Why work feels so personal with Gabriella Braun
In this episode of People Soup, Ross is joined by consultant, psychoanalytic thinker, and author Gabriella Braun for a deeply human conversation about why work can feel so personal.
Drawing on her remarkable book All That We Are, Gabriella explores what really happens beneath the surface in teams, organisations, and leadership.
Together, Ross and Gabriella explore:
- Why we can’t simply “leave our emotions at home”
- How Gabriella’s experience as the child of immigrants shaped her ability to observe human systems
- The leadership experience that left her “floundering”… and sparked a lifelong curiosity about organisational life
- Why so many workplaces are carrying hidden distress
- What leaders learned about vulnerability during COVID
- Why psychoanalytic thinking has so much to offer the workplace
- The deeply personal writing journey behind All That We Are
- Why leaders may be helping their organisations choose between constructive and destructive forces every single day
And finally…
Why love may have a lot more to do with leadership than we often admit.
Originally released in 2023. Reimagined and re-edited for the new People Soup format in 2026.
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Transcript
Assembled
[:[00:00:00] Gabriella: we can't be robotic when we go to work, and neither does it help us, but you know, the idea that we leave our emotions under the pillow with our [00:00:10] pajamas. Well, nobody talks about the pillow in the pajamas, but they do say, leave your problems at home.
[:[00:00:51] That's all part of being human,
[:[00:00:54] Ross: Hi there, and welcome to People Soup. Real conversations about work, leadership, [00:01:00] and being human, grounded in behavioral science with practical ideas that you can actually use. I'm Ross McIntosh, and this week I'm joined by Gabriella [00:01:10] Braun, consultant psychoanalytic thinker and author of the remarkable book, All That We Are, a book I genuinely love.
[:[00:01:48] so get a brew on and have [00:01:50] a listen.
[:[00:02:12] Ross: Mm.
[:[00:02:27] So you introducing [00:02:30] that made me think, actually that's where I'll start because I think that is quite a large part of of how come I ended up [00:02:40] writing this book and how come I do the work that I do. Because in a way, as the child of immigrants and as you picked [00:02:50] up the geography moving around so much. . I grew very used to being on the boundary of places.[00:03:00]
[:[00:03:21] So I had a, a strong Dundonian accent at one point. ? Yes,
[:[00:03:28] phenomenal.
[:[00:03:34] Can you still do it now?
[:[00:03:54] And I think part of standing slightly at, at the boundary of [00:04:00] places means that I always had an eye looking in rather than just being in the center where you don't necessarily look in in the same way.
[:[00:04:09] Gabriella: I [00:04:10] worked in further education, which I loved. I loved being a team member. I loved being a manager. .
[:[00:04:16] Gabriella: But then I progressed and got a job in [00:04:20] different organization and I became a more senior leader. And the organization at the time was restructuring, relocating. It did [00:04:30] everything in one fell swoop. It actually was a lesson in how not to do these things.
[:[00:04:36] Gabriella: It was awful. And I really floundered. [00:04:40] I had no experience of leadership in those days. There was no coaching, no no training. Actually, I read books that didn't begin [00:04:50] to speak to my experience. They all kind of said, you know, five easy tips or, well, I didn't find anything easy and five was [00:05:00] no way gonna cut it for me,
[:[00:05:45] Few years later I started into this line of work. It was quite a [00:05:50] long time later. I think that set the seed because I wanted to really understand what happens in organizations. I, I did become a [00:06:00] freelance trainer and I enjoyed it very, very much. But eventually I felt it, it was too superficial.
[:[00:06:09] Ross: That [00:06:10] frustration of sensing there was something deeper going on in teams and organizations would set Gabriela on a very different path
[:[00:06:39] But the way you, [00:06:40] the way you consult and the way you support organizations and teams is that kind of reasonably fair?
[:[00:07:06] They were in a terrible place. We understood enough to [00:07:10] get them out of it, but we didn't understand. I came to the conclusion with that one and I talked about it with them that. , maybe we'd never completely understand it and [00:07:20] maybe we understood as enough, but I do make huge efforts to understand and also help clients understand.
[:[00:07:31] Ross: Hmm. So it's not, it's not just that understanding it. It's understanding and
[:[00:07:36] Ross: how can, how can I support you in. in moving [00:07:40] forward from this,
[:[00:07:42] Ross: So I was curious, when you spend your life helping organizations make sense of what's happening beneath the [00:07:50] surface, what themes start to show up?
[:[00:07:53] Gabriella: there, there definitely are themes. I mean, what I was noticing before and that led me to the book as [00:08:00] well was just how much distress and damage was going on in the workplace and how unwell a lot of organizations were [00:08:10] and how distressed a lot of people at work were. And the, you know, the mental health or mental illness statistics at work [00:08:20] were and are grim.
[:[00:08:35] Leaders became more humane
[:[00:09:01] And three, although of course we weren't all in the same boat in Covid, we were in that, [00:09:10] uh, and not by a long stretch of imagination were we in the same boat, but the thing that we did have in common was this existential terrible fear [00:09:20] that most of us had an experience. We saw huge numbers of people dying.
[:[00:09:51] Leaders prioritized the care of their staff
[:[00:10:43] They weren't showing it inappropriately, but showing vulnerability appropriately and [00:10:50] uncertainty appropriately was very helpful. As of course, they had to during Covid, cuz nobody, you know, nobody could be certain of everything. There was massive [00:11:00] vulnerability and massive uncertainty. So all of that I felt, was hopeful.
[:[00:11:17] The book and why it matters
[:[00:11:19] Poor at taking it out into the world
[:[00:11:24] I became very preoccupied with the idea that people like me, and there aren't [00:11:30] many of us who apply psychoanalysis to looking at the workplace. but people like me are really poor at taking this out into the [00:11:40] world. I mean, how many workplaces would think you could apply psychoanalytic thinking? very, very few. And yet it's got such relevance [00:11:50] because I, I believe it's the most sophisticated method we have for really understanding the complexity of human nature. . And that to [00:12:00] me is incredibly important in understanding and improving the workplace. So I got really preoccupied [00:12:10] with why are we so bad at taking it out into the world? And that led me to this bright idea where I thought, I'm going to put on a [00:12:20] seminar series and it's about what's leadership got to do with psychoanalysis or the other way around. I can't remember. And [00:12:30] I had all these different seminars.
[:[00:12:53] it was entirely up to them. And people came who knew nothing about psychoanalysis, never heard of me, never heard of [00:13:00] working well, and they came along and they loved the stories and they loved the psychoanalytic theory. And I quite quickly [00:13:10] thought, there's a book in this. this. is a book.
[:[00:13:12] Gabriella: And then in 2014, I went off on a writing retreat to start writing this book.
[:[00:13:33] what I learned quite quickly was that I had to learn to write. So you [00:13:40] picking out the, the example of the sentences with a lot of detail, I really learned that and I really. Huge attention to the [00:13:50] craft of writing. And I got very excited about the craft and I started reading about writing fiction and, you know, use some of the techniques, I [00:14:00] suppose of fiction, like that kind of detail where you, you appeal to the readers different senses.
[:[00:14:30] Many iterations
[:[00:15:05] Belonging
[:[00:15:16] I didn't know what the hell I was really writing, and [00:15:20] then I suddenly thought, why don't I try this from first person? , why don't I have a go at my belonging? And I wrote to my editor and said, what do you think of me [00:15:30] trying it as first person? She said, good idea. Give it a go. And that was a very pivotal moment actually, because that was really my story.
[:[00:15:49] Ross: [00:15:50] Mm. Be because you, you do talk about when things were going well or when you were. feeling quite perplexed about whether you were adding value or whether you were the [00:16:00] right person.
[:[00:16:35] prioritizing the book.
[:[00:16:48] so I asked Gabriella for her [00:16:50] song choice that would announce her arrival in a room.
[:[00:17:03] Ross: Oh, it's a belter.
[:[00:17:19] [00:17:20] That's quite an entrance.
[:[00:17:24] Gabriella: And I like the idea of people sitting up and taking notice at the moment, not forever, but at the [00:17:30] moment when I've got my book going into paperback, I'd like them to sit up and take notice. But the other more serious reason for that choice is [00:17:40] that actually what I talk about a lot in the book is that human beings are not coherent.
[:[00:18:21] So actually I think love has got a hell of a lot to do with it.
[:[00:18:31] Gabriella: I suppose the takeaway for me is that we can't be robotic when we go to work, but they [00:18:40] do say, leave your problems at home.
[:[00:19:17] That's all part of being [00:19:20] human, and I think then really trying to understand ourselves and each other a bit more. So thinking about, you know, why did I just react [00:19:30] like I. I didn't react to this kind of same thing from a different person yesterday. Why am I reacting to this person like this [00:19:40] today? Maybe just more reflection and also more thinking about other people.
[:[00:20:10] And I suppose the other thing, along with the reflection and the self-awareness is to making space and time for better conversations at [00:20:20] work.
[:[00:20:45] as ever, thanks for listening, thanks for sharing People Soup with others, and thanks for [00:20:50] helping us bring evidence-based ideas to more people. Until next time, look after yourselves, Peace Supers, and bye for now.
