Transcript: 

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Geraldine  0:14  
Hello everyone, and welcome back to the New Earth lawyer podcast where we feature lawyers who are changing the practice of law to change the world. My name is Geraldine Johns-Putra. I'm your host. I'm a lawyer. I'm speaking to you from Melbourne, Australia. And this is Boonwurrung country where I'm speaking from and I wish to pay my respects to their Elders past, present, and emerging. So welcome to the first episode of season two. This is 2022. I'm so excited to talk to our guest today because she's a trained lawyer. She hasn't practised law but she is a qualified psychologist, an organisational psychologist. She's an expert on something that's very meaningful to me, which is the changing nature of work, the connection between our heart and soul on the one hand and our work. So Emily Knowles, welcome. She is, as I said, a registered psychologist. She's a psychologist, consultant and researcher at the Human Link in Melbourne, Australia. and one of her favourite perspectives is the interplay between psychology, specifically organisational psychology, and spirituality. She's also National Convener of the Buddhism and Psychology Interest Group of the Australian Psychological Society. Welcome, Emily. As I said, I'm looking forward to the conversation we're about to have today.

 

Emily  1:41  
Thanks, Geraldine. So am I.

 

Geraldine  1:44  
Perfect. Now, this really carries on the conversations I was having at the end of last year, the end of Season 1, about the nature of work about how it's changing, how the pandemic and lockdowns have changed us. I see myself as a great example of that. I've gone from working with a large law firm to now working for myself, because you know through actually working from home during the lockdowns, I realised how satisfied I was with the flexibility and I felt like it was time to make the leap. And the fact that people have grown more used to working from home and I can conduct a lot of my meetings over Zoom, people are not, they're not fazed by the fact that I'm in my home while I'm working. All of that has meant that the move has been a lot more seamless for me. What are you seeing out in the world, in your profession?

 

Emily  2:59  
Geraldine what a timely question and topic. Certainly we're seeing changes. And there's a bit of a narrative at the moment that we've gone from normal to new normal, to no normal, which I think is quite interesting now as well. What was normal if it ever was anything? So I think if we look at that question, in the world of work, we can examine it at three different kind of levels or in three different ways. How is the work itself changing? How are workers changing? And also how workplaces changing? So there's kind of three dimensions there if you like. So as you mentioned, the worker is having some new preferences, is seeing and experiencing some different ways of being at work and what it is to be a part of an organisation, a part of a culture, and a part of a team as well, that works remotely or sometimes in a hybrid format. 

 

In terms of the work itself, we're seeing a division between what's done synchronously and asynchronously in terms of what's done in a collaborative way online versus in person versus more deep brain thinking time. Depends what industry we're in. We're talking about the legal profession here. So what does that mean? If you're practising in different areas of law, for example, do you have a firm culture that you are feeling some norms to kind of fit in with? Are there court proceedings that you need to kind of align with, you know what's going on with the nature of the work? 

 

And then the workplace. Organisations are taking really different perspectives and stands on where they want to position themselves in this new, I'm calling it a, it's like a work place rather than, sorry, it's a workspace rather than a workplace. So it's more of a head space rather than a physical space. And especially with the advent of work from anywhere and people, I'm based in Melbourne as well, Geraldine, people are doing a bit of a tree change or a sea change, even moving interstate or overseas. That, of course, will either fit or not fit with your organisation's workspace and how they imagine work. So, and then, of course, there's people who are entrepreneurs and innovators who are doing their own thing and making their own rules up as they go, and really leaning into this flexibility and ambiguity that we do have a moment. So that's how I'd kind of analysed it at those three layers. Does that make sense? Or is that a helpful kind of distinction?

 

Geraldine  5:51  
Very helpful framing. Thank you. So I could see where I fit into all those three things. But particularly the last thing about workspace I like because, you know, I actually, I work from home as we've discussed. And I generally work upstairs in my study. But as I said to you, before we started recording, I've started working downstairs from my dining table for the summer, because I can leave the back door open, and I've got a little dog and he just likes to run in and out. That flexibility of being able to move around, even in my own house but set up anywhere, feel comfortable and effective and productive working, is something that has developed in the last two, three years. I used to be very much office based and found it very difficult to work anywhere, but my desk in the office. So that's an internal thing that's happening to me. But it's being reflected in the, you know, in what's happening externally. So switching then that idea of workspace, there's a space in us that's also growing. Maybe that's the worker aspect of it, but I feel like what's changing in the worker is actually impacting, you know, the space around them. And I find that really interesting from a psychological and spiritual perspective, that the changes in us are impacting the spaces around us and and then rippling out to impact the world.

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Emily  7:37  
Yeah, I love where you've taken that in terms of the inner and the outer realities. For me, there are so many ways to answer that. I might answer it from a more kind of scientific way first, because sometimes that gets people over the line. And then we'll go to a little bit more of a spiritual adaptation and translation. So what we know from the research is that environment counts, the environment can impact our wellbeing. And so wellbeing is very much one of the subject matter areas that I play in when it comes to organisational psychology, supporting individuals, teams and organisations as three layers of the workplace ecosystem. So when we look at the environment, in particular, we've done some inquiry and when I say we, this is me and my team at Human Link around the environmental dimension of wellbeing as a specific interplay, that contributes to the whole of the wellbeing pie. So if you think of wellbeing comprising of, you know, my intra-personal elements, so my body and my mind, the things that are within my corporeal control, arguably to different degrees at different times. So that's your intrapersonal. Then you've got your interpersonal which is that social space, relationships, interactions. And then there's like a third layer, which is the bigger than me piece, and this is where the environment sits and this is where spirituality also sits. 

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And so the environment piece, we've started to break it down into kind of three ways that the literature and the evidence is starting to converge here. And that is around my space, our space and then nature. So my space is very much what you were talking about their Geraldine, the place where you work, how you curate your physical environment, whether that's location in the house, the amount of light, fresh air, news, music, smell all the senses the way you are in your physical proximity. The our space is a little bit more about concerned about the collective so if you share a home habitat with other people, you know what your community is like where you live, whether you live kind of in a metropolitan city, whether you live in an isolated kind of location or whether you are in fact working from the office and what that means. So that's a bit more of the collective.

 

And then natural space is nature. What do you like to kind of be surrounded by when it comes to the elements? Do you like to have greenery within kind of eyeshot? Do you like to have birds within earshot? Do you like to be able to walk to the beach on your break? Do you like to be able to get fresh air at the end of the day? Kind of, what do you, how do you like to interact with nature. And for some of us, and for many of us, we had to get super creative with that during lockdowns because many of us live in apartments and we don't all have that luxury of having a backyard or even a patch of lawn sometimes that we can easily access plants, indoor plants via the kind of the deluge of plants. But also I've got a really good friend of mine who's an occupational therapist. So I spoke with her very early about how to set up kind of not just the ergonomics, but optimal light, kind of fresh air flow, all these other elements of what it is when I am feeling like I'm feeling a bit compressed by the nature of, or a lack of nature. How can we cultivate more of that? And then once lockdowns have eased, I'd really integrated more outdoor time, and very punctuated and strategic time in that because the research is there. And anyone will tell you from a more experiential perspective, that being in nature is, and grounding, is such a wonderful way to feel grounded yourself.

 

Geraldine  11:42  
It's what you've mentioned there, which is that integration is for me, it's the word of the pandemic, you know, it's integration is, alignment is one word, but integration is the other. I think we're learning that all parts of ourselves in our environment impact each other, right? And it's dynamic. And it's very hard to pin down because as soon as we start trying to fix things, then we realise that one part is changed, and is causing changes in the other. So that, I love what you were saying about work, worker and workplace. We've been talking about that dynamic, the effect that worker has on workplace, workplace as on worker. Let's talk about the work. What how has the pandemic and lockdown impacted the work we want to do?

 

Emily  12:44  
I think we're, I hope that's the question, we're all asking ourselves. 

 

Geraldine  12:48  
Yeah. 

 

Emily  12:48  
Like you said, you've been reflecting on it. I have a hope that organisations are kind of turning their mind to the fact that professionals are asking this question. So I guess to break that down a little bit around what type of work or how we engage even with that question. For me, it's really a matter of looking at kind of the, you know, with this narrative around the why for a while, you know, why do you do something? You know, Simon Sinek's great Ted Talk inspired lots of introspection, I think, and also occupational kind of inquiry when it comes to that question. I think we're moving to a new question, though, or two new questions. One is how rather than why. So the how and then the when? So how do I want to show up with my work? So how do I want to engage with my day? And when do I want to do certain pieces? 

Now to start with the latter actually, when has become such a critical criteria, I'm not sure about in other people's households, but in ours, when we started to lean into that self-managed kind of space, everyone has the same amount of hours in a day. And it's up to us to work out where we optimally work, and then to synchronise, as we're required to with our workplace. But there's a whole new aspect of what it is to be productive. Are you a night owl? Are you an early bird? Do you need regular breaks? Do you like to get in chunky states of flow? Do you have your Pomodoro Technique where you're pausing every 90 minutes? There's so much philosophy, science, there's so many schools of thought that sit there, and so how well do you know yourself? And there's some great kind of blueprints out there to work out when your energy is that optimal, right? So we've got obviously our circadian rhythm, which is our sleep cycle. But we've also got our ultradian rhythm, which is our wake cycle. And so you need to kind of work out when you are at your best to do your best work. And there's some really great research and movements out there around times of day, times of weeks, or even times of  month that you should be optimising for certain types of creative versus due diligence versus collaborative time. So that's the more when. When do I want to do my work in the way that it's required or the way I wanted to? 

 

And going back to your question around how, how do I want to show up? How do I want to be present and be selective? How do I want to meaningfully engage with my to-do list? Well, I would actually argue that the movement that we're progressing towards is a bit more of a to-be list. And so we typically would have a to-do list, you know, we've got our notepad, and we've got, you know, here's that, this is the critical pathway to achieve all these things, whether it's external deadlines being, you know, kind of court hearings, or internal ones or kind of more self-imposed, kind of momentum-based goals that we've set for ourselves. There is a real shift now moving towards how do we want to be in those tasks? How do we want to be in the day? How do we want to be in our work. And so one of the practices that I've adopted is writing a to-be list at the beginning of the day, rather than a to-do list. It depends where you're at with your kind of workflow. I'm fortunate enough that I have an amazing project manager and a team that helped me organise those critical milestones, so they're kind of on a spreadsheet, I know exactly what's happening with those. And I've got a pretty comprehensive diary and calendar mapped out. So look, that's one version of reality, you know, these are the black and white things that need to get done. But how do I want to do them? How do I want to show up for myself and for other people today? Do I want to cultivate an intention of feeling really calm? Do I want to spark others' creativity? And so this to-be list concept is something that I've been really enjoying Geraldine.

 

Geraldine  17:15  
I think that's fascinating, because I think I intuitively do it. I of course, like you say I've got the notepad with the things that I want to do. But as I'm writing it, I kind of know which ones I'll get to in the day, and which ones I know I won't, because it's just not going to be that kind of day. Maybe it's a big chunky piece of work where I need to set aside three hours. And then there are all these other little things. And it's just the kind of day where I'm going to be maybe in and out, there're lots of errands to run, lots of phone calls. And so I know I'm going to get to all the little things, but the big chunky one isn't going to happen today. But I'll put it on my list anyway, as a to-do. And it sits there and it kind of nags at me. But I know that I'm going to get to it tomorrow. So if I had that approach, you know that to-be approach where tomorrow, it's, I've got an afternoon completely free, let's say, I know I could do that chunky piece of work then. It's very interesting. But I suppose for me what immediately came to mind was I can do that now with the flexibility that's built into my work and my work space. How would you do that if you were you know in a more structured workplace, like a law firm?

 

Emily  18:38  
Yeah, this is, this is the question, right? This is the tension. 

 

Geraldine  18:46  
Yeah. 

 

Emily  18:46  
And this is the tension that I've been grappling with. And you know what I thought it was just going to be me in the legal world, but it's me in the working world more generally, how do you balance out that high octane performance, you know, things need to get done to the best highest quality, in the fastest possible way. You know, they need to be done fast, they need to be done to a high quality, and they need to be done yesterday. And so for me that tension of you know, feeling the external pressures and the internal pressures that I create there for myself. And then I know others who are, you know, have a high ambition drive, others who have some of those other kind of competitive and sometimes perfectionistic kind of qualities to their personality. I think what we really want to focus here on is the nature of the work and the worker. And so what I have been doing some inquiry into here is, you know, how do we feel a sense of self, but not over-identify with the work. So, especially when we're working from home, there's that piece around, where do I start and where do I finish. And that would be equally valid for if you're working for yourself or if you're working for an organisation, the log-on log-off, kind of when does that happen in terms of with the clock on with your days. 

 

But in terms of navigating that tension, I think, what a lot of my research has really explored what it is to understand you as a person, and you and your kind of strengths and some of your potential derailers. So for example, if you are working in, it's a concept that I'm working on called practice area of psychology, so if you're working in a certain area of law, let's say corporate-commercial litigation, if that area of law, what attributes of your personality really come to life in that practice of law, and which ones when overplayed or underplayed can derail you? And so it's a really acute awareness of your own constitution. So personality is one aspect and the other one is values, what are my values? What are the values-set that I carry with me as a human into the workplace, but also what are the values that my workplace really cultivates and celebrates. And if you haven't got the alignment of personality, and or values with workplace, that's when you're going to start that to feel that real jarring. And knowing when it's a tension that's a growth tension versus say, this is not right tension, I think, is a critical distinction. 

 

Geraldine  21:38  
Hmm. Well, that brings to mind many conversations I've had on this podcast, for example, people who have gone into large law firms coming out of law school, but with a very strong ethos of social justice and in wanting to do the right thing by the world and then found that ethos was being crushed by a very rigid structure around them. So there was a misalignment. Or people going into litigation, where they really see conflict through a different lens. Or I personally changed from corporate transactions, even though I loved to do corporate transactions, to something that was more advisory. Also working with different kinds of clientele, from big corporates more towards smaller ones, social enterprises and not for profits. So I guess this practice area psychology concept that you're talking about, is a, it's so vital, yet, we tend to see it as a through a career lens, you know. When I have conversations with, with young lawyers who are trying to decide at the end of the training, where they're going to settle, as you know, as we say, in law firms, which part of the firm am I going to settle in? I'm looking at this career for the next 30 years or so. Am I going to be a litigator? Or am I going to be a corporate transaction lawyer or whatever, workplace lawyer, etc. It's done through such a transactional lens, you know, like what's going to serve me best in terms of career progression, rather than what's going to actually satisfy me the most. And what aligns most with my purpose? Which means that at that early stage, we should be applying your concepts of practice area psychology, as well as, as teaching people wellbeing awareness so that they understand what actually makes them happier. I think that's an obvious outcome, but so missing. 

 

Emily  23:49  
I agree that it seems obvious. And then, you know, the things that are obvious, things that seem obvious, are sometimes, you know, they're lightbulb moments or sometimes they're hidden beneath norms and cultures that don't really embrace kind of what that would look like to play it out. And you'd need to really work in a supportive environment. Within, let's go for that more traditional kind of legal workplace, like a big like Big Law or a big firm, to really embrace that way of even being at work. And I'm really fortunate that I'm aligned with Minds Count. Not sure if you're aware of this body, but they are have 13 workplace factors that they have put together for law firms to adopt and be signatories to, to support kind of the what it is to really cultivate and nurture, lawyer wellbeing at work. And so this is a foundation that I'm a signatory to, and there's some great resources online, maybe I can pop it in a link or something. Yeah. So there's a foundation that's really committed to having, like I said, a bit of a signatory-based who wants to sign up to this way of living and working in the legal world. And that's the first step right? That's, you know, recognising that we want to align with that. The challenge is, how do we actually live that out? How do we bring that to our people? How do we activate that in our culture? How do we create leadership standards and wellbeing practices and ways of working that are aligned with that, so that it's not just lip service. 

 

Emily  25:37  
And so, like I said before, that peace around knowing your own constitution, as a lawyer, I think is a part of it. you need to have responsibility for yourself and the environment that you put yourself in. But then also, organisations need to have a responsibility as well, in terms of they could be signing up, or they could be endorsing a better way of doing and practising that legal culture. So that's kind of the individual in the organisational lens. 

 

But I want to go back to expand on what you said about the practice area psychology, because I think it's really vital that in addition to you, as a lawyer showing up, and being kind of a human, a human being, and showing up in your work, the actual practice area that you choose, like you said, Geraldine will have its own idiosyncrasies, and its own tastes, and challenges and its own silver linings of bright days and dark days. And so I think what's really interesting to explore is what am I signing up for, not just in the work, but in the culture, in the norms, the narrative that exists in this system. So yes, I might be really analytical, I might be really good at putting together cohesive and robust arguments, I might be really-detail oriented, you know, other features that can really stoke your ability to perform and succeed in the world of work, and in the legal profession, but what am I signing up for in terms of the norms? And how are those norms changing? Or how do I want to influence those norms?

 

So there's some pretty radical and pretty cool, innovative law firms out there at the moment, who are really shaking things up, and also legal communities where you can join and as a collective, rather than feeling in a silo in this endeavour, so I think, yeah, the lawyer themselves, but then also the legal practice. So what sometimes I refer to as, because my perspective is normally informed by well being approach is I talk about lawyer wellbeing, which is the individual, and then legal wellbeing, which is what it's like to actually practice in that area of law, not just for you, but for the clients, for the culture, for the organisation. And I know Kim Wright, who is wonderful, kind of has her views on how the law impacts society. So that's more that pocket that I'm really honing in on, as opposed to the individual lawyer, which has its own kind of body of knowledge around what it is to succeed, what the derailers are, and what some of those risk factors could be because we know burnout, and some other mental health experiences can be really quite, if not attended to, damaging over the prospect of a whole career span.

 

Geraldine  28:36  
So it strikes me that it this concept of lawyer, know thyself is quite important. And the earlier you can, you can cultivate it probably the the more satisfied you're going to be as a lawyer, but also the more positive effect. one would hope you'd have on the world, that legal wellbeing. But is there a connection between the work you're doing in yoga teacher training, in terms of developing that sort of awareness in the person?

 

Emily  29:12  
Yeah, thanks for bringing that in to the conversation. Geraldine. You know, I'm in my teacher training at the moment, which I'm just absolutely loving. And it's such an intentional space that I'm moving into as well. Taking on that extra, yes, it's a credential it's an extra, it's a certain path that I'm choosing to go down, but for me, just to wind it back before I answer the question, so that we can understand the context that that comes to support kind of the work that I am doing more holistically now, for me kind of yoga was a little bit of a self-care routine from a young age. It was a great way to ground, it was a great way to kind of get into my body and if felt good. It was like some kind of, you know, I didn't really understand it, but it felt really good while I was practising, and I felt really good afterwards. So it was like that for like maybe five years or so then when I decided to take a deep inquiry into psychology and really pursue that as a career pathway, I saw it as more of a study of mind. So we add on an extra layer now, so we've already got the body piece, at least for me, it was like, yep, yoga is about the body and the asana. Now it's okay, yep, yoga is about the mind and how we still the mind, and there's mindfulness and meditation that comes in. So that's like the second layer, with the body, then we've got the mind. And then after a few years, I've really been focusing on breath, and so kind of mind, body and breath and the interconnectedness of those three pieces. So the pranayama, the energy, the movement, how we harness that, how we practise that, the techniques, the art, the skilful means involved in that has been the latest kind of, and I think, probably that kind of final sheath that goes on top. Because for me, if we're not connecting with our body, our mind and our breath, our wellbeing, really, we're not harnessing the best of our wellbeing. 

 

And yoga is really now for me personally more of a way of life, rather than a kind of we said, you know, it's a pathway, but it's a way of being in the world. And what's really interesting is, I mentioned the environmental dimension of wellbeing earlier, we're actually starting to implement more breathing practices in the wellbeing work that we do in the corporate and commercial worlds. So we're finding that while the science, people get really comforted by the science of breathing, the act of for example, every workshop we do, we start with a breathing exercise. The act of breathing and getting into our breath, takes us into our body and settles our mind. And so I know there's so many great practitioners out there who are working at that intersection of law and psychology and other intersections that involve spirituality. But for me, there's that big piece around how do we harness what we've got? Like this, all we've got at the end of the day is who we are and how we show up. So how do we bring our, it's a bit kind of trite to say, how do we bring our best selves? But how do we bring our whole selves in a way that we feel embodied? And really, all those interconnected pieces of our mind, body and breath can help us show up when we need to?

 

Geraldine  32:35  
I feel like you're hitting on something that I see, I'm seeing a lot of in the spiritual communities, which is the realisation that we are our bodies, that we'd emphasised so much on the spiritual part that at the cost of looking after our bodies, when in fact, the body, as you said, is how we are, who we are, in a sense. This is how we interact with the world. It's actually a wonderful, wonderful insight. Thank you.

 

Emily  33:09  
And Geraldine, there's something else to build on with that, because I'm so glad that it's striking something for you that's resonating. One of the, I guess you'd say, teachers, kind of in that more Buddhist domain of my life, has written kind of really made a stand about what it is to be and the two types of beings. So she calls it little B being, and big B Being, which we love. And so the little B being, as she talks about it, and this is the way that really resonates for me, little B being is that that more presence piece, what it is to be, right now you and I are in a conversation, I'm fully here, and I'm being here. And the big B is that, is the piece around, I'm a human being. I need to acknowledge that. And I think one of the risks that's happened when we've turned to a virtual world is we feel like floating heads. We feel like where's the rest of our body? When we're in the physical world, we're commuting. If we're in talking in front of people, we have body language, we have all this physicality involved but when we're reduced to, we're necessarily reduced to a square. It's like a floating head. Where is the rest of my body? I often ask people a pretty disarming question in workshop like are you wearing shoes or how are you sitting right now? Because I'm really curious, what are you doing with the rest of your body? Because we kind of have, what's the word, we've outsourced like everything and we're just this you know, mind and a worker and we're in this you know, where we're in the rat race, we're doing it, we're really here. But what about the rest of us? What happens when the spring goes off? I think that's a really interesting question we should be asking ourselves.

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Geraldine  35:12  
That's an interesting point that work from home and working remotely and doing everything online has narrowed the concept of work even more, in some ways to that little box. So so long as from your waist up, you're presentable, then, that's fine. And the rest of it can be ignored. Which means that that's an even smaller space that we're working on than we used to when we were going to the office or going to our workplaces. I hadn't thought of that. That's a very interesting perspective. Emily, I knew this would be a fascinating conversation. It really has. We've touched on so much. And there have been so many interesting ideas that you've given me and anyone that's listening to this and watching this. I was going ask you, the Human Link it does it work mainly with organisations or individuals? If people are interested in coming to you for more on what you've talked about, which has been so rich, can you counsel individuals in trying to find you know, work through practice area psychology and work on the legal wellbeing versus lawyer wellbeing?

 

Emily  36:28  
Yeah, definitely, we're very open to have conversations about where that might fit for you, you might have come to us with one idea, and we might expand that for you. So there's that. I'm also happy to have conversations that are more aligned with the spiritual side of things, which is a bit more about my personal work. And that yoga space that occupies so very happy to have a workplace, or a bit more of a personal conversation. And if I can Geraldine, I'd love to just suggest a couple of resources that people might like to access as well, that would build and kind of broaden the way in which I've been tapping into a few themes today. There's a wonderful organisation called the Institute for Wellbeing in Law. Now, they are a US based kind of outfit, and I'm a committee member there. And they are doing amazing work. And they have identified spiritual wellbeing as one of the aspect of a lawyer's overall wellbeing, kind of constitution. So if people are interested to read a bit more about what's happening there, and they've done some really robust studies, and there's some good stuff there. That's one of them. And the other one is, there was an excellent journal that was published last year, called the Humanistic Psychologist. So that was an American Psychological Association endorsed publication, and they really do a big examination of what it is to look into mindfulness from a Buddhist and contemporary perspective. And there's just some gem articles in there if you do, if you are drawn to the science, and you'd like to read a little bit more about what's happening in this space, academically or at a more scientific level. There's some amazing articles in there as well. So I just wanted to throw those out there in case people wanted to do some further reading.

 

Geraldine  38:18  
Sure, I'll add the links to the webpage and on YouTube so people can easily access them. Resources are always helpful. So thank you for that. Thank you for sharing your time with us. And your insight. I just love how you've thought about all of these different perspectives that seems so woolly. But you've actually really carefully listed them and categorised them, but yet in a way where the dynamism between the concepts is easily, easily captured. So thank you so much.

 

Emily  38:56  
Thanks Geraldine. That multi-disciplinary approach that comes out when you've been trained in more than one field, you get to really play at the intersections and really bring across methodologies and put them together in wonderful ways. Thanks for your excellent questions today Geraldine, as well.

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