anyone at your end, but you know, the technical brilliance at your end is a massive asset. And of course it is. And leadership is about, is also about how we create the conditions for other people to succeed. So sometimes, when I’m working with engineers, I’ll say to them, get curious about people the same way you are about problems. Because you know you’re you’re trying see the relationships around you as part of the system that you’re leading, and maybe use terminology that’s a little bit more resonant for them. But when we connect with people as leaders, it’s, I think there’s a maybe an old school thinking. It’s very much about charisma and stuff, but for me, it’s really about intention, and I think you can connect with technical, technical leaders in a way that allows them to flourish as people leaders as well. And sometimes I find explaining the reasoning, and this is why I find neuroscience actually very powerful, because neuroscience is engendered, and it also isn’t. It isn’t following the the old school way of thinking that you’re, you’re a left brain, or you’re a right brain, or you’re a blue or a purple or whatever it’s saying. Well, we all have this sort of circuitry in common. Male or female, doesn’t matter, or anything in between. It’s it so it sort of, it kind of takes the heat out of
Mark McBride-Wright 38:06
some, Yeah, completely. It makes it, it de identifies it. It makes it, it makes it rational, you know, it makes it neutral. It makes it fact based, you know, yeah,
Karen Aitchison 38:23
yeah. And it reduces a little bit of the defensiveness that sometimes can come up. And I love it as well, because there are certain sort of psychometric tests that are still widely used, and people often will take great pride in telling you what color they are or what whatever quadrant or whatever. And I think that that can create a fixedness in us, that and also a kind of justification for why we’re not doing the people side well, I’m not the emotion. I don’t have the emotional brain. And you kind of can call them on that when you introduce much more contemporary neuroscience and say, well, actually, that’s not true. And we all have access to a care circuit in our brain that that is what triggers empathy. It’s just how do you want to? Do you want to activate it and see what happens? Rather than that? Part of me sort of, it’s not, not accessible. So I enjoy neuroscience as a challenging tool as much as anything else, but it certainly has been wonderful to see. I mean, I worked recently with the financial director on this stuff. And, you know, I probably went into that group thinking the finance director’s gonna be the hardest sell here. And he was blown away by it. And he was like this. This has changed how I think about metrics, you know, not not to the extent that he’s thrown them out, but just really opened his eyes to there’s other ways that we can engage people on the numbers.
Mark McBride-Wright 39:53
Yeah, oh, I love that. I love that. So what kind of legacy then would you love to leave? At erm and across the wider consultancy industry.
Karen Aitchison 40:06
Good question. I’m getting there in age. I mean, I think I’m in my last decade of my career. What legacy I was
Mark McBride-Wright 40:17
working till any age there is no I know.
Karen Aitchison 40:22
Well, traditionally, I’m in the last decade, then maybe I would love people. I would love to have made a difference. And I’m not entirely sure I could articulate what my legacy would what would I want it to be. I would really like people to say that person is was an authentic soul, and I learned a lot. I felt like she was an advocate, that she was an ally, that she stepped in. I would really like people to remember me as a mentor in so far as you know, it’s often, it’s interesting. Your question earlier around you know, how did you kind of navigate being a woman in the workplace and and I think that that as a white woman as I understand that I’m one of the biggest beneficiaries of the D and I movement, and therefore is incumbent upon me to amplify the voices of women who are not white and women who and I’m very proud of some of the work that I’ve done in erm, and I’m very proud of erm for having the programs available. But I don’t know if you remember, we had an Aspire program, but we also now have a lead program, and lead is all about elevating underrepresented voices and underrepresented groups, if that makes sense. So I help deliver some training around psychological safety for the sponsors, but also for the people being sponsored to understand what that means for them in that journey they go on together. So yeah, I feel like the legacy would be that, in some shape or form, I’ve helped to support and develop the generation that will take over a year I am after I’m long gone
Mark McBride-Wright 42:11
i i don’t i remember the activation points for me on my journey to discovering diversity and speaking to you. I do remember, yeah, starting to look like trying to find more LGBT role models that were in the business. And I remember some programming that we did. It was pre diversity strategy, though, of erm, there was nothing like concrete and part of the business strategy in that. But I do remember then graduate, because I think I had just gotten married, actually, or it was a few years married. Yeah, it was like way, way before we had kids, and way before I did any diversity work, I hadn’t co founded inter engineering at that point. It was about three years before that, but I think, like the initial things I started doing at erm, or maybe some of the initial conversation, or even just that hunt to try and find the other the others of me in the in the office was a bit telling in and of itself. You know, within a group, I think we had some, we had an event once, actually, didn’t we in the we had some drinks office. And then that was so that that really was like, Oh, wow, great. There are people like me that are here. You know, I even noticed, actually, that your MS changed its logo on LinkedIn with the with the progress flag colors. I thought that was That’s brilliant. That’s cool to see organization, an organization, actually doing that this month.
Karen Aitchison 43:57
This month is obviously Pride Month and
Mark McBride-Wright 44:00
force. Think I’m one of those people that you have, like, started an interest in this stuff for like, I remember, I do remember, some of the conversations that we had, like, earlier, you know. And it really, like, opened my eyes to, like, you know, the needs for doing work in this area. It was, it’s definitely been one of the experiences on the journey of where I’m at now that was, you’re like, an early influencer, and my shift in trajectory as I went on in my technical years under my belt, so I could get my chartership and all that when I when I then discovered my love for more cultural based work. I My experiences at erm are sort of one of my reference points, you know. And you know when, like, just erm embracing flexible working before it was a thing proper thing, you know. So you need to go up to the Manchester office to see Suzanne. And everyone felt really included being able to go up to Edinburgh on a Thursday evening and work remotely from the beautiful office that we had at the time right the castle, and like not have to take a day’s leave or holiday to do that. Just was there to do it. It was, you know, it was really, it was it was, it was inspiring and empowering. So, yeah, I owe a lot to those, those early days in my office is still there,
Karen Aitchison 45:36
and it’s a beautiful location. And I do, you know, I think what you’re leaning into a bit here is representation and the importance for those of us who identify as being slightly different to the majority. And erm, I think you’d be pretty proud of the journey that we’ve been on and that we continue to invest in and the you know that that representation is moving to a much healthier place for me. I mean, you talk about engineering and it being a male dominated environment. Yeah, I’m really proud. I think if you were to come back and visit, you’d say, Okay, this, there’s some good stuff happening here. And, yeah, I mean, I think those of us who maybe are at the pioneering end of it are are looking for our people. We’re just looking to know we’re not the only one. And it’s amazing what grassroots movements do in that regard. And I think, you know, proud of erm in the sense that there’s a very there’s sponsorship from the top, and there’s this real investment in the grassroot, you know, employer resource groups, etc, and and the move to allyship and advocacy and amplification that we must have, because if people in underrepresented groups only have one another, then nothing really changed in the system, and the system has to respond. So I’d say we’re on that. You know, we’re moving along the maturity curve there really well, and I think there’s more people willing to name their difference.
Mark McBride-Wright 47:12
Wonderful, wonderful. Well, I’ll have to come back for a visit, definitely. Okay, quick fire questions. You’re not getting off the hook. Okay, what’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
Karen Aitchison 47:26
Um, I mean, wow, I’ve received a lot, but I think for the purpose of this conversation, um, it’s, it’s probably something along the lines of, in in life, and probably in leadership, it’s the quieter, more intuitive part of us, rather than the analytical voice that sees the bigger picture and trusting that intuition has changed, I think, how I’ve led teams, how I’ve listened and probably how I’ve kind of grown as a person leaning into that more, yeah,
Mark McBride-Wright 48:09
what’s the proud, most, proudest moment in your career so far,
Karen Aitchison 48:16
being asked to do this role and winning the award Because security to thrive, which is the program that I’ve kind of LED on. I’m immensely proud of that
Mark McBride-Wright 48:27
what’s one skill every leader should learn,
Karen Aitchison 48:34
that they’ve got two ears and one mouth,
Mark McBride-Wright 48:38
coffee or tea,
Karen Aitchison 48:39
neither never had it either in my life, neither. Yep,
Mark McBride-Wright 48:45
what’s your go to? Well being? Practice the beach. If you if you could have dinner with any Scottish leader or thinker. Who would it
Karen Aitchison 48:59
be? It would be a man called Ian McGilchrist, who is a neuro science expert. I think he’s a psychiatrist as well. And he wrote a book called The master and his emissary, and it talks about the two hemispheres of our brain and what they what they do. He lives on the Isle of sky now,
Mark McBride-Wright 49:21
okay, what’s the one thing you do to reset when things feel overwhelming, breathe. What’s one book or podcast you’d always recommend,
Karen Aitchison 49:36
Man’s Search for Meaning, by Viktor Frankl,
Mark McBride-Wright 49:39
what’s a lesson you think more people should learn earlier in their careers.
Karen Aitchison 49:46
I think they should learn to expose themselves to the leadership styles of as many people as possible, so that they don’t just become a clone of the one that they tend to work with the most and. They also help form their own identity through that process, rather than kind of just falling into a kind of pattern of, this is the way we do things around here.
Mark McBride-Wright 50:11
Wow. Great advice. Finally, then, what advice would you give to your younger self walking into first boardroom? I
Karen Aitchison 50:25
to to be intentional about when I did open my mouth, and to not worry that what was going to come out my mouth wasn’t going to make sense.
Mark McBride-Wright 50:41
That’s great advice. That is great advice for all of us at any point in life, actually. Thank you so much, Karen. If people want to get in touch with you, if they want to find out more about your work, some of the programs that you’ve mentioned, how you do that.
Karen Aitchison 50:57
So I’m on LinkedIn, and I can send you my work. I think you have that. My email is Karen dot HSN, a, i, T, C, H, I, S O, n@erm.com, that’s probably the easiest, easiest way.
Mark McBride-Wright 51:13
Fabulous. Well, thank you very much. It’s been an absolute pleasure, and it’s been a little trip. There many memories. Well, I’ve really enjoyed it. Thank
Karen Aitchison 51:25
you so much for having me pleasure.
Mark McBride-Wright 51:30
Cool. Stop.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Other Podcasts
E049: The Power of Unexpected Connection
E048: Walking Into Your Leadership Potential
E047: Engineering Resilience and Reinvention
Join The SAFE Leader Insights Newsletter
Practical tips, expert advice, and inspiring stories on leadership, safety, and engineering inclusive cultures.
Join The SAFE Leader Insights Newsletter
Practical tips, expert advice, and inspiring stories on leadership, safety, and engineering inclusive cultures.
Quick Links
Get In Touch
Copyright © Mark McBride-Wright LLC. All Rights Reserved.