Ep32: Women’s Health: A Guide for Male Leaders

In this jam-packed episode, we delve into the often-neglected topic of women’s health. As male leaders, we understand that it can be challenging to discuss certain topics, especially when they are related to sensitive matters such as women’s health. This episode is dedicated to addressing those questions you’ve always wanted to ask but were afraid to bring up.

We are fortunate to have an outstanding panel of experts in the field of women’s health joining us today. These remarkable women bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to the discussion, and they are eager to help demystify the subject for our listeners. Our goal is to foster an open and honest conversation about women’s health, empowering male leaders to be better informed and more empathetic in their approach towards their female colleagues and employees.

In this episode, our esteemed panel will shed light on a range of women’s health topics, such as menstruation, pregnancy, menopause, and more. We will also explore the intersection between women’s health and workplace culture, discussing how organizations can implement policies and practices that support the well-being of their female employees. Through this conversation, we hope to bridge the gap in understanding and create a more inclusive and supportive work environment for everyone.

So, sit back, tune in, and prepare to learn as our expert panel addresses your questions and concerns on women’s health. This episode promises to be informative, enlightening, and thought-provoking. Whether you’re a male leader seeking guidance or simply someone who wants to gain a deeper understanding of women’s health, we’re confident that you’ll walk away from this discussion with valuable insights and a new perspective.

Don’t miss this opportunity to broaden your horizons and become a better ally to the women in your workplace!

Resources

Dr Kellie Pritchard-Peschek

Dr Kellie offers 1-2-1 coaching and treatment programs supporting women with burnout and perimenopause.

You can find out more at 

• Website: drkellierose.com
• Instagram @drkellierose  
• LinkedIn: @kelliepritchard
• Facebook: Dr Kellie Rose

Dr Claire Ashley

Dr Claire Ashley, our burnout doctor, also offers various free and paid-for resources. 

“For individuals, I help to provide evidence-based, practical and achievable changes for optimal mental well-being, with an aim of helping them to achieve careers that are sustainable and fulfilling. 
For businesses and organisations, I provide evidence-based solutions to help with workforce recruitment, retention, productivity, absenteeism, engagement and company reputation.“

Check out drclaireashley.com including her blog, and connect through Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and LinkedIn.

Hannah Austin

I highly recommend Hannah’s book for women that have, or are experiencing burnout, questions around identity and life and career transitions.

“Hello, Head, Meet Heart” is available on Amazon.

Hannah also offers organizational wellness workshops and talks, and private 1:1 coaching for busy (and burnt-out) professionals through her consultancy SheShatter.

Head to sheshatters.com for more information.

And while you’re there, be sure to check out the She Burns podcast, Season 3 is themed ‘Women Game Changers’, where Hannah explores the stories of powerful, resilient, driven women that have influenced change to help themselves and women everywhere burn bright.

Other resources I’d recommend include:

• The primary care women’s health forum for a whole host of resources related to physical and mental health. https://pcwhf.co.uk/
• The women’s recourse centre WRC is the leading national umbrella organisation for the women’s sector in the UK, striving to give voice to the most marginalised and disadvantaged organisations.
  https://www.wrc.org.uk/values-vision-mission
• You can also check out the Big Ideas for Women and Girls Coalition advocates for placing gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls at the center of U.S. foreign policy and assistance, as not only the right thing to do, but the smart thing to do.
  https://bigideascoalition.org/
• If you’re in the UK, The Acas website is a vital resource, including help to understand your rights and options, employers and anyone affected by sexual harassment at work
  https://www.acas.org.uk/sexual-harassment/get-help-and-support
• Victim Support in the Uk also offers support for victims of sexual harassment, including a dedicated helpline. https://www.victimsupport.org.uk/crime-info/types-crime/sexual-harassment/, 08 08 16 89 111
• And of course, we will always recommend The Samaritans. If you’re in distress or despair, including suicidal feelings, contact the Samaritans on 116 123.

Connect with your hosts

• Connect with Al on LinkedIn 
• Connect with Leanne on LinkedIn
• Join the discussion about this episode on LinkedIn
• Email: podcast@TruthLiesandWork.com
• Follow us on Instagram @truthlieswork
• Chat with us on Twitter @truthlieswork
• YouTube channel for the podcast @TruthLiesWork
• Check us out on TikTok (LOL!!!) @truthlieswork

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The Transcript

⚠️ NOTE: This is an automated transcript, so it might not always be 100% accurate!

Dr Claire Ashley  
But I think disproportionately women are affected by that. And that kind of makes us feel like we’re torn between those responsibilities and our work as well.

Al Elliott  
Hello, and welcome to the truth lies in workplace culture podcast brought to you by HubSpot, the audio destination for business professionals. My name is Alan, I’m a business owner. Oh, and the ends not here. This is a very special episode. It’s kind of like a sibling episode to the one we did back in January with Jim Young about the untold heartbreak of male leaders. This is all about women, and as a male, and as a bit having been a male boss in the past, I don’t really know what it is, I can ask what I can’t ask. I didn’t really know much about this. Now, obviously, I work with Leann. So I do have an idea of the kind of struggles that women go through at work. But as a leader, male leader, what do you what can you say? What can you not say? What can you ask about? What can you not ask about? These are all really, really important questions. And I’ll be honest, I think most males are like Mega, I don’t really know what I’m allowed to say. And there’s that meme from Parks and Recreation, where Andy says, At this point, I’m too afraid to ask and I think that does does kind of relate to us as male leaders. So in this episode, we’re gonna learn a lot more about women’s health. We’re going to learn what kind of questions we can ask them what we can’t ask. She’s going to talk about the gender health gap. I’ll be honest, I didn’t really know what that was the outside talking about it a few months ago, but I still am not 100%. Sure. So I’ll be listening to this. And then there’s the curious idea that crash test dummies have always been male up until a couple of months ago. All of this I hope is going to give you if you’re a male leader, I’m going to give you the context required to understand better women’s health in the workplace. And also perhaps to understand what questions we can and can’t ask things like menopause. Is it appropriate to mention it? Is it appropriate to bring it up? What should we be aware of? And what questions you’ll be asking around that? We also touch a little bit on Gen. Zed, perimenopause, and Leanne’s got an load of amazing resources in the show notes. So look underneath this episode, and you’ll see a link to the webpage with all those amazing resources. So let’s go meet Leanne, as she talks to three incredible women.

Leanne Elliott  
We’re wrapping up Women’s History Month with a very special panel episode exploring women’s health. We’re here to ask and answer the questions that male leaders let’s be honest female leaders, or however you identify leaders may be afraid to ask. So yeah, we’ll be talking about menopause burnout, harassment in the workplace generational shifts, and that often debated question is women can we have it all? We have scoured the globe for you to find some of the most relevant and high profile voices in women’s health today. And I’m very excited to introduce our three guests. Our first guest is Dr. Claire Ashley. She is a GP and burnout specialist from Bristol in the UK. Alongside her clinical and personal experience. Claire has a degree in neuroscience, uniquely placing her as a mental health expert and advocate. Claire is also an NHS clinical entrepreneur, which will tell us a little bit more about let’s meet Claire.

Dr Claire Ashley  
I’m Dr. Claire Ashley. I’m a portfolio career GP basically what that means is I don’t work for surgery. I have lots of little jobs, lots of different roles. I’ve created a portfolio career having gone through a nasty episode of burnout but started back in 2019. And following that I’ve made being a mental wellbeing advocate. And talking about my experiences has really become my mission because when I went through my burnout was an incredibly lonely and isolating experience.

Leanne Elliott  
Our next panellist is Hannah Austin, from Portland, Oregon. In the USA, Hannah is best selling author of Hello head meet heart. She’s also the CEO and founder of she shatters which offers consulting services on the topic of burnout prevention in the workplace. Following a 20 year high flying career in corporate since 2021. Hannah has dedicated herself to teaching others how to burn bright and not burn out. Hannah is also the founder and co host of she burns podcast. Here’s Hannah,

Hannah Austin  
my name is Hannah Austin. I’m the CEO and founder of she shatters and we are a coaching and consulting company designed to elevate people who are suffering from burnout. And I recently wrote a book. Hello had me at heart so I’ve been travelling around the country doing speaking engagements promoting the book.

Leanne Elliott  
Our final guest panellist is Dr. Kelly Pritchard Piszczek, who joins us from Brisbane in Australia. Dr. Kelly has extensive experience in the sporting and allied health industry. She actually spent over a decade supporting Olympic athletes and world record holders in Australia and Europe, before going on to leading projects and sporting communities in Sub Saharan Africa, and a community of researchers for a Swiss digital health startup company. In 2021. She founded Dr. Kelly Rose and executive health coaching business and enabling professional women to recognise the signs of burnout and empower them with the knowledge and skills to prevent it and rebalance their health. Let’s meet Dr. Kelly.

Dr Kellie Pritchard-Peschek  
My name is Kelly. I am a sports scientist by trade. So I did a Bachelor and a doctorate degree in Exercise Science majoring in physiology. And the first half of my career I spent actually working in elite sport with Olympic athletes. So that was that over a decade through three Olympic Games cycles, where I really sort of immerse myself in that high performance culture, working with the top athletes really getting them into the peak health and fitness for that peak level of performance. Essentially, Kelly joining

Leanne Elliott  
us from her clinic in Brisbane there. I do apologise for some of the background noise you’ll hear on Kelly’s interview. She did ask me before we started recording if I could hear anything, and while I couldn’t, I think our mics have picked up some of that. But it all adds to the atmosphere. So yes, three is phenomenal and highly successful women with a real passion for empowering women for lifting women for women’s health, and women in the workplace. Interestingly, this isn’t the only thing that they have in common. And you may have already gathered this, Dr. Claire, Hannah and Dr. Kelly have all experienced and recovered from burnout. Throw me into that mix. I’ve experienced burnout as well. And then you’ve got two medical doctors, a psychologist and a corporate leadership superstar. They’ve all experienced burnout. If that doesn’t show you that really burnout affects anyone in everyone. I don’t know what well, but yeah, you are you are not alone if you have or are currently experiencing burnout. So today we will be talking about women’s mental health and experience of burnout. In addition to physical health experiences such as menopause, we’re also going to be touching on societal challenges as well, including experiences of sexual harassment in the workplace. So this may not be the easiest conversation to listen to. We will however, be sharing expert advice and practical tips along the way. And some acts and organisations that support women’s physical and mental health, or details for their support services are in the shownotes. So if you’d rather head straight there, please feel free. So how this how is basically work? I have conversations with these three incredible women and ask them lots of lots of different questions. I then asked Al to review these questions and see if he could pick for me the ones that he felt male leaders would want to ask or perhaps be afraid of asking. So with that in mind, these are shortened interviews from our three incredible panellists. So women has been Women’s History Month, you may be listing regardless of how you identify, and think why why do women need a history when men don’t have a history month? Why are we still talking about women needing to create spaces for themselves? Or, you know, surely there’s enough corporate opportunities for women now? So let’s address the elephant in the room. Why do we still need Women’s History Month in 2023? His hammer?

Hannah Austin  
Well, first of all, anyone saying that I would say why are we still having this discussion? Right? It’s 2023. You know, why are we still having this discussion? And the reality is, is our society and world hasn’t learned how yet. Right? And Jim Young, who you’ve also had on the podcast, he and I have had this discussion? You know, what can men do? What can everybody do to help every generation every race? I mean, it’s not just limited, it’s race to right? We have discrimination all around the world, trans people as well. So it’s figuring out how we can have deeper empathy, how we can have the conversations to, for men to elevate women, it’s not just enough to post on LinkedIn, Women’s History Month, here’s my wife, she’s such a great wife, she does everything that’s not helping. What’s helping is, how can we have discussions around what women provide and how they’re different? And build systems, systemic systems around us? Certainly pay us right what we’re worth. But I think ultimately, we have to learn the house. And that’s what I wanted to do in the book, like so many health, self help books, man, they don’t help you at the end of the book, you’re like, that’s great. But how do I put that into practice into my life? They don’t question you. They don’t challenge you. And I think that that’s what we need to continue to do question and challenge job descriptions question and challenge, pay scales question and challenge men and other genders who are saying, Why do we have Women’s History Month?

Leanne Elliott  
beautifully put there Hannah and Hannah mentioned Zarin in terms of, of the the gender pay gap, which we talked about recently on the on the podcast, you’re probably familiar with that. But what are the inequities to women experience? Well, one of the most pressing and prevailing issues at the moment is health, and specifically the gender health gap. So the gender health gap describes institutionalised sexism within healthcare, and the poor service and outcomes women get as a result To the UK suddenly is thought to have the largest female health gap among G 20 countries and the 12 largest globally, there are millions and millions of women falling through the gender health gap every year. There are a number of reasons for this, including medical education. As Dr. Claire explains,

Dr Claire Ashley  
I think, when it comes to medical education, we you know, we’re we’re very biassed towards the male perspective. I think traditionally, if you look at how scientific studies are conducted, largely, I think, off the top of my head, it’s about 80% of scientific trials are conducted on men and male bodies. Women are really largely excluded from the scientific process. And of course, when it comes to practising medicine, we have to be evidence based. But if we’re basing our practice offers of, you know, trials that have been done purely on men and male bodies, then we’re missing data to do with hope for half, you know, half the population

Leanne Elliott  
is almost unbelievable that, that 80% of scientific trials are conducted on men and male bodies, and that that science is then used to make decisions about how illnesses should be treated. When women are 50% of the population, there isn’t that that same Insights is almost unbelievable. And Kelly agrees. She recalls her own observations in the worlds of birth, health and elite sport.

Dr Kellie Pritchard-Peschek  
Even my time as a physiologist in sport, the statistic currently is that I think it’s between six and 8% of all scientific research in sports is done on women’s female athletes. So there’s a there’s a gap. So every bit of research and knowledge that we use to apply in sport is based on men, yet, we work with so many female athletes as well. So there’s definitely, definitely a gap there. When we look even from a health and chronic disease perspective, so going more down the medical path, there is a difference like the they don’t know too much about like symptoms for women, and particularly around things like cardiovascular disease and heart attack risks. And there are two key ones that I run. Also statistics on and not knowing though signs and symptoms in women in particular, how they manifest a little bit differently. Women are being sent away from healthcare, from hospitals from practitioners. So it’s, it’s still happening and you know, I didn’t hear something that sort of was fine but really also hurt her I need to listen to the other day and said, You know, it’s a it’s a health risk to be a woman. That was essentially what this physician was talking about, just for what we face in this health gap, the research gap behind it. And then when we get into the nitty gritty of how our hormones actually impact some of these disease risks as well. Increasing the risk so places a bit of importance on you know, taking care of ourselves as women

Leanne Elliott  
as Dr. Kelly says this is you know, why women still need to, to push for change. And I asked I spoke at length with Dr. Kelly and Dr. Claire about this and and Dr. Claire was actually telling me about some scientists in Sweden that have now produced the world’s first female crash test dummy. So you know those dummies that you put in, in cars you simulate crashes see however the seatbelt impacts the body how the the airbag impacts the body up until 2022 All of those dummies were based on male anatomy and it took him until now to get to these testimonies put in that are based on female anatomy unsurprisingly this is going to really change how future cars driver’s seats and and other safety features are designed and ultimately will make roads safer for female drivers. So yeah, the between the science and the actual health gaps there is there is a real huge health risk is Dr. Kelly says to being a woman the impact has also had a huge impact on on all of us and yet for women it has seemed to create a new gap so women have reported huge benefits for their career and and work life balance that you know, the flexibility they’ve gained from working from home is huge while others have reported you know, real increase in stress and, and particularly resulting from those challenges of balancing work and home life. Dr. Claire was on the front line of the GP during the pandemic in the UK working for the NHS and and she explains a little bit more for us on the impact it had on women. I would say

Dr Claire Ashley  
during the pandemic. I barely saw any women presenting with physical health problems unless of course it was an acute situation you know Something that we dealt with in mediately. But we saw an awful lot of mental health problems. And the amount of suffering that was happening behind closed doors during the pandemic was huge, huge explosion in anxiety in particular and depression, I would say, and also mental health problems and children, interestingly, so I would say my average age of referrals for children because of course, women are likely to be looking after their children during the pandemic as well, isn’t it? You know, obviously, their husbands or partners might be involved. But, you know, I would say no, like, during normal times, I would have been referring teenagers, for instance of mental health support, the average age of which I was referring, children dropped to probably like eight or nine, which is, in addition to teenagers, which is a really significant change. And so, you’ve got, you know, this perfect storm of women at home for some people, obviously, it was a great thing for their careers and their work and their family life. But for some people, it really wasn’t. And I think it probably polarise people quite significantly. The people that found it good found it really good that people that found it struggled found it really, really hard. The pandemic has been a massive, perfect storm for mental health problems, I would say that less so physical health problems, although we are now seeing, you know, that we’re coming out of the pandemic, and people have more access to GPS, more, you know, when we are seeing more people face to face, we are seeing much more physical health problems. And

Leanne Elliott  
you might be thinking we were all impacted by the pandemic, it wasn’t just women, and I hear you, but there is a growing body of research that has highlighted a disproportionately negative impact COVID-19 had on women globally. And one of those is as Dr. Claire alludes to is this is lack of access to to care. And, you know, the pausing of a lack of care at the start of the pandemic resulted in the greatest backlog in NHS history. And there are still 6.1 million people on the waiting list as of March 22. And suddenly, you know, 24,000 of those are a portion been waiting at least two years, for women not be able to access this reproductive health care has meant that we have seen significant increases in stillbirths in maternal death in maternal depression. You know, there’s actually a study that I was reading from social politics, international studies in in gender stain society, this is from me at the back end of 2022. And it was even just the the headline really summed up for me, the headline was a quote from one of the participants that said, I was facilitating everybody else’s life, and mine had just grind to a halt. So I asked Dr. Claire, for her thoughts on this, she went on to share her very personal story of burnout.

Dr Claire Ashley  
I think that women also carry a lot of additional strains on them, not just physical health problems, but also kind of, we know that women genuinely take on more of the emotional labour of the household, do more domestic chores, do more childcare, and all that sort of stuff. And I think that we tend to juggle a lot. And I’m not just I’m not saying that, you know, that this the all women’s experience, or all families experience, but I think disproportionately women are affected by that. And that kind of makes us feel like we’re torn between those responsibilities and our work as well. And certainly, I think that some of those factors affected my own burnout. So if you’re happy, I’ll just kind of briefly touch on that to begin with. So when I found out I was working a job that required me to be in work for 12 hours a day, I have a partner’s that works away, often with very short notice. And it’s all very unpredictable. So we don’t have a schedule. And at the time that I’ve burned out, I had one child in reception and one in nursery. So very, very young, and still very dependent on me. And I didn’t have family locally, to me to support me. We had kind of this, this, this problem where I didn’t have local support doesn’t have a village. You know, we’ve lost a lot, you know, with our nuclear families and how we live and work now we’ve lost a lot of that. So I think for mums with my partner being away, obviously it meant that the childcare fell to me, largely and my work just didn’t the way I was working and I was expected to work just wasn’t compatible with the childcare arrangements that I had. So we have an issue with lack of flexibility when it comes to childcare. So my kids were in nursery or Breakfast Club and our school club from kind of 730 to six ish, but I wouldn’t finish work until say eight on 830. And that meant I had to then employ a nanny to come and pick my kids up from school and from nursery and put them to bed for me, which a made me feel absolutely horrendous but also Secondly, it was ruinously expensive. So we do have a problem in the UK, I think with not just lack of flexible childcare, but lack of reasonably priced childcare as well.

Leanne Elliott  
So we dive more into burnout, Dr. Claire raises a really important issue here, the cost of childcare. So this is a problem in the UK. And my understanding is it’s it’s a problem in the US as well. Child care costs are ridiculously high. The average annual cost of full time nursery for a child under two in the UK is now almost 15,000 pounds a year. That’s gone up by 5.9%. In the last 12 months alone, in the US, I was reading that it can cost somewhere between $5,000 for a school age, home based care, and up to 50 and a half $1,000 If we’re looking at kind of infant centre based care. So it really does raise, you know, challenging questions for CO parents. And let’s be honest, almost impossible choices for single parents. So let’s hear more from from Claire’s experience. As a working mother.

Dr Claire Ashley  
I’m a higher earner and it was still, the majority of my monthly salary was being spent on childcare. And for some women, that’s not even an option, you know, they might not even be able to stay in the workplace because childcare is so expensive, it was much more than our mortgage. And without a shadow of a doubt, that additional stress. You know, not feeling like I was doing a good job at work, but also feeling like I was failing my children and not being a good enough mother absolutely factored into my burnouts. And I think that a lot of the issues that women face now in society, but actually the the issues are very much the same issues as I was experiencing back then. But they absolutely factor into that emotional load that additional stress, you know, we’ve got childcare that is very, very expensive, very inflexible. Women do take on disproportionately more of the emotional and domestic labour in the household. So you go and do a full day at work. You spend most of your salary on childcare, and then you come home and do all the rest of it. You know, all the washing, the cleaning, and all that sort of stuff. Obviously, this is a huge generalisation. But this is what the data tells us. And so you take you feel like you you’re spinning multiple plates at the same time or juggling multiple balls. And at some point, you’re going to drop some

Leanne Elliott  
declare went on to explain that as a woman saying you’re finding things hard, can attract a lot of backlash, in our comments about women’s working rights and balancing family will attract comments like well, you chose to have children. So how do we internalise that as as women, some of us stop talking about it don’t complain. Others conclude that finding it hard means failure, especially when we’re children. So you know, what do I do just keep pushing myself. I also think as well as a huge internalised pressure. You know, as an older millennial, I grew up in a world where I was told women can have it all. And now that I’m in my late 30s, I have a career that I love. I have marriage that I’m both very happy and and very proud of. I don’t have children. My choice. I’ve never felt that maternal drive. But by definition, no, I don’t have it all. But Can others. Is this a truth? Or is it a lie? Can women have it all? His hammer?

Hannah Austin  
I think having it all is knowing yourself and putting yourself first and I always thought that was the most selfish thing. I can’t even believe it’s coming out of my mouth. Now it means I’m doing my therapy. But I mean, I think having it all to me was all extrinsic things. Leann. It was the house. It was the car. It was the, you know, title, it was all the extrinsic things that I thought was going to make me happy. And when you have all that, and you’re still not happy, it’s not happy with looking yourself in the mirror. So for me, I had to really dig deep and say, without all these things, who am I right? Well, I’m looking myself in the mirror in the bathroom in the morning. If I don’t have a job, if I don’t have a title, what who is Hannah? And I had to dig I’m still digging, right? Even after two and a half years of doing a lot of self discovery and self awareness is, you know, those patterns of behaviour are ingrained in you for 4050 years. And I think that’s why people have midlife crisis is a 40. I mean, I think there’s a reason why is because we can only lie to ourselves. And by that societal dream for so long before your inner voice finally says stop believing this. What you should really believe is who you truly are. And that’s when kind of the, you know, sports car, you buy a sports car or you quit your job or you kind of as a woman, say you’re having a menopausal moment, but really, it’s just a redefining of who you really are a moment in life where you’re finally clear.

Leanne Elliott  
Hana brings us nicely on to our next topic of conversation. Menopause. We’ve seen it in the movies, right? Does anyone remember Samantha German stripping off in sex and sitting movie in that busy supermarket in Abu Dhabi, and there are so many Stand Up routines. One of my favourite actually is Sandra Chavez. She talks about perimenopause and the exciting 10 years before menopause actually kicks in so worth worth looking at. So yes, let’s go there. Let us ask the questions we’re all afraid to ask and women to I’ll be honest, I’m a 38 year old woman, I am staring down the barrel of menopause. So let’s educate ourselves. Let’s educate our husbands. Let’s educate our bosses. Dr. Kelly is an expert in helping women navigate Peri menopause, and she’ll be guiding us through this topic. Let’s start at the beginning. What is perimenopause and menopause? Here’s Dr. Kelly.

Dr Kellie Pritchard-Peschek  
It’s sort of a tricky one because it’s different for every woman. So it’s sort of an unknown entity. But what what we do know about perimenopause, so perimenopause is the first starting point of the hormonal changes that happens. So we go from our reproductive years where we have menstrual cycles, perhaps go through pregnancies. And then once we hit this age, that nice rhythmic menstrual cycle, hormonal fluctuation start to get a bit disrupted. So it’s not that my cyclical monthly pattern anymore. And so the main drivers there if we ever run out of oestrogen and progesterone, so they start to sort of go out of whack out of sync and decline over time. So that through from a hormonal perspective, what’s happening, those levels will drop down, eventually to a very low sort of baseline level. So in this phase of perimenopause, it can last anywhere from about two to eight or 10 years. So it’s quite a period of time. The median length is four years. Quite often, it lasts for about seven. And so essentially, in this time, this is where we go through all of the symptoms that we talk about, and we hear about the hot flushes the brain fog, we can our body composition can change, the mood swings, and the emotional outbursts, those types of things. This is where it happens. It’s actually in perimenopause. So we go through this for a number of years. And then at the point of menopause, this is actually you could almost put it down to a single day. So it’s what we call the 12 month anniversary of your last period. For menopause, technically to occur, you have to have no menses for 12 months. So once you’ve hit menopause, then everything after that for the remainder of our lifespan, we’re in what’s called post menopause. And so this is where our hormones have now sort of calmed down and they’re at that baseline level. So we obviously don’t have a period anymore. But we can still be a little bit symptomatic, just because we don’t have those hormones in our systems anymore. So, so yeah, perimenopause is actually what everybody sort of colloquially talked about as menopause. And it’s that symptomatic stage, and as I said, it can be different for many people. Every woman will probably have a different experience, different symptoms, different intensity of symptoms, different types. So there’s over 50 known symptoms of perimenopause. So, it can be quite, quite fluctuating and different things like in our lifestyle, so things like smoking, and passive smoking, that can cause an earlier onset work related job stress as well. So that can be correlated with an earlier onset and some of the symptoms of perimenopause. The other one is night shift work. So for people who work jobs that require, you know, chronic sort of night shift as part of their work, that can be a trigger for earlier onset. And then we come to other factors like race and and BMI. So even like how our physiology is from a BMI perspective, so that can have an impact on that onset of many perimenopause. So an earlier onset typically happens for Asian, Hispanic and black women. And then there can be a little bit of a difference in the length of that as well. So yeah, a few factors that that can impact.

Leanne Elliott  
I was also keen to understand from Dr. Kelly the typical symptoms she mentioned there are you know, 50 known symptoms beyond the ones that we’ve all heard of the hat, the hot flashes, the the mood swings, And you know that the cognitive challenges as well the brain fog. My main concern was that, you know, menopause causes significant changes in our hormones. And we know that hormones such as oestrogen, testosterone all have important roles in women’s health and emotions, if we’re experiencing this hormone dysregulation that’s going to impact on our brain chemistry in our mental health. So how can we tell the difference between symptoms of menopause and symptoms of mental health? Can we

Dr Kellie Pritchard-Peschek  
all actually when we’re looking at the symptomology associated with perimenopause, the big groupings are sort of the physical symptoms, the urogenital, the neurological with like the brain fog and the concentration, the base and motor where we get the hot flashes and the psychological and definitely some of the key symptoms in that psychology. The psychological symptoms box is depression, anxiety, the mood swings, and, you know, coming from that perceived stress so that actually, yeah, is actually a symptom of off perimenopause.

Leanne Elliott  
Speaking to Dr. Kelly, it also really struck me that perimenopause seems to happen at an age where we’re more than likely going to be in senior leadership roles, or a kind of peaks of our career or making career transitions. So how does this experiences of perimenopause and menopause impact our working life, our careers, and the sustainability of our work?

Dr Kellie Pritchard-Peschek  
Where, I guess where a lot of my work fit, so when I’m working with senior female leaders, they tend to be, you know, in their senior ranks, they’re in their 40s to early 50s. Climbing the ladder, and at the same time sitting alongside that they’re going into her medicals or some of the symptoms coming on. And really like this, a lot of women don’t know that. Some of the symptoms that they’re feeling or some of the health symptoms that they’re feeling are from perimenopause. And so a lot of what I do is that Karen clarity from chaos and, and trying to tease out, okay, what’s happening in sort of the physical and burnout space? What other menopause symptoms that might be showing up through some screenings for both to try and figure out like stratify and profile like where women are seeing. And so yeah, it’s really these convergence of, of two factors that can that can happen. And so where there’s added work stress, it sort of sits at the base of those and it can drive the burnout. Obviously, we know that we know that and then it can also worsen sort of that, that perimenopause, symptomology. And so the other thing is that the symptomology sort of does crossover to a degree physically as well.

Leanne Elliott  
We talked a lot about this in our our burnout episodes, if you haven’t listened to them, I do encourage you to go back just about how burnout has so many physical symptoms that that we might not associate with burnout and we can overlook and yet you know, as Kelly explained there, there was also then there’s crossover in symptoms between burnout and perimenopause, she was telling me that both in terms of the literature and in her experience supporting women, burnout and perimenopause are very similar in terms of a number of symptoms. She mentioned declines in cognitive functioning, short term memory loss, brain fog, a poor ability to concentrate, low mood anxiety, emotional deregulation, insomnia, pervading fatigue, low energy, your poor recovery weight game, the list goes on. And this is why Dr. K works to profile both perimenopause and burnout, to tease out the symptoms and understand what is attributed to what and then use that information to figure out a holistic and impactful treatment plan. Dr. Claire is also an expert in burnout. In fact, she’s known as the burnout doctor. So given what I’ve learned so far about perimenopause, I wanted to understand a bit more about burnout in women and starting with do men and women experience burnout differently. Here’s Claire,

Dr Claire Ashley  
I think we’ve men that they they generally speaking, find it harder to, to kind of cope with their emotions. And to talk about it. We see this played out in all areas of mental health actually not just burnout, and to access help, and actually, I think typically, in my clinical experience, what men tend to do is to use maladaptive coping strategies to manage their stress levels and their burnout. So that’s things like drinking more alcohol, perhaps turning into drugs or other substances, burying their head in the sand. Dare I say it? I think men find it harder to recognise and also to cope, really because men I don’t think are taught coping mechanisms in perhaps in the same ways that women use over a talk coping mechanisms. I don’t, I feel like there’s this kind of brand of toxic masculinity that doesn’t necessarily allow them to experience that. I think there is a wider conversation happening at the moment about men’s mental health, and there are strategies and things in place to try to manage that. And I think that, generally speaking, there is a bit more of a conversation about it. But I think men still find it very hard to recognise it themselves. And also to seek help. I think, in my clinical experience, I see slightly more women than men presenting with mental health problems. By now, definitely more women than men come forward. But I don’t think that necessarily means that they’re not experiencing it, as well. I’d say that yeah, I’d say that’s, that’s the difference that I’ve noticed.

Leanne Elliott  
This episode was designed to act as a sibling episode to an earlier conversation that I had with Jim Young. It’s the untold heartbreak of male leaders. And we will live that I will leave the link in, in the show notes, but where we dive into some of the points that Dr. Claire has picked up on that in terms of man’s experience of burnout, so do go check that out. Dr. Claire also has a degree in neuroscience which feeds into her clinical practice and advice around burnout recovery. And I was curious, you know, she mentioned these differences in in terms of how men or women experience emotions, the different coping mechanisms. Is that a societal factor? Is that how we’re socialised? Or do women’s and men’s brains function differently, has neuroscience research actually proved that men are from Mars and Women are from Venus? Here’s

Dr Claire Ashley  
what I would say in the literature, that I haven’t read anything that says that, that kind of talks about how the male and female brain experience stress differently. But it might be that that’s because the research hasn’t done hasn’t been done or reported. A lot of neuroscience studies are done in animal brains. We have a lot of in terms of the studies that have been done on people, a lot of it is kind of functional MRI scans. And I think there’s a good split between the sexes, in terms of that work. So I would say in terms of what I’ve read, I haven’t come across anything that differentiates between the male and the female brain. But that doesn’t mean to say that that doesn’t exist. So once

Leanne Elliott  
again, we’re perhaps not quite as different as we think the symptoms of burnout seem to be the same. Our brains seem to be the same as far as we know. But as we’ve learned, you know, socially, societally women face different pressures to that made me ask, does that mean that women are at higher risk of burnout? Here’s Dr. Kelly,

Dr Kellie Pritchard-Peschek  
I think fun time. We are wired that way, as women that we we do tend to take on a lot. And we do tend to just keep going and keep pushing, not ask for help. Those types of behaviours, I do see that I’ve had it and I see it particularly play out in the workplace. Coming back to sort of some of those, making some of those stigmas. And, you know, with the inequalities in the workplace, women are having to work harder to get to the same place. And well, from what I’ve seen, and also just talking to other executives, women, it they don’t want to be seen as weak, either. They don’t want to be seen that they can’t handle it. They can’t handle the pace, they can’t handle the workload. And so there’s also dissembling, which I think comes back to what you were talking about in terms of just driving just keep on going, keep on doing and make sure that you can keep up with everything, which is obviously not a healthy place to operate from.

Leanne Elliott  
Yes, that sounds familiar. You know, the things that society tells us all we tell ourselves, you know, we have to fight for the positions we get in work anyway. So don’t be weak. Don’t be a walkover don’t be that person, that woman who cries at work. And that sounds kind of fundamentally opposite to the roles that we’re socialised. To play at home, to be nurturing to be caring to be stoic. Being strong as a woman seems to mean very different things in different environments. Or maybe that’s just me. I asked Hannah do women how To be different people at work and at home to be successful, has shared that having different personalities for home and work was something that she had experienced. And it also inspired a chapter in her book Hello had me at heart called Creativity and play. Here’s Hannah.

Hannah Austin  
I had two personalities. For the 20 years I was in corporate I had work Kiana, which was very responsible to cell phones, give me a project, I’ll tackle it. And then I had home Hannah. And it was only when I went to a retreat with some work people, I think we went to the coast or to my bosses wedding or something like that. And my, my co workers, my peers saw fun, Hannah. And they said to me, kind of we love fun, Hannah. And I was like, so do not like work, Hannah. Like what? You know, and it was an eye opening moment when they they really what someone said to me really jive and it hit home. And I thought, gosh, am I two different people? Like, who am I showing up at as work right. And so that’s when I wrote creativity in play, and really trying to talk through like, I actually used to sneak away or you know, cancel meetings or postpone meetings so that I could go and build these sounds silly but bouquets of flowers at this grocery store. I even wasn’t impersonating the person that worked there. So I could build it. You know, for someone else, kind of a funny story, you have to read the book. But what one of the women, the client said to me after I built her, okay, she’s like you really make you made something really beautiful, you made something really tiny and beautiful, but it’s going to make an impact. And that was a moment to me that I was like, Oh my gosh, I can actually give someone make someone have a beautiful day doing something that I enjoyed. It’s not being responsible. It’s not managing 100 staff, it’s not putting in a new pathway. It’s not discharging a patient from the hospital like I can, I have other talents, I have other skills, but that I have neglected for so long. Because I think as women, we often just have other things for other people, whether it’s her husband or wife or kids. We don’t ever have something just for us. And I for me creativity and play is something that’s just for you something that ignites this positivity, this energy is nice, your true self. And that’s my hope and writing creativity and play that Limon read this and men, and they say, I want something just for me. And they take that class,

Leanne Elliott  
creativity and play is actually my favourite chapter in Hannah’s book, and I and it really resonated with me. I’ve had times in my life on my career from being honest, where I have felt like I’ve needed to be a little less myself to fit in, you know, or, or to act a little bit stupid or not embarrass the boss, especially when you know, the solution seems really obvious. Again, just me.

Hannah Austin  
I feel like we lock away. And I feel like that’s where we live in this box. This normal and extraordinary life, right? We live this day to day mundane. And I hate to say it, but I feel like as women, often we want to dumb ourselves down, but we dim our lights to fit in. And we are so busy putting ourselves in a box, that we actually don’t realise that we don’t need a box, right? We need to be having free space, we need that creativity. And I think that’s what’s happening in our world. Like there’s not a lot of creativity and flow like it’s just so rigorous and so I formulated and so I think get out your boss, you know, start getting colour, bring some colour in your life or taking class. Of course,

Leanne Elliott  
there is a darker side to shining less and being you know, less bright, less noticeable in the workplace, not drawing attention to ourselves. Sexual harassment in the workplace is still a problem for many businesses. As the Equity and Human Rights Commission states no workplace is immune. And a lack of reported cases does not mean it’s not occurred. You don’t have to look very hard to find some really shocking statistics. The trade unions Congress, for example, reported that 52% of women and 63% of women aged between 18 and 24 reported experiencing sexual harassment at work. 32% said they’d been subjected to unwelcome sexual jokes 28% and experienced sexual comments regarding their body or attire. 23% of been touched against their consent 20% had experienced unwanted verbal sexual advances. And 12% had been sexually assaulted. Hannah and I spoke about this. And she bravely shared her own personal experience.

Hannah Austin  
I mean, especially, you know, in health care, there was a lot of women leaders, right? Naturally, a lot of nurses and doctors are female, especially administrators. We had a larger population of women, but a lot of the leaders were men. And so I did experience several opportunities within my 20 year career of you know, bias discrimination. Lots of people, lots of men would say oh no wonder why you’re getting so many movements or no wonder why you have so many compliments or you’re so nice to the families or nice to look at you know, things like that and was a young woman, I didn’t know that. I know, it felt icky to me, but I didn’t know what to do about it. And in my first job, and Alas, actually, in high school, I was, you know, sexually harassed by one of the older men. And I told my female boss about it, and she took care of it right away. And she’s actually, in my book named Sharon, she’s one of my first bosses I’ve ever had. And she and I’ve seen it touches you can see from for 20 years later, but I remember feeling like God, I trusted this woman to tell her what happened to me. And she went to ball for me, and she took care of it. And that guy still work there. But I can tell you, he never, ever did anything like that to me again, and he was reprimanded for it. And he was held accountable. And that was like a moment to me that it’s like, okay, I can trust another woman. There’s another woman that’s listening to me and another woman that’s going to deliver exactly what this person needed.

Leanne Elliott  
If I’m being honest, I wasn’t surprised by his experience. I’ve experienced it, too. I’ve experienced patronising and manipulative treatment to things like Oh, come on, sweetheart, you can do this for me, you know, to actually being you know, having that unwanted physical contact. So yeah, it doesn’t surprise me that, that Hannah and I, and like so many other women have experienced this. What did surprise me there, sadly, was that Hannah reported it, and her manager escalated it. I did ask her about this, I asked her if her manager, her female manager, was ever concerned that it may have this reporting, this event may have a negative impact on both of them.

Hannah Austin  
I mean, like years later, we’ve actually talked about that same situation. She just thanked me for coming forward. And she basically put a line in the sand and said, no matter what happens, this is wrong. I mean, I think that’s what it takes. It takes a ballsy move, it takes a risk, it takes another woman standing up for another woman to say this is unacceptable, and it’s never going to happen again. I think it’s the silence that kills a lot of women, young woman’s dreams. And frankly, if I were to go to another boss, and they didn’t do anything about it, that’s when that kind of erosion happens in your spirit and your soul like this is all they deserve.

Leanne Elliott  
There is a lot of interesting research into generational differences relating to relationships in the workplace, particularly what is and what is not acceptable. Gen. Zed, for example. They’re the first generation to enter the workforce, post the me to movement. And research is showing that this is having potentially an impact on on how they interact physically at work. They’re not as touchy feely, as when it comes to colleagues. I was reading a survey from reflective and it’s actually saying that Gen. Ed’s are much more similar to boomers and their attitude towards this physical contact, flirtation, feminization. You know, millennials in contrast, were saying that 50% of millennials will go in for hugs, 10% of Gen Xers will go in for a kiss on the cheek. It’s a very different relationship we seem to be having in terms of what is and what isn’t acceptable physical connection, even when it’s not steeped in anything more more sinister. I mean, we talk a lot about generational differences in psychology in the world of work. And that’s because the significant changes that we’ve experienced for the last 50 years are really having this impact on how different age groups are experiencing the world. Now, the prevalence of sexual harassment may not be trending down as much as we’d like, but its lack of acceptability in the workplace has absolutely changed. So what else has changed? I asked her about her observations of Gen Zed and young millennial women, what do they want from their work and their careers?

Hannah Austin  
You know, I just spent a week with someone significantly younger than me, she’s like, a nice to me. And, you know, I was listening to her and she has a full time job. And she’s actually starting a consulting agency on the side. And she’s doing amazingly well with her consulting agency, but she’s so afraid to let go of that, you know, typical job, it’s bringing in, you know, consistent income. And I was listening to her, you know, just sitting back not trying to, like, be a coach and jump in. And she was really kind of talking through in her mind. What was most important to her. And what she landed on was life. She wants to build a career around living, not a career around what a career wants, right, or your business wants. And so she I told her, I love what you’re saying that you’re trying to build your life backwards, right? I always thought, if I’m doing this, and this and this, I’m going to get to the life I want. She started with the life she wants and building the career around that. And I just thought, God, she’s so incredible. She’s so amazing. Like she’s doing it right. The challenge is with people who work in that organisation where you’re going to be leaving. We’re trying to keep those people because those are the most freedom and enlightening and exciting new people with fresh ideas. So how can companies build their company and retain their employees and flip it around to what is the life you want? Building job description, so it’s like person and then the life person and then the job Um, and I think it’s really interesting because I think that’s what organisations are struggling with when, you know, I told someone that I was leaving, they’re like, What can we do to keep you? Well, it was too late, we, you should have built the job around me right or the job around the lifestyle that I wanted, or at least offer me like, for example, Friday off or something like that. So that I could be, you know, a little bit more energised to do the work. So I think companies have to think differently about, you know, paving the way to keep young people engaged.

Leanne Elliott  
I also asked her about her experiences in corporate and often being the only woman in the room. As it turns out, this was what inspired her to start her own business that is fully women operated.

Hannah Austin  
I don’t know what if you’re at this chapter yet, where I do talk about, you know, only being one woman in the room, one woman at the table, a sense of competition, I will be completely honest and transparent. I have self sabotage myself, I have stuff, I’ve sabotage other women, I’m just gonna put it out there, who I was afraid that they were going to take my job, take my project, because that’s how it was raised, right, that we had to be competitive. And when I left my job, I made a promise to myself, that I would rebuild that, you know, turn those mistakes into legacy, and that I would focus on mentoring women, I would help women who, when I didn’t get help, right, I would be that change agent, I would be the show or not the person that said, Don’t be this person. And I was very conscious and figuring out okay, what women do I want to be a part of this, who are the women that will foster that environment? At the same time, you know, rolling out a woman led company, especially during COVID, like women were burning out at a higher rate than men. And it’s just statistically the way it was during COVID. And before. And so it was figuring out, how can I help those women, specifically, is was there a company replaced that they could just go just for them. And that’s how I initially started. And then of course, it’s gotten certainly bigger than other genders. But I think for me, it was most important to turn those mistakes in my heart into a legacy that I could leave,

Leanne Elliott  
I want to end this conversation with some practical advice and support of my experts on on all the topics that we’ve touched on today. But before I do, we’ve purposely call this episode, Women’s Health a guide for male leaders. So I want to I want to bring the men back into the conversation, you know, minority group surgery change, whether it be women, people of colour in the queer community, we all talk about the importance of allies, allies are a people or groups of people that have the same beliefs, interests, values was, but typically that the capacity and resources to help and allies are essential, because we can accomplish so much more. If we have people who believe in our core supporting us, the way our society is set up, does mean that women are in many different ways, disproportionately disadvantaged. Can we have it all? I don’t know. And I asked Dr. Claire Ashley, about this as well. And I think her her response to my question, can we have all perfectly frames why we need these allies in our life to support us and help us create this change?

Dr Claire Ashley  
Here’s Dr. Claire. That is such a big question, isn’t it? Because the feminist in me wants to say, well, of course we can have it all. I think that I think that perhaps that is an unrealistic expectation, given how society is set up. I’m not saying that, that we that’s not something that we should aspire to. Absolutely, I think that, that women should be supported in the workplace that we should have a conversation about flexible work. And you know what, you know, the other thing to remember is that what works for women works for men as well, you know, this is about levelling the playing field and making it better for everyone, not just women. But I think at this present time, I think it’s really, really hard to have it all, whatever, whatever that means.

Leanne Elliott  
It’s important that we engage our lives not just to, to change the world and make it a better place for women, but to as you know, Doctor classes there to make it a better place for men and for everybody. With that in mind, I asked Dr. Kelly, how do we promote women’s rights in a way that engages our allies and doesn’t push them away?

Dr Kellie Pritchard-Peschek  
I assume here. I mean, so much of this almost comes down to engaging in conversations just doesn’t sound enough. But I feel like there has to be more open conversations and recognition and a commitment to real change. Like we don’t want we just want equity. You know, we don’t want to see above or, you know, advanced at rapid rates. We’re only talking about basic human needs to a degree.

Leanne Elliott  
I could not agree more. It sounds so simple, but having these conversations breeds empathy and understanding They help us to reflect on our own behaviours and identify positive changes and actions that that we can take. You know, I felt this way after, after our old and Jim Young’s conversation helped me reflect on, on what my beliefs and behaviours were and how they were impacting him. You know, if you’re not ready to have that conversation yet, you know, and perhaps as a woman, you might be finding it hard to manage working kids, you might be finding perimenopause really difficult, but you might not quite feel comfortable enough to have that conversation yet. Maybe just consider sharing this, this episode, you know, it could serve as a as a starting point to to have those conversations with with the people in your lives. I also asked Hannah, her thoughts on how men can better support the women in their lives.

Hannah Austin  
And I think that’s a great question. I’m actually doing some work with a company here in Portland, they’re having gender issues, all their women are leaving at all their men are getting promoted. So I offered to do an engagement session with them and have a very frank discussion in a town hall with women and men in the room of Hey, guys, raise your hand, how do you know how to support your your female colleague? Okay, if you don’t, here’s some scripting, and here’s how to do it. We’re doing roleplay sessions, Leanne, and I think this is what it’s gonna take. It’s gonna be a town hall and honest discussion, lunches. You know, let’s talk about bias. Let’s talk about the barriers. Let’s talk about the system. And that needs to be bred from the inside out of an organisation. But it’s gonna take a while, right? I mean, it took a long time to erode the system, it’s going to take a long time to build it back.

Leanne Elliott  
So alongside the societal challenges that women experienced, we’ve also learned a lot about menopause, perimenopause. And what a challenging experience it can be. I asked Dr. Kelly, how can we better support ourselves through menopause?

Dr Kellie Pritchard-Peschek  
A few key areas that, that I really work on with women, and it’s the physical health and the hormone health as the two key areas and, and the mind. So you know, their physical health is really looking at okay, how can we optimise things like our sleep? How can we work on strategies there? How can we start to mitigate our stress because that stress can actually impact and, and worse than some of our symptoms, looking at some of our lifestyle behaviours, as well. So we know that alcohol can trigger some of the symptoms. So looking at what we can modify there. And where else like exercising as well can be a great strategy for a lot of things that are stress mitigation.

Leanne Elliott  
So in addition to the societal challenges that women experience, we’ve also learned a lot about menopause, perimenopause. And what a challenging experience it can be. I asked Dr. Kelly, there’s anything that we can do ourselves to really help us better manage these symptoms. She gave lots of great advice. She said, you know, focusing on on our physical health and our hormone health are really good places to start looking at our diet, looking at our sleep, looking at ways to mitigate stress within our lives, looking at some of our lifestyle behaviours, you know, alcohol consumption, how often we exercise and finally, a really big one social connection, making sure we have that social network around us and stay in contact with the people we need, whether that be friends, whether that be colleagues that being our kids, know that social connection is going to be a huge, huge factor in helping kids navigate this really challenging time. I also asked Kelly about support that she offers. So more professional support, and working with an expert to help women navigate perimenopause,

Dr Kellie Pritchard-Peschek  
the work that I do, I work highly individualised in one on one coaching programmes that could be anywhere from three, six or nine months. And I work on three pillars. So the body mind and hormone health. And in the boilers, where we talk about, you know, these physical elements that I’ve mentioned before, where we optimise and improve your sleep, we mitigate your stress, we look at recovery, in particular that stress recovery balance because that’s important the recovery and the energy for this, you noticed that fatigue and low energy that we feel so we address Thor’s and then from the hormone health as well, so obviously looking at the reproductive hormone side and also the stress hormones that can play a role there in terms of like that, the symptomology and the severity. So it’s really based on those three pillars over a couple of months. It’s one on one consultation, and it’s really working on how we and how we can suit those strategies to you in your context. And in your lifestyle. I also use data driven insights. So I have a work device on I get all of my coaches to wear that so that I have the biometric data as well. So when you tell me you have bad sleep, I can dive in and see exactly what is happening with your sleep. We look at what is happening with your stress, what are some of the stress triggers that we can sort of start to mitigate, to really pull down some of those symptoms, we look at these lifestyle factors and what impact alcohol and excessive caffeine can have on the symptoms. So yeah, so it’s from the ladies, but then it’s also in terms of their subjective experience that then it’s also using the power of the data that we see, and really forming that into an intervention, then so we follow that over the months that we’re working together, and really underpinned by behaviour change. So making some of this you know, habits and routines because it is a couple of years, as we know that this is going to go on for so how do we set you are with the strategy for the going to be sustainable, so resetting new habits and and sort of those behaviour changes in the lifestyle as well,

Leanne Elliott  
a really interesting approach that Kelly takes there. And I’m sure I will enjoy the the wearables aspects, and that’s one of his predictions for for 2023, and wearables helping with physical and mental health. So there you go. Kelly has also generously offered all of our listeners who do want to access this type of support a 15% discount on her six month one to one virtual training programme, we will leave Kelly’s contact details in the show notes where you can contact her and when you do be sure to mention this podcast to claim your discount. With that in mind, I started by asking Dr. Claire what her vision for the future is, in terms of women’s health, physically, and mentally,

Dr Claire Ashley  
I’d like to see employers taking some responsibility for the health and well being of their staff and getting rid of burnout culture. And that means listening to the problems that women have, and actively supporting them and making impactful changes that mean that they can be the best employee that they can be for you, you know, more productive for making more money, or at the end of the day. That’s what it’s about, isn’t it, but also mean that they have a better experience of work. I’d like to see more women in leadership positions. Something that frustrates me with, you know, obviously, I work in the public sector, I see a lot of courses, you know, leadership for women learn how you can be a leader, break the glass ceiling, and all that sort of stuff. But that that frustrates me slightly because I feel that that puts the onus for change on the women themselves. And it feeds into this thing called the deficit model or so I’m not sure if you’re aware of the deficit model yet. And so the deficit model refers to when there’s a when there’s a problem, generally speaking, in the literature, this is to do with problems like racism. So when you have a systemic problem, like racism, the deficit model assumes that the person that is the victim of whatever systemic problem there is, it’s their responsibility to change it. And we definitely see this within with, you know, big problems such as racism, but I also see this happen in burnout, and with women’s health problems as well. The onus for change is placed on the victims of the systemic pressure. And I think that that’s a far too, it’s very, it’s an easy way out, I think, for employers and for leaders to say, well, you know, for instance, if you don’t have women being leaders in an organisation or lots of women at a senior level? Well, we’ll put it on a course that that so that women can become leaders? Well, actually, you need to remove some of the barriers, you know, and why should the women be the ones that do that. So I would like to see more change happening at a higher level to allow women to access senior positions that don’t mean that those women have to have to take on that responsibility solely themselves. I’d like to see women more represented in scientific data and studies. Because as we said before, if you don’t know that, if you don’t have the data to say that there’s a problem, then you don’t have anything to to bounce change off of either. I also

Leanne Elliott  
ask Claire about what businesses can do to better support women and all employees with burnout prevention and recovery.

Dr Claire Ashley  
So if we look at what the data says about burnout prevention in the workplace, I think start with some low hanging fruit and stuff that you know that you can really genuinely do. So peer support and creating a psychologically safe space to work is probably the easiest way of doing it. So we know that peer support and socialising with your peers is really protective against burnout, it builds better team working, it builds individual resilience as well. So perhaps have a think about whether or not you can have a night out, or go on a team building day, you know, that stuff really does genuinely make a difference to how well your team will function and also how the individual members of the team will feel about their work. When we look at the workplace factors that cause burnout, you’ve got six workplace factors that, that feed into burnout and peer support tackles a lot of them. So we will tackle feeling valued, because that’s a risk factor for burnout. If you don’t feel valued, it also tackles community. So communities really having a robust community is really important at work, reward as well as another one. So reward at work doesn’t necessarily have to be financial and being your paycheck at the end of the month. It can also be the relationships that you have at work with your teammates. So that takes a lot of the boxes, just just thinking about how you’re how you’re getting your team to work together, to socialise together and to support each other. And then, in terms of creating a psychologically safe space to work, there’s a lot of data that suggests that that also is protected against burnout is really good for fostering individual resilience and better teams. So that basically means creating an environment where people feel safe to share grievances, or to talk about problems that they have without fear of retribution. And the way to do this, if you want to lead from the top is it’s an again, it’s such low hanging fruit, and it’s so simple. It’s being civil. It’s not even being nice in the workplace. It’s just being civil. And being civil has a huge impact on mental well being and on. And on productivity of your organisation. The the effects are far far reaching. So if you’re thinking about, again, something to start with over the next month, I think that that’s a good place to start with, as well

Leanne Elliott  
declare actually Talk Talk me through this research. And it is really interesting, you know, it’s not, as she said, it’s not all about having these kind of really awesome, everyone loves each other work environments, it’s actually just being civil and being civil often just remains, you know, removing that toxicity. So yeah, in the research that Dr. Clark quoted, it said that, if someone is rude within a team, 80% of people lose time worrying about the rudeness. 30% reduce their quality of work 48% reduce their time at work. 25% of it 25% of people take it out and service users and 12% Leave. So yeah, it’s not. It’s just about being civil start. They’re a great starting point from from class. And finally, I asked Hannah, if there is any women listening, that perhaps are at the start of that career, what advice should we be giving them

Hannah Austin  
I would say find a mentor, as soon as possible. Find someone in your organisation, female if you’re a female, another female, who you trust, respect and you want to learn from and start now. Invite them to coffee, ask shadow them. Ask Frank questions, have a list of great questions available. And I would also align yourself with another male in the company. Is there someone who you trust as well, who you can have a conversation with to help you elevate into your career as well? I think there’s, there’s opportunities for mentorship. And I think succession planning is something that a lot of companies aren’t even aren’t isn’t even on their radar. Leanne. I also think we need to build systems and organisations, especially with women, where if you look at your annual review, or your 360, evaluation, whatever you’re rated on, I would encourage young women to ask their supervisor or their boss or managers to incorporate a dei component or incorporate a collaborative component of your 360. Because I think that’s most important is are you aligning with people in your organisation to communicate? Are you bringing diversity inclusion to your Are you walking the walk and talking the talk? I don’t think young women can ask for something that they’re not modelling as well.

Leanne Elliott  
Thank you so much for listening to this conversation. And I will see you again very soon.

Al Elliott  
Well, I hope you agree that that was quite eye opening as a male. There’s lots and lots of things that I hadn’t even thought about. I mean, to be honest, menopause does not sound like fun at all. I’m kind of pleased that I’m a male. And I don’t have to go through that. But obviously, I understand a bit more and I understand about the whole idea of perimenopause is as well, something which a word I genuinely hadn’t heard of, until we’d had these experts on and the added explain what it was to me. So not only is this going to help me to support the man through the next 20 years, as well, but also as a wife and as a co founder, but also I hope it’s going to help you as a male leader to understand the unique problems that women have that perhaps we weren’t ever aware of. As I mentioned the beginning. Leanne has got some amazing resources she’s put together entire list To the hundreds and hundreds of resources, as well as links to all of our expert guests, and you can find all of those in the show notes as well as on the dedicated episode page, the link of which is in the show notes. So yet another JAM PACKED episode that I genuinely hope was a useful quick note, as stats are showing us that about 65% of you who listen to this aren’t subscribed, if you don’t subscribe, then you’re not going to get all the rest of the episodes coming up for the rest of this year. But also subscribing really, really helps us to move up the charts and to perhaps get that coveted new and noteworthy position in Apple podcasts. So if you did enjoy this, please click subscribe, and also share it perhaps that’d be really, really useful. We’ll be back next week with most of around workplace culture. We both back together again next week, so you can look out for some banter and also the news round feature which was missing this week. And also that word of the week that Leanne loves to find. I found one for her next week, and I’m gonna see if she’s going to use it. So have a fantastic week, and we’ll see you next time on the truth lies and workplace culture podcast. Bye for now.