Swim Jump Fly with Charlotte Housden

CHARLOTTE H PART 2

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[00:00:06] Charlotte: I just felt I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to. be there for other people in a way that would support them when I couldn't support them.

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[00:00:46] Ross: In this episode, I continue my chat with Charlotte Housden, who talks about her brilliant book, Swim, Jump, Fly!

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[00:01:43] So let's crack on. For now, get a brew on and have a listen to part two of my chat with Charlotte Houston.

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[00:02:03] Charlotte: I have

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[00:02:05] trepidatious.

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[00:02:27] There are two shining stars of the book. The first is Charlotte's practical and accessible writing. And the second star is a collective, made up of Charlotte's research participants, all 108 of them across 27 countries. Their experiences are woven throughout the book. Charlotte normalises the human experience of change.

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[00:02:58] Charlotte: Oh, thank you. That's lovely. I really love what you've said and particularly the piece about the stories because I really wanted it to be lots of people in the room, not just me. One thing I love about being a coach is that I don't have to be the expert. I don't have to know everything.

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[00:03:53] People tell me I needed to do about 10 or 20. I did a thematic analysis and they said, Oh, you needed 10 or 20, not 108. [00:04:00] But I went to 108 because I wanted to have a really good range of ages and genders and types of people from different places. and I also wanted to make it really. accessible and interesting.

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[00:04:33] And I just thought, well, this is rubbish. I need it to be broader and more interesting. So I, I, I purposefully went to 108 because I wanted to get to almost balance of genders and, lots of different people from different places. And so it just feels like I, I, I loved the interviews because it felt like I was in this enormous hall full of people from different places all just chatting about their lives.

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[00:04:58] Ross: I'd love to take a step back and say,

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[00:05:12] Charlotte: So I was in the middle of a career sort of change process myself. I didn't know what I wanted to do next. I'd been working in consultancy for many years and had kind of fallen out of love with. Some of the things I was doing and I did, but I didn't know what else to do because I'd always done either being a consultant or being in HR and run leadership development functions.

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[00:05:53] It was very kind of focused on my own needs. But in the process of having this structure, semi structured interview, I realized [00:06:00] that people were getting a huge amount out of that process of stepping back, looking at their career, their lives. And then it sort of snowballed because The people that I was interviewing then told other people about it.

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[00:06:28] And therefore we were also learning about what not to do next time. And it just kind of snowballed. It just, it started off being by five or 10 and then it kind of 20 and then 30 and 50 and then ended up with 108. So, yeah, it wasn't kind of where I imagined it was going to go, but it was lovely. I, I, I, that was the part of the process that I loved the most.

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[00:07:13] My kind of home office turned into like a serial killer's lair. With bits of paper all over the wall, with connections between them. And, I was immersing myself for hours every day in this and came out looking like some sort of crazed caveman. so that was with 16. So Charlotte, tell me how it was with 108.

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[00:07:36] Charlotte: I did not enjoy the process because it, when I started out, I thought, Oh, this is fun. And I created the, I created all sorts of like charts and I had color coding and I had these themes that I was creating, you know, these sort of, I had, in the end it was like 120 or something like that. but as it went on, I'd done the first 10 and the 20, and then this is great.

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[00:08:35] I mean, a lot of people give feedback to me and say, the book is very rich. Um, I think the richness comes from the volume of people I spoke to. So there is a benefit to it, but I found the process very

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[00:08:57] Charlotte: I had some advice from somebody who's a journalist that not to write a book and I was very disappointed by this idea that not to write a book. So the whole point of doing this research was to write a book. But I thought, no, he knows what he's talking about. I'll do what he says. And he said, Practice your writing.

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[00:09:11] Charlotte: Hone your writing. I'd done a lot of writing in work because I had run a lot of internal communications functions, or when I was a management consultant, I was running all the communications for these big change programs. So I was very well versed at writing business y stuff. Um, but I hadn't really written from the heart and, he said the process of writing in a way that is attractive or engaging has to have a bit of you in it.

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[00:09:54] And so he said, get used to that process. Get it out there. Don't worry about it so much. So I took his [00:10:00] advice and I wrote the blog whilst I was doing the thematic analysis and pulling out themes and sharing them. Some of it wasn't the thematic analysis. Some of it was just my thinking. Um, but I did that for 18 months.

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[00:10:33] I have, a style that people can recognize. Now, some people will hate it. And I'm kind of comfortable with that now, the idea that, I have a particular way of writing that aligns to who I am. And in fact, my website, I've got a number of websites for my business and I actually almost use them as an, as an assessment center.

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[00:11:19] Ross: We'll include all the links to your websites in the show notes, but just tell us the names or the directions of the websites, if you would.

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[00:12:08] And there's a third one actually, Liminal Muse, which is the coaching product. So primarily for

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[00:12:16] Ross: and

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[00:12:22] Charlotte: that's right. Um, we're not, I think we're not recording this on, on video, but I'm going to show you so that you can bring it live for you. But it's called Liminal Muse Conversation Cards. Um, and it's basically based on my photography. And many of the images are, abstract. So you can't really, you don't really know what they are.

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[00:13:08] And if I said to them it wasn't a log pile, it would sort of undermine their metaphor. Or they, they're storytelling around it. So I use this a lot in coaching. I use it in, in

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[00:13:20] Ross: Lovely. It's lovely just to glimpse a few of those, just for the listener. There was one with some quite geometric shadows I could see. The log pile, for me, that was more a a pathway. not regular paving slabs, but with a real richness of color.

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[00:13:41] Ross: And, there was another beautiful image you showed of, of, a close up of, of peacock feathers. And you're very much pinging all my circuits there because I love to use visuals with, with coaching clients to help unlock thinking different perspectives.

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[00:14:17] And I used them the other day, actually, in a, in a workshop I was running for, for the association of business psychologists. And, uh, so that you can actually do it where it's interactive. It's like a whiteboard, but it's interactive online. So if I'm coaching with a client, just one on one, they can access and they can pull out the cards they want to play with, and I can see what they've chosen.

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[00:14:40] Ross: It's great to know they're also available virtually as well as perhaps holding them up. Thank you. So that was quite a little tangent we took, but again, it speaks to your, it speaks to your creativity and your, your desire to support others in unlocking what's meaningful for them. So I want to bring my attention and our attention back to the book.

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[00:15:05] Is that right?

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[00:15:28] And it had struck me that there was only so many hours in the day, you know, in our kind of work, we, we don't tend to do so much one to many. If we're doing coaching, it's tends to be more of one to one. Um, I do do some group work.

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[00:15:40] Charlotte: I just felt I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to. be there for other people in a way that would support them when I couldn't support them.

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[00:16:21] I'm making it more accessible, so from a cost perspective, you know, coaching can be expensive. A lot of people can't afford it, but they might be able to afford a book. So that was my

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[00:16:32] Ross: And don't underestimate how much your voice comes through.

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[00:16:43] Charlotte: yeah. we talked in a previous episode about, my energy levels. And that at the start of projects I often have a lot of energy and at the end I have a lot less. And so I kind of know this. And before I started writing, I gathered together a group of people in a book club. And these were people who were blog readers, or friends, or they were ex colleagues, or consultants, some of them are therapists.

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[00:17:57] And I think it's building on that thing I said earlier about having the [00:18:00] choir. So I, I have the choir of all of the storytellers, all the people who've been through change. And then I've got on the side here a little kind of maybe quartet of people who are also gonna sing alongside with me, maybe when the choir isn't singing.

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[00:18:29] Ross: and again, I see that courage in you. The courage to engage with the quartet as you go through the writing process and a testament to you building relationships with them, the depth of the relationship with them, that they were willing to give you affirming feedback, but also, like, Charlotte, what are you thinking of?

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[00:18:56] Really does, does bring that extra richness, I think. The choir and the quartet.

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[00:19:19] And I felt that wasn't a very good, way to go, because life isn't like that. And so I wanted it to be evident, evidence based, but I didn't want it to be one of these super heavy tomes, psychological kind of, I find sometimes

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[00:19:37] And I thought, if I struggle and I've got two degrees in psychology and a diploma in coaching psychology, what about everyone else? So I wanted to make it really accessible, but I also wanted to bring that kind of theoretical underpinning. And so. That's how I got into ACT actually because a colleague of mine is an ACT practitioner and clinical psychologist and coach and she Introduced me to ACT and said well, I think you should have some of ACT in your book [00:20:00] so I started experimenting and reading out at that point I didn't know very much and actually if I were to go back and redo the book I'd do it differently because I know more now.

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[00:20:29] And I thought, Oh, that's exactly what I wanted. I wanted a range of storytelling, but also some theory behind it as

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[00:20:36] Some evidence based.

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[00:20:58] So I can see it being a useful go to book for me in that respect too.

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[00:21:25] Either because I was sharing ideas or theories or stories or ways of working that they nicked. Totally happy for them to just take it and use it. Or another route that people were using, they were using it as a workbook. So they'd buy it for their client or suggest their client buys it. And then they'd go back to the exercises in the book.

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[00:22:09] And I was shocked by that. Not shocked, but surprised by that. one of my coaching colleagues showed me a book, a copy of it, and it's full of, you know, those stickies and she opened it up and it was sort of full of underlining and colors.

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[00:22:23] yeah,

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[00:22:26] Ross: Wonderful. And I wonder if you wouldn't mind just talking

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[00:22:32] because that, I think that's a really powerful, one

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[00:22:39] Charlotte: areas of investigation. One is a personal one and one was the research. So personally. When I was going through this career shift, I felt like I had to change everything. I felt like everything had to be different because nothing was working for me. And there was this sense that that's why I went off to think about alpaca farming.

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[00:23:21] And they almost did it too quickly, and they didn't really know where they were going. And they felt they had to have this massive shift in order to, to create changes in their career. And over time, as I was doing the thematic analysis, it became very clear to me that there were different types of change.

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[00:23:54] That if one is kind of risk averse, the last thing you need to do is go off and just change [00:24:00] everything all at once. It's overwhelming. And actually, you can change the size or the steps of the changes you make and make them smaller and more manageable. So I came up with this idea about swim, jump, and fly.

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[00:24:29] And so throughout the book, it's full of cartoons of fish, grasshoppers and birds. And it brings a life, different people who I interviewed, who made those shifts, sometimes successfully, because it was well aligned with their personality and their approach, and others who went too far. And I was one of the people that went too far, because I didn't need to shift myself considerably.

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[00:25:09] For this moment, because it might shift, and then adapt your goals and your, you know, actions to fit you better so that you're more

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[00:25:20] part of Swim, Jump, Fly.

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[00:25:39] Charlotte: People said they like that, they find that interesting. Others who didn't like the metaphor, didn't like the birds and the animals, I just say to them, just think small, medium or

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[00:25:51] some people

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[00:25:52] metaphors

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[00:25:57] Charlotte: Um, partly the accountability, [00:26:00] because I said I would do it. having talked to my husband, he said I, I tend to do a thing where I say I'm going to do something, and then I get gratification for saying I'm going to do it. And he said to me, wouldn't it be just better if you actually just wrote the book rather than telling people that you were writing the book?

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[00:26:34] I didn't want to let down the people that had given me accountability in the book group. And I thought, come on, this is, you've always wanted to write a book, you know, you've half heartedly written a novel. Now is your time. And so I

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[00:26:47] And I'm delighted I did, actually.

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[00:26:52] really got in the way?

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[00:27:10] I'm going to have to take the whole of that section out. perfectionism. Um, laziness. Oh, whole raft of things. Um, what will people think of me? Have I put too much of myself in? Is it going to be embarrassing because I've got some, there are, there are, as you've read, there are some stories of me in there. and I think I went, some of them I went back and took sort of honed those stories a little.

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[00:27:49] I would

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[00:27:51] which I could let it go.

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[00:28:01] That would probably take me five years. before I even started to write. So, That feels very, very rapid.

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[00:28:20] I've written the book. It isn't. It's about a third of the work. Because there is so much work put into editing, You know, getting designers involved, getting editors involved, changing stuff, checking all of your data sources if it's not, um, if it's not a novel. it really, there is, I found that tedious, that part actually.

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[00:28:45] that. He was brilliant.

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[00:28:51] Now, would you have a takeaway for the P supers?

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[00:29:21] I think they were, they were kind of focusing on the wrong bit. They were thinking it was that they had to change their work. And actually, sometimes it can be the how of what we do, which is, do I want to run my own business? Do I want to work from home? Do I want to, have more agency in the kind of work that I do?

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[00:29:58] So for you and me, [00:30:00] it's working, uh, with people and coaching and doing a training, um, versus the, how that we do it. Do you love doing it in person, Ross? Do you like doing it, online? Do you like doing it in Spain where you live or would you, do you actually enjoy the piece of kind of going around the world and doing it in different places?

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[00:30:30] Ross: Beautiful. Thank you so much. That makes so much sense. And thanks for Thanks for directing it, using me as an example, because it's already getting me thinking. Because I think sometimes I have the balance right.

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[00:30:43] Ross: And sometimes maybe I'd like to do more here in Spain.

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[00:30:48] Ross: With the ideas of things like retreats or,

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[00:30:52] Ross: taking people out of their environment.

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[00:30:57] Charlotte: you involve bees in

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[00:30:59] Ross: Well, I think by then we'd have an

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[00:31:02] Charlotte: bee

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[00:31:07] So, yes, pea soupers, watch, watch out for News on Bees as well. It's taken an interesting turn, this, this, this potential collaboration, so who knows? Or it might, we might change tack and it might be alpacas or almonds.

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[00:31:27] Ross: thank you so much for joining me on

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[00:31:33] Charlotte: it's been lovely. I've been, I've so enjoyed the conversation.

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[00:31:41] Ross: That's it, the second part of my chat with Charlotte in the bag. Do go over to the swimjumpfly. com website to read a section of the book before you buy it. You won't regret it. Next week, I'm picking up on my collaboration with Dr. Richard MacKinnon that we started in Season 5. And we'll be discussing [00:32:00] values and how we can get clarity on our values.

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[00:32:06] captivate. fm or wherever you get your podcasts. If you like this episode, we'd love it if you told us why. You can help me reach more people with the special people soup ingredients. Stuff that could be really useful for them. So please do share, subscribe, rate and review. Thanks to Andy Glenn for his spoon magic.

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[00:32:36] Charlotte: Good. Can I, can I give you some feedback? You have beautiful segues. I love There were times when I took us off track and you'd be like, Oh, boop, boop, boop. We're not, we're not in the core content anymore, but you're really good at going, right. So, um, I think what I'd really like to

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[00:32:54] found that

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[00:32:55] beautiful way of moving it back to where

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[00:32:58] it to be.