The Tree That Bends by Professor Ross White

PART 2

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[00:00:00] Ross Mc: Hi there, and a very warm welcome to season 6, episode 5 of PeopleSoup. It's Ross McIntosh here.

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[00:00:57] Ross Mc: Pea Soopers. You've just heard Professor Ross White reading the preface to his book, the Tree That Bends. In this episode, we continue our chat and Ross's people soup. Ingredients are thriving. Psychological flexibility, tree wisdom, relentlessness, resetting, and cultural architects.

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[00:01:25] I'm also on a personal mission to see if we can get the hashtag BeMoreTree trending.

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[00:01:56] We love it that you are part of our community. A quick scoot [00:02:00] over to the news desk. My collaboration with Dr. Richard McKinnon continues. I am delighted to be joining him for the delivery of an Open Access Blended Learning course in November. It's called Thriving with Psychological Flexibility and it's open to all, and it's just the ticket to support you in landing well in 2025.

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[00:02:33] Ross, the time has come. I want to dive more into your book, and I'd like to start with my review. And P Supers, Ross is looking a little apprehensive now, as he hasn't heard this review yet. So I'll not hold back any longer, I'll just dive in.

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[00:03:26] His writing is captivating, particularly when he describes significant moments from his own life. This powerful role modeling allows us to appreciate Ross's humanity and builds trust in him as our guide. And the title is far more than an illustrative metaphor. It's integral to the book and you'll also come away with insights into the secret world and magnificent adaptability of trees.

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[00:04:01] Ross White: Wow. I'm actually quite emotional. Yeah. Speechless. The reason being Ross, because you put a book out there and there's this uneasy period of time where you're left to wonder how is this landing with folk, right? And it's just over two weeks. And it's not a lot of time for people to have had the opportunity to read it, right, or to

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[00:05:12] Ross Mc: Well, well, thank you for, for writing the book because I don't recommend books to, to my clients lightly, but I can see me recommending it to more clients.

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[00:05:26] Ross Mc: Let's explore a bit, Ross. Why did you feel compelled to write this? You've talked about your, your move from sort of academic writing to, to more personal writing driven by that desire to get this to more people.

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[00:05:41] Ross White: Yeah. A number of times clients that I work with have asked me to recommend a book. And I'm very happy to do that and I'm fortunate to have read some, some great books. Both for five to thrive as the newsletter and some of the monthly reviews that I do. That's a real [00:06:00] blessing and a great encouragement to me to, to set aside the time to do the reading, which is a big passion to learn and then to be able to share about that learning. So, yeah, clients would have asked me to recommend books and, Ross Harris, uh, happiness trap, for example, Paul Gilbert, compassionate mind. some really great helpful resources that are readable and entertaining and how they present the work the way they did. But I was conscious that I have a particular approach to integrating some of the focus on compassion that we've talked about already with psychological flexibility. And it struck me that there was a real opportunity there for the high performance environments and clients I work with to benefit from someone like me accepting the challenge to write for wider audiences. So that's really what set the train in motion. And whenever I've been working in sub Saharan Africa, and Uganda, I was aware that of this Tanzanian proverb, the wind does not break the tree that bends. And that just stayed with me. It's such a powerful image. So yeah, that was really a guiding light once I had a title for a work that I hoped to do. So I then got in contact with a literary agent and we worked up the proposal and we put the proposal out to a number of publishing houses and it was great.

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[00:08:21] 350 million years, okay, so maybe there's things that we can learn from nature. Nature from trees, in particular, about what it means to thrive. And, um, for me, I think the tree represented a great way of understanding psychological flexibility and for listeners, psychological flexibility is the ability to be true to what matters to us and to shift our relationship with the thoughts and the feelings that might arise as we pursue that purpose so that it doesn't block us. It doesn't become a way of preventing us from progressing towards that, that sense of purpose. So the anatomy of the tree for me represent the psychological flexibility quite well. The roots anchor the tree. And there's something about us needing to be anchored into the space and the time in which our lives are unfolding. Too often we mentally time travel back to the past and get stuck in rumination. Or we end up anticipating futures that may not come to pass, but we still worry and we're quite future oriented. So we're not anchored in this space and this time. The trunk of the tree needs to sway in the wind to allow the tree to endure. And like the trunk of the tree, we need to be willing, willing, to lean in to difficult experiences. To lean into difficult emotions, difficult thoughts that might arise, rather than rushing [00:10:00] to resist, because if we resist, we can get rigid. And that's when difficulties can emerge. We start to live life small. So then the final piece of psychological flexibility is represented by the crown of the tree, which is the engine room. That's where photosynthesis happens, that's where trees generate their fuel by using the sunlight and growing towards the sunlight, its source of energy. For me that represented what I refer to as the empowered element of psychological flexibility where we grow towards our sense of purpose, where we demonstrate particular personal values and growing towards that source of energy for us. So yeah, for me, psychological flexibility is represented by those three parts of the anatomy of the tree. Being anchored, like roots. Being willing, like the trunk of the tree. And being empowered, like the crown of the tree.

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[00:11:19] Quaking Aspen

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[00:11:21] the quaking aspen and trembling is right, you know, because it trembles, its leaves move in the slightest breeze. So it can be seen to quake when other trees just aren't in motion. So what's that about? Well, the leaves of the quaking aspen are designed, By nature to, to move so that sunlight can access through the crown of the tree onto the trunk, because there is the opportunity within the Quake and Aspen for the trunk of the tree to be involved in photosynthesis as well as the leaves. So

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[00:12:36] It can't sustain that effort. And for me, I think that's a very powerful metaphor for burnout. We can all go hard and fast, but is that going to be sustainable in the long run?

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[00:12:53] Ross Mc: Yeah, thank you. this depth of knowledge and interest in trees, is this something that came alongside the book, or had you had it before then?

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[00:13:20] um, you know, going out, uh, taking the dog for a walk, which was a big part of, um, trying to write the book as well, right.

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[00:13:38] to help me see the wood for the trees whenever I was engaged in that writing process.

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[00:13:54] my dad lives on an estate on the sort of outskirts of a village in Northumberland, [00:14:00] and there are trees now that are as old as I am.

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[00:14:04] Ross Mc: And I look at them and think, Blimey,

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[00:14:11] Ross White: Mm hmm.

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[00:14:17] Ross White: Yep.

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[00:14:20] garden. But they are absolutely majestic and now I'm fortunate enough to have a garden.

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[00:14:29] I've lived in a place with our own garden. And I'm absolutely fascinated by the trees because they're different as well for me. There's an orange tree and a lemon tree and, uh, Oh, orange, lemon and olive. Yes, that's it.

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[00:14:48] Ross Mc: That, that is correct.

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[00:14:53] Ross Mc: Indeed we can. But even if we think about trees in our lives, there's a, there's a tree that I always remember passing on to me. Trips as a child. Between, I would say it's between Riding Mill and Hexham. This really spectacular tree that was kind of a landmark of my youth and it's still there.

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[00:15:13] Ross Mc: it was probably a couple of hundred years old when I was a

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[00:15:20] Ross Mc: we've got a lot to learn from

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[00:15:24] Ross White: Yeah. Well, let, let me say a little more about what the book is focused on, and it relates to your question of why I wrote it. I increasingly, over the last number of years, I've been frustrated, frustrated by a biased, skewed impression of what qualities contribute to success. And particularly success in high performance environments. And there's been this kind of pervasive messaging about the no limits, right? No limits, just push, push hard. This kind of suck it [00:16:00] up attitude. And the kind of, Do more to be more mantra, right? And you see some people doing this and acquiring quite huge followings on social media, but whether it be David Goggins, um, former us Marine, he's now an endurance athlete, Jocko Willink, um, again, retired service man, but someone who is quite into, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and UFC kind of training regimes and it's very driven, you know, it's all about being up before 5am and getting out and doing your thing. And look, I'm not going to argue against the important role that some of those qualities can play. So being driven, being highly motivated, being conscientious. Being persistent, but for me, it's only giving part of the story and there are a lot of other important qualities and attributes that contribute to success in high performance environments that are, dare I say, less sexy, but perhaps more important than all of that stuff. Things like, yeah, taking care of oneself. Being self compassionate, being flexible, right?

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[00:17:25] Ross White: So it's not just about gritty conscientiousness, it's about being adaptive, responding to the particular environment that you might be in and recognizing that certain attributes might be better. to foreground and those environments relative to others.

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[00:18:36] Relentlessness or relent more

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[00:19:54] Th anatomy of trees - get, threat and reset mode

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[00:22:44] Ross Mc: It's just a joy to hear you bring to life these these concepts from the book and and make them accessible for others, which is another reason I think this book is so important because you'll be as familiar as I am with organizations and speaking to ambitious highly motivated people either as individuals or as teams where they really do have that Keep going and that sort of toxicity of you've got to keep going to achieve or I've got to follow my guru and do What they do I get up at 4 a.

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[00:23:33] it's so important that people hear this other side, this kind of alternative. It's not quite myth busting,

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[00:23:47] Doing more of the tough stuff isn't the hardest thing

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[00:24:46] Ross Mc: so powerful. And I talk, I sometimes talk about that with senior teams saying, your willingness and your capacity to vulnerable with each other is the price of admission to you becoming the team that you really could be.

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[00:25:28] Where the absolute opposite is true.

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[00:25:31] Ross White: I think there's been some lovely examples of, of Damien Hughes from the High Performance Podcast often uses this term about cultural architects. So I think he would be the first person to say he didn't coin it, but, um, he certainly uses it and he uses it to good effect. And, um, yeah, cultural architects are key people within organizations that embody the The, the attributes, the [00:26:00] qualities, the values that can be so instrumental and influencing that milieu. All right. They're leaders in helping to create a culture. And there have been people like Nick Cox who have gone on record, Nick Cox, was speaking in his capacity at that time. I think he still is the head of the Manchester United Football Club Academy. Right. And he spoke very powerfully about. The important role that vulnerability plays and his approach to leadership, his willingness to talk with other senior leaders within the organization about him not knowing about him being uncertain about him seeking advice creates a context that other people are then more comfortable and feel safe to acknowledge when they don't know and they might need to seek advice.

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[00:28:00] So it feels like a good time to be focusing on this concept of thriving, which I describe in the book as, yes, performing well. And feeling well, right?

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[00:28:48] hmm.

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[00:29:00] and they could be a board level, executive level on the cusp of becoming, for instance, a partner. in an organization and they're being overloaded in a way that kind of represents what the person who's overloading them went through to get where

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[00:29:21] Ross Mc: So they're saying, I'm going to do to you what got me here.

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[00:29:33] Ross White: Mm hmm.

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[00:29:45] Ross White: Mm

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[00:29:51] Ross White: hmm.

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[00:30:04] elite

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[00:30:06] Ross Mc: And Insights from sports world. I find that really helps them understand it. I think that's, that's really important as a way in for us to be sharing this with more organizations.

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[00:30:22] and they keep doing what they did to be successful in that previous organization or

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[00:30:27] Ross Mc: role.

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[00:30:46] Ross White: hmm.

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[00:30:52] Ross White: Yeah, well there are so many things that I could pick out of that, right? And I think Alan Watts, the English philosopher, he talked a lot about the way in which we bring our children up to then bring their children up, who then bring their children up. in a similar fashion to pursue money in the hope that the money may afford opportunities to do the things that matter to us. But in making the money, we drive ourselves into a position that we're time poor. And we don't get the opportunity to actually do those things. I think he describes it as it's all retch and no vomit, which is a very powerful kind of metaphor. and then, yeah, like it takes immense pressure to convert a lump of coal into a diamond.

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[00:31:48] Hooke's Law

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[00:32:11] e. a weight, onto a spring, and it will extend the spring, and lo and behold, when you remove the weight, hey, it bounces back to be the spring it was before, up until the point that its elastic limit, as Robert Hooke referred to it, is exceeded, and you will load so much weight onto that spring that you permanently deform it. You take the weight off, it's not going to stretch back into what it was before. And indeed, if you apply even more force or weight onto that spring, you will break the spring. And that, Robert Hooke described as the breaking point. Lo and behold, that has entered our language. It's moved away from springs to people. So, for me, I think the better analogy around that isn't Coal and Diamonds, it's Springs, Elastic Limit, and Breaking Points. And we need to recognize that there is going to be a point at which our limits will be exceeded, right? For me, there are limits, right? And this is counter to the no limits

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[00:33:29] Ross Mc: Oh gosh. Yeah. And, and Hook's Law. Yeah. That brought back, as you were talking, it brought back a vision of Mr. Turland. demonstrating that to us with a spring and putting more and more weights on it and showing how it could go back, but then showing how it then didn't go back and then it broke. It's very

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[00:33:50] Well, it's really funny you should say that, Ross, because he was asking me to pass more weights because it was like the whole class was captivated and [00:34:00] I was trying to be cool in the class also. Quite an anxious type of fella,

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[00:34:06] yeah, yeah,

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[00:34:10] It didn't hit his feet or

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[00:34:17] And it's such a useful metaphor. It's actually a passage that I highlighted amongst many others in the pdf, and you were kind enough to arrange for me to have a pdf of the book just for speed's sake, and I have ordered it as well from Amazon, because it's one that I know will be kind of reference book for me.

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[00:34:47] Ross White: a half days in a very small recording booth in, um, a part of London and, The building that, the Hachette Publishing Company use, Quarkus, the publisher of the book is, is an imprint of Hachette. And, um, yeah, it was a really interesting experience to work with a great producer, a guy called Chad, over those three and a half days.

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[00:35:44] Ross Mc: Yeah, hell yeah, and you've got a voice made for it, man. So, not

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[00:35:58] Ross Mc: at all. I think, I [00:36:00] think, as you say, I much prefer an author reading their own book than, someone else performing it. And I've noticed on the socials, I've seen you spotting it out in the wild, your book. What does that feel like?

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[00:36:31] Ross Mc: Of course,

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[00:36:56] Not really. And I said, Oh, I'm a local author. And I just wondered whether you're going to stock the book. And, um, I said, okay, well, what's it called? And I said, the tree that bends and no sooner was bends out of my mouth. And they were like, we have it. And, um, you know, this is actually two days before they, I hope I'm not getting Noel Weiser in trouble. but they had taken the delivery and, they had gone. a little early with, uh, just putting it on the shelves and, um, that was such a lovely thing to be able to walk over and see physical copies of the book. And I was very happy to sign copies for them to put the signed by the author sticker on the front, which was, um, lovely, but, uh, big thanks to. David and the team at No Alibis, they were lovely and yeah, great to see it in the shops that way.

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[00:37:54] Ross White: I think it's, there's been lovely to promote the book. So I've done, I think this is [00:38:00] maybe podcast number five, which is lovely,

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[00:38:03] opportunity to talk about it and both in the United States and in the UK. So lovely to have that. Um, and then there's been some media coverage as well, the Sunday Independent. in Ireland, printed a story with an interview with myself there yesterday, Belfast Telegraph published an extract, the local newspaper here in Northern Ireland, and then RTE, the Irish television broadcaster, had an extract on at the weekend from the book too. So, but we're in that very interesting period, as I mentioned, just, um, between the book being released and people having an opportunity now to go out and buy it.

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[00:38:57] Ross Mc: Wanted to talk to you about the dedication in the book

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[00:39:01] Ross Mc: your Uncle Tom.

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[00:39:03] Ross Mc: it felt. It moved me to read that. Would you mind telling us a bit more about him and the reason for that dedication?

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[00:40:09] Yeah. Very cool people like Leonard Cohen, Warren Ziffon, if listeners haven't heard Warren Ziffon, check that out. and yeah, it was great to have him there and he was also very big in the humanist society in Ireland, and unfortunately he passed away just at the point where the first draft of the book was submitted, right? Um, yeah, it was lovely to be able to dedicate the book to him, but there's also a poignancy about knowing that he wasn't able to read. the work, um, so thank you for asking about that.

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[00:40:52] Ross Mc: I really felt the poignancy and the gravity of that dedication, so thank you for sharing a bit more about Uncle Tom. So, before we were recording, we talked about This being the sort of waiting period. But I wonder in that waiting period, are you already thinking about what's next? Or are you just having a well deserved rest?

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[00:41:22] and being quite purposeful in how we approach the end of projects, or indeed transition periods within projects, and the idea of pre commitment pledges. So in advance we are thinking about, well, this is the objective that I'm trying to achieve. When that is achieved, I will take time to do this.

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[00:42:58] So strong intention, light attachment in this, this time period at the moment.

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[00:43:20] Ross White: It's funny, you do reflect a lot on the writing process and the opportunities that then present themselves in terms of where you could go with the writing. So yeah, that's something, if I was to say I hadn't thought about it, I would be a liar. I know that there are people in that space as well who I greatly admire and, certainly I think Matt Haig would be an author that I'd certainly mention and encourage listeners to check out. But I think he's got a wonderful gift for. using fiction, but also autobiography too, in some of his past books, He has a gift [00:44:00] for really engaging readers on an emotional level that I admire him for, so

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[00:44:16] Ross White: thank you.

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[00:44:29] Ross White: Yeah, I think one of the important things that I emphasize in the book, Simon Sinek has done fantastic work, and the focus that he really applied to, starting with why. Right? Y being purpose and that leading into a focus, if you like, on process, which is the how, which can then lead to important outputs, products, if you like. Okay. So that kind of why, how and what, but for me, I also wanted to add in which, which qualities are you going to bring to how you engage in your processes. So if purpose is important, process is important, product is important. I also like to think that proclivity matters and it's a really interesting word proclivity, but that speaks to which proclivity is about which qualities are we going to bring to the fore and what we do right. So for me, I think that's a call to listeners to think about the personal values you really want to bring to the processes that you engage in, because you and I could engage in exactly the same process. But we could do it very differently. Right? You know, what is it about how you want to engage with those processes?

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[00:46:13] And I'll have mine. And I encourage listeners to think about, well, what personal values do I want to bring and how I show up in the processes that I'm engaging in, in the workplace or in the sporting arena. You know, am I going to be the one who's just sort of, just getting through churning out the motions, or am I going to be someone who's curious, curious to kind of learn how that experience might be. Am I going to have fun with it? Am I going to, do it in a way that is collegiate? Am I going to interact with others in a kind of friendly and cooperative way as I engage in those processes? So proclivity is an important piece I wanted to add in to that, that framework that Simon Sinek has done fantastically well to develop. The other point that I would emphasize, Ross, is that for me, You know, that idea of finding your why

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[00:47:06] Ross White: can be a bit limiting. I don't think that purpose is found. I think it's formed. And I think for listeners, they'll be thinking, well, what is my purpose? Well, your purpose, the seeds of it are there already in what brings vitality to your life. It could be that you get a buzz from coaching others, kids football team in the local area. It could be that you get a buzz from contributing to a charitable cause. It could be that you get a sense of vitality from being creative. and working as part of a team to come up with ideas and implementing those ideas. It could be that you get vitality from being a finisher, someone who completes and gets through the project. You've got to listen to that. You've got to cultivate those seeds and your purpose grows from that.[00:48:00]

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[00:48:01] Ross White: So don't wait thinking I'm going to walk around the corner and trip over my purpose and oh, there it is, I found it, right?

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[00:48:33] Ross Mc: Brilliant. Ross, thank you for your generosity, your wisdom, and for writing this book.

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[00:48:42] Ross Mc: That's it folks, part two of my chat with Ross in the bag. please do check out his book, The Tree That Bends. And remember, this is the first review where I used the word masterpiece. You'll find all the details for this episode in the show notes at peoplesoup.

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[00:49:19] You can help me reach more people with the special Peopleship ingredients.

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[00:49:39]

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[00:49:55] Ross Mc: I say what I see, man, so

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