Human Innovation in Hospitality: Meaning, Psychological Safety and the Courage to Lead

Good afternoon and welcome to Fifty Shades of Hospitality. This is Crystal Cavan, your host. Today we are happy to welcome Jay Humphreys. Jay, it's a pleasure to have you on our podcast today.

Can you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself? Sure. Thank you very much, Crystal. It's a real pleasure being here.

I'm having listened to several of your podcasts. I'm thrilled to be on your show. And for the listeners, a little bit of background. So I I started in operations and then consulting, operations in the UK, consulting in the UK, US, and Europe.

I moved into international hotel development and had the opportunity to do projects across Europe, Middle East, and Africa, including some of the troubled regions that we find ourselves in today. So I know the Middle East very well, Russia very well, Ukraine. Oh wow. So it's very sad to see what's going on in this these particular regions at the moment.

One of the big pleasures of my career is just meeting so many wonderful people from so many different territories and backgrounds and cultures. I think it's one of the joys of hospitality. It's a real privilege to be in this sector. I transitioned 10 years ago into education and also my own company creating concepts around innovation and experiences.

And so parallel tracking, creating courses at uh Ecole Hotelier de Lausanne, as some of your listeners may know, in asset management and development. Then I had the fortune of heading up a specialization at Glion called the International Hotel Development and Finance, which was a wonderful and still is going, a wonderful course for the students as a final year programme. I had the opportunity to set up other courses working on their master's in leadership, also their MBA when they had it, their executive MBA.

So very diverse kind of set of courses. Also had the fortune of being invited to Beijing as a guest lecturer, and also I was for several years a guest lecturer at Zurich University on their corporate real estate course. So for their master's program. So actually, you know, it's been a kind of multifaceted career, but always with an angle on hospitality.

So yeah, that's that's kind of where I am today. And at the moment I run HokusO. It's a team of experts all over the world, all kinds of backgrounds from recruitment to culture building to commercial to development to asset management operations. And we just do amazing projects and very fortunate to work with some wonderful people.

Excellent. So your hospitality background, as you mentioned, has been eclectic and quite broad. You know, from as you mentioned, corporate leadership, asset management, academia, concept creation, communication strategies, and now to your current focus on mental health, resilience, human-centered organizations, and ethics. Can you explain to our listeners how and why this shift and this evolution came about?

It hasn't been a sudden shift. It's been something that's been at the forefront of my uh particular belief system for a very long time. I was very conscious, um, even growing up and also entering the world of work of the importance of mental health. Um, I took steps during my career to always try and maintain a level of fitness.

So one of the things I I loved to do when I was traveling was to take my running shoes with me and run around various cities. Um, and I've run around some very unusual cities very early morning, but it's a wonderful way of um seeing those places. And I remember I think it was in Krasnoyarsk, I was running along the river there, and it's uh I just remember people looking at me, I don't think they'd ever seen anybody running around, you know, in kind of very cold temperatures. But I used to, you know, I trained for marathons and triathlons.

So I had a level of fitness, but I I wouldn't say I really embraced kind of well-being, like from a holistic perspective. It really started with COVID for me. And I was very fortunate to be in a position where I and still am have a wonderful network of people, professionals that that are in leadership positions and had been in very impressive leadership positions. And during the the early stages of COVID, I started reaching out to them for advice, actually, more than anything else, like, you know, how best can we particularly look at this and cope with this particular crisis?

And what was what was interesting was that the leaders that I felt resonated, they had a very kind of centered focus and calm about themselves. Like unfazed, not stoic in like with a big S, but more a small S. And I was just impressed by, and I started to realize they kind of embody like a more holistic sense of well-being. They're also very centered in themselves.

They have very grounded personalities, they're very true to what they say and do. And I just felt that kind of very rewarding and also motivating. So I started up something called um the hospitality resilience series along with a couple of other uh co-hosts. And we wanted to interview people who had been in leadership positions in times of crisis that they we could basically share this message with the hospitality industry.

And we started getting into their much more specific topics around sleep, um, also where we get our energy from, habit building. So there was all kinds of different topics, and it kind of took me on a journey, and I started to realize that there's so much overlap between the work I had was doing, have been doing, and also this particular piece. Ultimately, we're all human beings. And, you know, whether we're in a team environment or we're in a university environment or in a student environment or we're in a corporate environment, actually our collective well-being is really, really important.

And um, especially, you know, when we have physical injuries, it's so much easier to see. But the mental health aspect is is very, it's is um invisible. And, you know, that's kind of it took me on a journey. We did a big study with the um with the university in in the United States around resilience and what made hospitality leaders more resilient.

And um, what we found was actually those leaders that had a greater sense of a place within their immediate community and they had very strong personal relationships, and that they could be open in those relationships and be themselves in those relationships, they actually were able to kind of weather this crisis a lot better. What we found is that those were kind of people that were more isolated, that maybe had put like a hundred, you know, a percent of their focus on their career and neglected their personal communities were struggling a lot more, actually, even to make decisions and even to make kind of sensible decisions for their teams.

What we realized is all, you know, which is very intuitive, is that actually as a leader, you need to be in the best possible shape that you can be in in order to lead. And it's not selfish in order to do that. So it really took me on my own personal journey of okay, well, what does that mean? I started um a conversation with um a very good friend of mine, Mark Hardy, and we were doing a podcast on habits, and um we he was explaining how essentially, if you want to take up a new habit, you have to be very consistent and focused for around three months, okay?

Either to break habit or kind of create a new habit. Right. And so we kind of tasked each other and just he said, So what are you gonna take up? And we'll do a podcast in three months.

And I was I said, Oh wow, I've always wanted to do cold water swimming, right? And it just popped into my head. It just popped into my head. And uh and and he said he wanted to take up running again.

That was something that he, you know, outdoor running, cross-country running. And so we tasked ourselves with doing this as as often as we could, pretty much every day if we could, for three months, and then we kind of regroup, um, which we did. So we did a second podcast. But what I realized was it wasn't necessarily the three months, I think it was the hundred times.

And so actually that's when it starts to become much kind of more built into the system. And it also was not just the habit itself, it was the the habit is kind of like the extension of the act. So, for example, it's not just the cold water swimming, it was everything that went around it from kind of packing my bag, making sure that my kit was always in order, making sure that I got up early, making sure that I prepared the tea that I drove down to the lake, you know, in all kinds of weather.

Even if I didn't said to myself mentally, I'm not gonna go in, you know, I'll just go down and see what it's like was kind of my that's how I kind of got into it. So I kind of realized that we can take these micro steps of doing something. Right. And it started to make me realize we can do those like micro steps in our daily life.

We don't have to commit to these huge things which seem impossible. We can just say, I'll just do this small step, this very small thing that I know for some reason it makes me feel a little bit better. Even if I just driven down to the lake and had a tea in the van and maybe gone for a five-minute walk in the snow, that would have been better than doing nothing. Right.

Right? Right. Well, and then and then it becomes a ritual. Yes.

There's this whole thing about when when something becomes a ritual and it really is part of who you are. And I think that what you're explaining there is yeah, just being able every every time you do that to have these steps that you're going through becomes a ritual. Yeah, it does. You know, so over time, I mean it's very interesting, and I can't say it was specifically due to that, but it gave me, and I'd been meditating for many years before that, and I'd been doing yoga probably for about 15 years.

But in terms of like a transformational change, I'd say it happened in the last four years, four or five years. And it it's definitely, I saw it more since I started this cold water swimming. Maybe the focus and the dedication. Um, the first thing to go was I stopped smoking.

So that was kind of interesting for me. Just the ability of going into the cold water. Then it was the coffee. I was drinking a lot of coffee.

Yeah, I was a very caffeinated person. Uh and you know, obviously over time when you build up your caffeine tolerance that you need more and more, right? So I, you know, it wasn't unusual for me to have five coffees a day, um, especially running around at the university or in meetings or whatever it might be. Um, so that was the second thing to go.

And then um, although I hadn't been drinking that much anyway because of my work, but that was the next thing to go. Um, and then uh and then meat actually more recently, and now fish. And so what I've realized is it's kind of, I just feel it's not like I'm forcing anything, but more and more I kind of feel this just you know, encompassing of this more holistic approach to health. And you know, that combines itself with good sleep.

I I realized one of the things that I really struggled with was sleep. And you know, even though we had sleep experts and all these people, especially when there's a lot of stress, it's very difficult to kind of maintain sleep. Absolutely. So that was one of the things that I I really focused on in terms of like a kind of a very routine, you know, every single night as often as possible to kind of have the same routine.

And so, yeah, slowly over time I kind of started to embody this. And and I guess it was more about I have to do this. And it's not like and I have to do it not just for myself, but for my boys. I've got two boys, you know, they're they're now one's just turned 18, but back then they were a few years younger, and the other's just turned 14.

Yeah, my partner, my colleagues, my extended family and uh friends, and I just feel like if I if I'm not there, then I can't be there for them. And I create the environment that I'm in. So when I'm stressed, then I can't cannot be myself. And it's not we're always capable of being stressed.

I'm not I'm not saying that. Yeah. But one of the things that I spent quite a lot of time on in the pre pre-COVID, but also more post-COVID, was the concept of psychological safety. And I went to a conference in Greece a few years ago and I held a um talk on psychological safety, but actually we had a panel and I posed this question about, and it was all development and investment heads from the industry, and I posed this question about what do you think that your teams need from you as a leader?

And you know, it was job opportunities, remuneration, training, psychological safety, and there was a few other things that were put on this list. I also then put the same question out on LinkedIn and I basically said, if you have, if you're um not a leadership position, what do you expect from your leader? And so I basically asked the flip side of that question. But and I did a live survey in the audience, and uh, we could see on the screen as the panel what the responses were.

And psychological psychological safety was about fifth. People, the leaders think that it's really about career opportunity, it's about training, it's about giving them responsibility. They're all very admirable things to do. But actually, the studies that had come out of places like Google that we had kind of researched as part of this exploration into this topic, but this notion of just being able to be yourself in your workplace, and I'll talk a little bit more about what that actually means, it came out top in this survey that we had done.

People want to feel safe at work. They want to feel secure at work, they want to feel physically secure at work, but also emotionally and mentally secure at work and safe. So, so what that we're kind of breaking it down. So, what does that really mean?

It means that a lot of people felt that they couldn't turn up to work as themselves. They felt they couldn't turn up to the environment that they were in as themselves. They had to leave a big part of themselves behind. And that can be due to themselves, obviously, but as a personal responsibility, there's this kind of, well, I'm probably expected to behave this way because a lot of these things are not, they're not explicitly communicated that you can't do this and you can't do that.

But people model behavior. People model behavior of the people within the organization. So when we say an organization, all it is is a group of people that exhibit a certain type of behavior. And so when those certain leaders exhibit a certain type of behavior, people tend to mirror that type of behavior in order to fit in.

We're we're we're basically, you know, as human beings, we actually don't want to be excluded. Being excluded is one of the most painful experiences. Yeah, absolutely. Right.

And so we want to fit in. So our survival instinct is to model the behavior in order to fit into that space. And one of the challenges as a leader is when we model a very specific type of behavior, we actually then potentially limit the type of people that can be in the space around us, or we're forcing people to be a certain way around us because we have this expectation. And then that limits the way that they interact with us and with each other.

And that's where we end up with the severe situation that we have around workplace, which is around mental health, and we have stress and we have people really under a lot of pressure and obviously going into burnout, amongst other things, and depression and all kinds of things that emulate from that. But I think, you know, as a leader, we need to be conscious of the environment that we're we're creating. So going back to the well-being space, I felt that it's so intertwined with our, especially hospitality, because we're we're kind of we're we're creating an environment where guests are coming into this space.

And I was focused so much on space planning and concepts and creating the right kind of experiences as in packaged experiences. But the the fundamentals of hospitality is that somebody walks into a hotel or they walk into an establishment and we don't know what frame of mind they're in. We don't know what they've what kind of day they've had, we don't know what's going on in their life at all. Now, during COVID was a very interesting time in some ways.

I felt that there was a lot more compassion going around. There was a lot more kind of understanding that people were probably facing a lot of duress and stress. So when a guest arrived into the hotel, obviously there were these very specific cleaning standards, but I think there was a lot more bonding of, well, we're all in this together. Exactly.

Right. And that kind of disappeared again after COVID, right? It kind of like there was this kind of sense people wanted things to go back to business as usual. But actually, there was a connection during COVID because we were kind of forced apart, we realized that human connection was really important.

And so, you know, going back to the hospitality space is that I realized that we have no way of knowing what situation that guest is in. And therefore, we need to make sure that our employees are in the best possible place, that they can cope with the demands of those guests. And that that emulates culture is built from the top. It really is.

As much as we can talk about, you know, grassroots, culture building, yes, we can do that, but ultimately we need to kind of emulate from the top. And so this kind of sense of well-being and looking after people around you, it can emulate through your organization. And when they feel taken care of, then they can take care of their guests. And if that's not happening, then it's really, really difficult for the guests to really feel that they are being taken care of.

They actually just feel that they're being scripted. Yeah. And they're being Which they are sometimes. Most most of the time, right?

Yeah. And so the reason I think this is incredibly important today is because we have to question the role of AI. We have to question the role of technology, and we have to question what is our role as human beings? And what do we want our role of human beings to be?

And I feel like the human connection piece is what actually glues us all together. That's what binds us all together. And this is why division is so dangerous because it creates massive individualization. And, you know, without going too much into the geopolitics and leadership at the moment, but one of the things that I will say is that there is huge focus on division around religion, around types of people, around political parties, around countries.

There's a lot of labeling, there's a lot of fear-mongering, and it's creating a lot of division. Now, division amongst humanity and division amongst human beings really only benefits a few people, but it also benefits a system, and that system is technology. Because when we are all individuals instead of a collective, when we can't connect together as human beings, then obviously we need something to replace that that connects together. That connection is going to be into artificial intelligence.

So, you know, we have to kind of say, well, then what are we going to be doing as human beings? Where are we going? Right. So that's why my focus is really on this.

I think it's super important about this, you know, human-centered innovation, which is where I am today. It's we want to put human beings at the front and center of innovation because so many of the other things will be kind of solved through technology. And I believe part of that can happen through creating environments where we can be even more of ourselves. We can really show up as we are truly meant to be.

We don't have to leave half of ourselves at home. We can bring all of ourselves into our work environment. We can bring all of ourselves into our interaction with our colleagues. We can bring all of our interactions with our with our boss.

And there is no kind of threat that we will lose our job or that we will be berated or put down or scolded or shamed, okay, which is all these things in a work environment we are afraid of. And therefore, we're just focused on the task in hand. We'll just we'll focus on the task in hand to get the job done. We'll just check the person in with the most efficient way possible because that's the job.

But that job is replaceable. You know, if I'm focused on creating the best possible spreadsheet that I possibly can, that job is replaceable. But what's not replaceable is how I communicate and interact with my colleagues and how I interact with, you know, the company, people throughout the company and my and my customers. That's not replaceable.

So we have to figure out kind of the replaceable part is going to be the bit that is really so precise that we can kind of package it and say, that's my job. Okay. Yeah. You know, so we have to be really careful.

Actually, most of us, that's not our job. You know, it's really not. Even somebody working on a spreadsheet, that's not their job. Their job normally is to then figure out what to do with that and how it relates to another piece and how to communicate it in the best way that it fits with another piece of the business and can be interpreted the right way.

And also to explain it in the right way. So there are there are many ways we can go with this, but that for me is uh I I think as a focus going forward for hospitality, I would like for this to become the front and center of hospitality. It's my wish. So you do you see that actually happening though?

I mean, what what are the trends? I mean, you talked about COVID, but then you said, well, you know, it's business back as usual. Uh do are you seeing that leaders in the hospitality uh field are starting to realize the importance of psychological uh psychological safety and how it may shape performance and or are you getting the feeling that, well, not really? My pause is probably it says a lot.

Yeah. I think, you know, I can I can look at different institutions. So on an individual level, yes, I see, I see change. So uh and when I see when I say I see change, we work with um, we work with our clients on uh essentially a values-based approach to leadership, which really means what do you really care about that's really unique and individual to you?

You know, what are you here for? What's your purpose in life, essentially? And I know it sounds really deep, but actually most people want to leave a legacy. Most people want to contribute some good to the world.

Most people want to leave the world in a better place than they found it. Although you based on what's going on today, you wouldn't believe it. But it's actually, it's actually true. It's actually true.

Most people want to create something constructive. They want to create a better place for their children. Okay. So with that kind of approach to appreciating and acknowledging someone's personal values, what we can then do is we can kind of emphasize those values and highlight those values and give the person confidence to exhibit those personal values in the organization.

It just makes them more human. It makes them, people go, wow, okay, that's that's interesting. I didn't know you you were like that. I didn't know that you appreciated that.

I didn't know, because people start to share more of themselves. And that just creates a more human-centered workplace. So on an individual level and a like a team level, yes. It has to be on that level, but it also has to be, as I say, it has to be really coming from the top in terms of the culture.

I think what we we have found, and I'll just be this is from my personal experience, but my observation, and I think many of your listeners will probably resonate with this. There is essentially a difference between the marketing and the reality of many, many organizations. A lot of organizations they promote diversity, they promote inclusiveness, they promote tolerance, they promote openness, they promote all of these things, okay? And the execution is very, very different from the marketing.

And the marketing is done to attract customers and to attract employees. And it's the follow-through that really counts. And we have to be very careful the same way that we saw with greenwashing around sustainability. Yes, a lot of companies are kind of joining that kind of bandwagon.

Yeah. And now, of course, because kind of globally there's kind of an anti-sustainability movement, you can see all the companies that just dropped all their environmental kind of standards and just said, okay, fuck it, basically. Yeah. We don't care about it.

But it's like, well, they didn't really care about it anyway, ever. No. Right? No.

They just did it because they had to. And I think that's the same when it comes to diversity. And we see it kind of with with regards to let's call it rainbow washing, which was essentially this kind of embracing of diversity and different cultures. Yeah, of course we do, of course we do.

But then when there's the opportunity to drop it, they drop it. We saw that in the United States with the this uh current administration going after all of these DEI hires and yeah. Absolutely, absolutely. You know, and obviously I'm not I'm not saying that these things can't be taken to extreme, and they do create a lot of resistance and they do create a lot of resentment if they also used as a weapon.

But at its core, you know, embracing the cultural and religious and mental and spiritual and human diversity that exists on our planet is got to be a good thing, surely. I mean, maybe I'm otherwise I'm living in a dysopial place, right? But I feel like we we have to embrace that. That's what we're here for, is to experience the richness of a humanity, not to live in a silo and not to live in a replica of ourselves.

Yes, which is kind of what certain companies and administrations want to have. Fine, that's okay. But in terms of innovation, that's not where innovation happens. Innovation happens by listening to many different types of people and very different types of environments and different types of cultures and backgrounds.

And that's kind of what we need to celebrate more of. But it also we have to be careful that it's not used as a weapon because, you know, as a political weapon or as an ideology to kind of justify selecting certain people over other people. No, we need to do it in an honest way. And we need to do it in a way, and I feel like if we can kind of root it back into personal values, like human values, then we can approach it from a more holistic place.

So so I would say to answer your question, yes, I've seen it, but more at an individual level rather than a company level. And I think the challenge that we have, and I think there's a reason for it, is that there's still a huge, huge, huge focus at profit at any means. By any means. Profit by any means.

Of course. So until we start to bring into the fold a multi-layered approach to sustainable business and sustainability for humanity, which has got to be more than just profit, have to bring into this equation people. We have to bring into the this equation planet. And if we don't bring those three elements together, then we're we're always going to be overshadowed by this kind of relentless focus on profit by any means, at all costs.

And I think that's hugely destructive because where we will go with that, we don't actually need human beings. We're not, we're not the most effective, efficient, you know, we need time off, we need holidays, we get sick, right? And I I think I don't want to misquote, but one of, I think it was, you might need to check this, but I think it was Sam Altman, okay, from OpenAI. He said, you know, all of this debate around the energy production of these AI centers, you know, we've got to put it into context.

Human beings take 20 years before they can produce anything, all the food, all the uh focus that needs to be given to them, all the education. We don't need to do that with AI. So we're already kind of being placed on this second rung versus technology. Yeah.

So, you know, I think it's I think it's very important that we kind of create, we need to think as human beings, what kind of ecosystems and focus are we going to put? So let's start to broaden what we mean by success. What do we mean by a successful company or a successful organization? Let's put it around planet and which means we have a future to live in.

Let's put it around people, which means we actually care for ourselves as human beings and as a species. And then obviously we need to for it to be economically sustainable. I totally understand that. But let's kind of bring this together.

And that way we can have a very constructive and open conversation about how technology will then envelop our lives. But at the moment, the fact that it's profit only, profit only, we will negate people and planet if we're not careful. They will become just not important. And one day we'll wake up, and unfortunately, we may live in a society and a place that we don't want ourselves to be in.

Yeah, well, and I think I think we can already see this trend. This trend is we're in seeing it everywhere now. And I think there's a real um fear, uh, and rightly so, that uh, as you said, machines are little by little going to replace humans in so many different areas of life and in business. And so I think a lot of people are starting to really question, you know, yeah, is AI really what it's pretending to be, or is it going to be a really negative force in the world today?

And I think a more and more people are saying, they're seeing the really negative side to it. I think this is why as as leaders we need to stand up and have these conversations. We can't we ignore them. And, you know, one one of the things that we need to keep in mind, I mean, look, I'm very fortunate, right?

I'm not at the end of my career, but I've had an amazing career, right? I mean, over the last 30 years. Um, you know, I I was in a time where this wasn't even a question. No.

But the young people and the graduates coming out today, they are facing an environment where they don't even know if humans are going to be relevant, right? And the fear and the concern that they have for their future is obviously much more magnified than when I came out. I when I when I came out of university, yes, I had a lot of debt. Yes, I needed to find some work.

Yes, I loved hospitality. And I'm my first job was in a bar to try and figure out what to do next. You know, as many people entered hospitality in in those in those days. But there was this, I have to say, there was, and with everyone around me, you know, there were many graduates working in hospitality in those days.

In 96, in the so it shows my age if anyone's calculated, in the UK was a recession. We were actually in an economic recession. But there was a huge level of optimism. There was a huge level of optimism that there were, you know, the future's bright and we'll figure something out, and you know, there'll always be something.

And and I I I have the sense with younger people today, they are lacking that. And and you know, rightly so, because there's no counter-dialogue in open society about how beautiful our society can be going forward and how we can embrace our humanity. And I feel like we need to do that. And, you know, that the the young people today that they're wonderfully talented and they are brilliant at what they do.

And I've I've had the opportunity for the last 10 years to be around many of them, and hopefully they will say that you know, there was a benefit to having an interaction with myself and my colleagues at the different institutions, but would say they are much, much better equipped to be in hospitality than when I graduated just because of the sophistication of the educational system and the experiences that they've had. However, the challenge that they're facing is way beyond anything that we've ever experienced before.

So, you know, there is this opportunity to kind of create or cohesion in our workplace. I think there is an absolute need for mentorship, and I mean it not in a tick-box form, which is kind of what companies are doing. Okay, we'll pair you up with this person and you have two coffees, and that's it. You've you've been mentored.

Right. Right? Right. People today need some kind of, they need a feeling once they're going back to psychological safety, that the adults know what they're fucking doing.

Right. Right? Yeah. And actually, it's clear from most of us that, you know, and I put myself in, unfortunately, I'm kind of getting to that realm, but it's clear that most of the adults in this world don't know what the fuck they're doing.

And that's really scary. Yeah. Right? I agree.

So actually, we all need to start looking at what we can do as individuals and how we can show up in the world. Because there is a need for adults in this world. And I don't mean in a classic patriarchy system. No, no, no, no, no, do as do as do as you're told.

No, no, no. Because, you know, but I mean in terms of showing some vision for the future, which is really positive about humanity. Because, you know, we're incredible species. We can figure this out.

We can definitely figure this all out. But we need peace. We need peace to figure this out. Absolutely.

And going back to what you just said, I mean, one thing we're talking about leadership, but you know, let's be honest, most people in leadership positions, not all of them, but many of them are from a older generation where it was kind of patriarchal and a lot more men than women. So it wasn't a lot of equality. There, you know, there still are not a lot of women GMs in uh in hotels, still not a lot of women chefs. So I think that there is with the newer generation, with the younger generations, we are seeing a lot more equality.

There are a lot more women who are uh getting into management and leadership positions and politics and, you know, but again, there's a backlash. There's a backlash against this equality that a lot of well, a lot of men probably are not so happy about, but there is some hope there. Don't you agree? That the fact that the younger generations are growing up in a more equal environment or not are women maybe not taking this on.

So there's there's two there's two parts to this. I agree with you having um ex um, I guess, been connected with the younger generation um through education, um that there is a huge diversity of of the young people going into the workplace today. Very, very talented people from all kinds of gender, culture, political backgrounds, religious backgrounds, and even people that don't identify with any of that. They're they're just really talented people.

So I I agree with that. I I think there are there's a couple of parts to this, is that the backlash against kind of a more diverse environment, which is kind of this um, let's say, white patriarchy system, um, I think it was it's it's been created by a lot of frustration, but it's also been created by a for want of a want of a better word, declining um kind of system. All right. So when when there is a decline in a system, when there is a decline in anything, there is normally like a last fight for dominance.

Right. And that's what we're seeing at the moment. We're seeing a fight for dominance through white patriarchy system, okay? Which is negating all of these amazing things that we have basically put together over the last 20, 30 years.

But I see it, I hope, I hope it's a bubble. We're seeing the the rise of nationalism and and right-wing fascism and all of these kind of things in various countries, but I'm hoping it's a bubble and a reaction. However, so we have this young population that is, I believe they are seeking to just be themselves. They are seeking psychological safety, but we need role models.

And we need we need places where they can aspire to. We need we need leaders that they can look up to. And this is really important because without role models, then we're kind of lost. And this is where, you know, one of the things I wanted to kind of maybe share with your audience, because it's like, well, what would what would I do today in in their position, right?

I would struggle to find a role model. I'm just being perfectly honest. For me, I would struggle to find a role model unless I was white and basically beholden upon the patriarchy system, then there's plenty of role models around, right? But if you don't want that kind of environment for yourself, and you don't want that environment for your future, there are very few.

However, what we can do, and this is going back to my own topic that I have been an subject matter for want of, or philosophy, it's a philosophy, which is around logotherapy, which is around Victor Frankel. If anybody wants to, we can leave maybe a link in the notes. Incredible person. Man's search for meaning.

Man's search for meaning. Okay. And an incredible person that survived the Holocaust and, amongst other things, set up a way of looking at the world and a way of thinking. And his his view is responsibility starts in every one of us individually.

We have to take responsibility for our own selves. And he has a wonderful phrase, we shouldn't take any nonsense from ourselves. Okay? Yeah.

So, but what we can do is we can start there saying, won't try and look for somebody to emulate. I will try and be the person that I want to emulate. Right. If that makes sense.

Yes. So we can kind of put it back on ourselves. However, I would ask, if people are struggling with that, because especially when you're younger, you're like, well, how do how am I supposed to do that if I can't see anybody that exhibits the kind of the kind of behaviors that I really want. Right.

Then I would I would say, if I was young today, I would say, Well, I see this person and they're doing this one good thing and I really like that. And I see this other person that's doing this really good thing and I really like that. Right. And I see this other person that's doing this really good thing and I really like that.

And those are the behaviors that I want to emulate, and those connect with my values. And that person over there has behaviors that I don't like and I don't want to emulate that. So instead of looking for one person to embody or one leader to embody, we can look at people through history, we can look at, you know, people today, we can look at even people in our family, friends. But we can we can just have a look at what we like and what connects with us.

And we can say, that's what I want to do more of. And that's that's really, if I was to give some advice for young people today, I would just say that's really a good place to start. That's really a good place to kind of start to find your own center and figure out the kind of person that you want to be. And also it'll give you the confidence to show up into your work environment how you want to be and how you want to behave as an individual.

Yeah. Not to emulate somebody else, not to copy somebody else in your environment. And that gives you going to kind of close the loop on this. It gives us an individuality, it gives us a personality, and that cannot be replicated by technology.

And that is kind of, I believe, what we're going to be here for for the next hundred years. Yes. So, Jay, I want to thank you so much for being with us today, for explaining. We've already talked about this.

We are going to schedule another podcast because we have, I have a lot more things that I would like to discuss. I think this is a really important topic, especially for our young listeners who are going into the business and even for people that have been in the business for a while, but are having a hard time perhaps finding their place for feeling safe and for just this whole topic of the importance of mental health. So we will schedule another podcast because we have a lot more to talk about.

So thank you so much for being with us today. That would be lovely, Crystal. It would be my pleasure. Thank you very much for inviting me.