Zoe Amar 0:04 We are delighted that this episode of Starts at the Top is sponsored by Arvato CRM Solutions. Arvato CRM Solutions designs and delivers award winning customer service, business process outsourcing, and digital and Intelligent Automation solutions with some of the world's most respected brands, as well as innovative charity and public sector clients. They partner with clients to help them define their customer experience and transformation strategies by implementing the right technology, people and processes to improve their customer journey while driving new efficiencies and helping them prepare for the future. To find out more about how Arvato CRM Solutions could help an organisation like yours, and to receive a free no obligation chat visit arvato.co.uk/walesairambulance. Ben Lindsay 1:13 We always have a check in before we get into the tasks, we ask the question how you doing? What's the emotional measurements of how you are feeling in your job as well? When you get an opportunity to build your own culture these are some of the important things. Zoe Amar 1:28 Welcome to a brand new episode of Starts at the Top, our podcast about leadership, digital, and change. I'm Zoe Amar. Paul Thomas 1:36 And I'm Paul Thomas. Our podcast is all about leadership, it brings you interviews with leaders who we believe are driving positive change in the world. Zoe Amar 1:44 Change comes in many forms and we're equally interested in speaking to leaders who are making incremental change and shifting the dial within their organisations as we are speaking about huge systemic changes that impact the world of work. The driving force of this podcast is to share these stories across sectors and industries so that we can all learn from each other. Paul Thomas 2:06 Today we're sharing the first episode of two with a focus on mental health. This week, we're sharing our conversation with Ben Lindsey OBE, founder of Power The Fight, an award winning charity, which tackles violence affecting young people. Ben shares his thoughts on how his team builds and sustains resilience and mental strength to cope with the challenges they face on a daily basis. It's a fantastic conversation, and Ben is an inspiration. So we hope you enjoy that one. Zoe Amar 2:33 Our next episode will be our interview with Sarah Hughes of Mind. And that was also a wonderfully insightful and thoughtful conversation about the work that Mind does shining a light on the challenges surrounding mental health in the UK. Paul Thomas 2:48 So given the topic of mental health this week, Zoe and I thought we would share a few personal and honest thoughts on our own mental well being challenges. And the next time out maybe some thoughts on coping mechanisms and how we, how we try to stay mentally healthy. So let me start by asking you, Zoe, how are ya? Zoe Amar 3:07 I'm okay I've had a bit of a overwhelming day, just with a number of power cuts in this area, and then also, and then also just the weather and that sort of thing. But yeah, I'm not too bad. How about you? Paul Thomas 3:22 Yeah, not too bad, not too bad. And it's that sort of thing? Isn't it that completely disrupt your your day throw you off your your path. And I guess in this sort of busy climate, that's one of the things that we all struggle with is time and if time gets disrupted, especially during the working day, then that can, that can throw all kinds of spanners into the works. What do you do? What do you make of time pressures? Zoe Amar 3:48 I think that's one of the things that can have a real impact on mental health can't it, you and I have spoken before about the overwhelm that comes with modern working life and having a billion emails to deal with, lots of different requests coming in trying to juggle work and family, I'm sure that is a challenge that many of our listeners will know really, really, really well. And then also, there's that, that whole thing of feeling like you need to be in several different places at once. And I don't know whether any of our listeners maybe can relate to this. But I'm one of these people who there's a very fine line for me between being really busy to the point where I feel really kind of energised and excited because I've got so much going on. And then suddenly it gets to a point where it's like putting an extra plate on top of a really big pile of plates. It goes from the point where it all feels good. And I feel like I'm getting lots of things done to actually this is a bridge too far. And this is getting really quite difficult now. Paul Thomas 4:52 Yeah, I get that as well. When you're busiest sometimes that's the most energising isn't it if you sort of think you know, you can't be beaten, everything's fine. And you're on a you're on a roll. And then that last thing, and it's usually a silly thing, really silly thing. It's just the bit that makes everything topple over and then you. Yeah, you're in a bit of a spiral, then you can't get back from it. Yeah. And I think that's the biggest battle for me is this sense of, of time not being able to control time not having enough of it. It's passing too quickly. I have a really weird relationship with it, where I always think it's running out rather than there's bags of it, if that makes sense. So yeah. Maybe not glass half empty. Hour-glass half empty. Zoe Amar 5:45 Yeah, I think that is is a challenge, isn't it? And I think as you get older, that does feel like something you become more aware of? Definitely. Paul Thomas 5:56 Yeah. And then just you know, and another one that I sort of wrote down, I was thinking about, you know, what are the sorts of things that stress me out, and I don't think I actually thought of this. We've mentioned this several times on the podcast, I don't think I really focused on mental health, when I was working full time travelling into London, that wasn't really sounds ridiculous, wasn't really time to focus on it. And I think it's the pandemic that forced it on me. And then obviously, I think, again, talked about this on this podcast before my dad died last year, and he had vascular dementia. And always, in the back of my mind, is that sort of sense of, Well, if he had it, do I have it? So I get inordinately stressed out by not being able to remember things. And it's nothing, you know, I don't think it is anything to be concerned about just yet. That's another thing, should I go out and get myself checked up? Should I go and have some of the tests that my dad had, and all that sort of stuff. But that sort of sense that forgetting stuff and not remembering what's next, I've got surrounded by post it notes, and always talking about how the stress of sort of context switching and things like that can leave you a bit exhausted. But I think it is just that for the time being, it's stuff that piles up. And as I said, the context switching between things, but there's, you know, that that worry in the back of your mind, it's all sort of time and memory related. And it sends again, you're into a bit of a sort of a spiral from time to time. Zoe Amar 7:29 And I think that is really normal. And I do think there's something about the ongoing impact of going through an ongoing mental health impact of life changes that tend to happen around this age, and also that many people will have experienced during the pandemic as well. I, as you know, also lost someone I really cared about really good friend of mine, about a year ago, and the start of this year, after Brad's six month anniversary was was really hard mental health wise, it was incredibly difficult, really, really difficult. And one of the things that Ben talks about in the interview that we're going to play shortly is he talks about the value of therapy. And if I hadn't had been fortunate enough to have access to your therapy, I would have really, really struggled during that time. So I'm a massive advocate for therapy, the way I always say is, it's a bit like having a personal trainer for the mind, someone who can help keep you mentally in really good shape, and also support you when you're going through a really rough period. So that is something I would always always encourage people to seek out. Paul Thomas 8:50 You'll be pleased to know it's on a post it on the bottom of my monitor. Under my monitor, I've got a poster that says Do I need a coach? And underneath that it says Do I need a therapist? But it's on a to do list. But it's one of those things, isn't it and as you know, you know, I always like to get football into the podcast, but I listen to a lot of football podcasts. And quite often, I guess because of the predominant audience. I think it's wrong to say that predominant audiences, some of the male football podcast is going to be male football fans. And one of the things that they constantly advertises is BetterHelp, which is the online therapy, which again feels like it's a sort of an idea to explore at some point. Yeah, one of those things that floats around in the back of my mind, but I haven't actually activated yet. So what, well I'm not gonna ask you what sort of things you discussed with your therapist, but how does that work? Is it is it a regular session? Or is it something that you can sort of dial up when you need to dial up? Zoe Amar 9:50 Oh, I'm really happy to talk about this. I mean, this episode and also the next one amazing conversation with with Sarah and of course this amazing guy conversation we have coming up with Ben, I think is good to be open about this stuff. So I see my therapist every two to three weeks for now, I talk to him online. And we either talk about things that have happened to me when I was quite young, I had quite a difficult childhood, because my dad died when I was basically a child. And that was really difficult. And other than that, we tend to talk about, you know, just the sort of like particular things that might have happened at work, or maybe family that I might have found a bit challenging. And I always always feel better afterwards, I've never had a therapy session and regretted it or thought that wasn't a really good use of an ad. It's a bit like, you know, when you go to the gym, or you go for a run or something, and you're thinking, Oh, my God, should I be doing this? And actually, there's that extra thing, when you go to therapy, where you're thinking, Oh, this is going to be quite difficult. And I actually genuinely don't like talking about myself, which might come as a surprise to people who are 'god she's just written another of her 500 blogs this week'. But I actually genuinely don't like talking about very personal things with people I don't know that well. But it's, it's always been really useful and really constructive. And, yeah, I really, really encourage people to do, I think if you're thinking about doing it, it's a really good sign that you should do it. And if something doesn't feel quite right, even if you can't define what that is, then definitely go and see someone and explore. And if you can't afford therapy, you know, go to talk to your GP. Because there may be some therapeutic services you can access to the NHS, or even just talk to a really, really good friend. I think getting stuff out on the table having a look at it, there's almost a digital way of doing things, isn't there of that? What is this problem? We know something isn't right, but let's define what this problem is. And I'm a great believer that once you can see the edges of a problem, even if it's something huge and scary, you got to give something a name, you give something a name, and then you can do something about it. So I'd encourage anyone listening who's not feeling great, or who's just worried about something, there's some recurring thought or worry or fear or whatever it is, where you're, it's just coming off your mind again, and again, it's a bit like that niggly pain that you might think actually I need to go and see a doctor about that. Just do it. You won't regret it. Paul Thomas 12:35 Good advice, good advice. Maybe I should take up myself. I think it's well worth doing that. And of course, you know, I think one of the benefits of, one of the many benefits of doing this podcast is that we get to speak to people with all sorts of different experiences. And this comes up a lot. So it feels like we sort of have a you know, every few days when we do a podcast recording another chance to have a conversation with somebody else that sort of facing challenging situations. And the benefit I guess of you and I having that sort of 10 to 15 minutes chat before and after a podcast recording, checking in with each other and making sure we're both okay. And on an even keel, I guess is the best way to put it. So the next time we speak, what we will do is we will share some of our coping mechanisms, you've already mentioned Zoe, running music is another one but we can talk through a bit about how we get ourselves out of these little episodes of annoyance or frustration or mental ill health. Anyway, should we get on with our interview? Zoe Amar 13:44 Perfect. Paul Thomas 13:46 So now for our interview with Ben Lindsay. Zoe Amar 13:49 We are very excited to welcome Ben Lindsay OBE to Starts at the Top. Ben is founder of power the fight launched in 2019. It's an award winning charity which tackles violence affecting young people, creating long term solutions for sustainable change and acting as a link between the community and policymakers. Ben was winner of the charity times 2022 Rising Leader Award and one of the evening standards progress 1000 London's most influential people for 2018. He's an experienced presenter, trainer and facilitator, with more than 20 years spent working with high risk young people in the field of gangs and serious youth violence. Ben began his career developing programmes in some of the most challenging estates in London. In 2003, he became a learning mentor at a primary school in the Borough of Lewisham before joining the Lewisham Youth Offending Service, where he worked in a number of roles including leading the Early Intervention Team, whilst at Lewisham Ben develop several successful programmes including the groundbreaking Knife Crime Prevention Programme Double Edge for offenders of knife crime, which was featured in the Gang and Group Offenders - A Practitioners Handbook of Ideas and Interventions. In 2010. Ben develop the gangs and serious youth violence strategy for Camden Council, and then went on to work for the mental health charity MAC-UK leadding their mini map project. Ben was chair of the Greenwich independent advisory group until 2016, between 2016 and 2020, and was lead pastor at Emmanuel New Cross in southeast London. He currently sits on the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan's violence reduction unit reference group, and on the cross party youth violence commission. His first book, the number one bestseller, We Need to Talk about Race: Understanding the Black Experience in White Majority Churches, was released in 2019. Ben was awarded an OBE in King Charles I New Year's Honours List for services to communities in southeast London. Ben, welcome to Starts at the Top. We're so happy to have you here. Ben Lindsay 16:10 Thank you for having me. Yeah, it's always funny when I hear all that stuff, which you just say... is it really? Is that really me? But yeah, apparently it was. So yeah, that's, it's great to be here. Thank you so much for having me. Zoe Amar 16:24 You have quite the bio. And You've obviously done so many amazing things, which we're really excited to talk to you about. And obviously, there's a common thread isn't there running through all this fascinating, very valuable experience you've had around tackling violence affecting young people. Could you take us back to the moment when you felt you found your calling? Ben Lindsay 16:48 Yeah, I mean, I think the moment probably was around 2001. And I was working in the city. And I was working for Ofcom, no I was working for Oftail, which then became Ofcom. So kind of all around telecommunications. And that was one of the first jobs I had coming out of university, it was one of the press office managers for Ofcom is a very interesting time, when kind of mobile phone licences were just being distributed. And it was a very busy time. But at the same time in the evenings, I was just working in, I was just volunteering in youth clubs and youth centres. And what happened was at the time, I just recently started going to church and I kind of became a Christian, even though I was brought up in a Christian home. I've kind of discovered Christianity for myself. And it was at that moment where I felt Oh, well, what does this really mean? Yes, I get the individual personal relationship I now have with the church and with Jesus, but what does that really mean for the community? How do I give myself and serve the community? What does that really mean? So me and a few friends just decided to go to various estates in southeast London. We'd take our turntables and microphones, and we'll just go and serve kids and I loved it. But then it got to a point where I was doing a lot of that stuff in the evening, and my day job, and then there was an opportunity to take voluntary redundancy in 2003 at Oftail before it became Ofcom And I just thought, you know what, I think I can, I think I can maybe do this full time. But there was a young man called Emanuel who, who lost his life 2004. And I suppose that was the moment where I thought, actually, we need more, we need more people, like myself, who grew up in southeast London, who understands the culture, understands what young people families go through. He was a lovely young boy, we used to do a football club in a local secondary school. And, you know, I think the environment around him caught up with him and he lost his life. But I suppose that was the first young person I had known and worked with and mentored who had lost their life. And I was like, Okay, I don't want to see anybody else lose their lives. So let me just put as much energy and time into this, as I could, so it was probably, the early 00's were the moments where I kind of felt my calling. Zoe Amar 19:35 And that was the moment that really spurred you on to make a difference it sounds like. Ben Lindsay 19:40 Yeah, I think the way I look at engaging with trauma and engaging with particularly young people impacted by violence or at risk of is that itthere's kind of two avenues you can go down one, you've experienced trauma and pain, suffering and via and yourself. And what tends to happen is that people will then think, because I've been through that experience, I can give my learning and my experience to young people in that way, which I think is, which is fine. I think there's another approach though, which is probably where I sit, which is okay, I have not personally gone through knife crime gang crime, I've not personally been in a gang. I've not gone to prison, I grew up around a time when that stuff was around me. But my lived experience isn't that. And therefore, because I can slightly detach my emotions, I can actually maybe be a good person to practically proactively work in this space. And that was me, I just thought, well, actually, I'm not traumatised by this stuff. So let me come with as much help and support as possible to the young people around me. That was just something which I felt I could do. And that has served me well. As time has gone on over the last 20 years, the communities that I've worked with the families and young people I've worked with, I suppose, because I am quite trauma informed in where my approach is just meant that I can probably take the sting and the emotion a little bit out of the work that I do, because I've not lived through it myself. Whereas what I've seen with some people with with the with lived experience, there always comes a moment where burnout comes, and I think that happens to a lot of people. And it did happen to me around 2011. But I think it comes quicker with those who have had lived experience, and particularly when you haven't got the clinical support clinical supervision around you. So I think that served me well, that was probably my moment where I felt I could do this, because I'm just looking at this from a slightly different perspective. Paul Thomas 21:59 How did the young people react to that around you? Are they? Did they sort of think well, actually, if you haven't been through this, then how do you know, what do you know? Well, they did they look for a mixture of both that lived experience and somebody that's grown up around it? Ben Lindsay 22:15 Yeah, it's a really good question. So I think it's this, there's levels to it. I don't know if I think there's a bit of a myth that young people think I can only relate to, to the ex gang member. Or I can only relate to the person who's gone to prison. And I always kind of say, Well, do you want to really engage with the person who got caught? Or the person who didn't? So that's, that is to say that, you know, let's, I'm not saying that I've always had a squeaky clean lifestyle. You know, I've never been involved in anything illegal. But there's been definitely moments where I've been around people where you have to make a choice, wherever you go left or right. So I think my experience would be, I've seen people go down and take the wrong turn. I've been fortunate enough to make decisions, whether it's because of people around me or, you know, just because I was into different things. And I think ultimately, children, young people want options, they want to see people who are successes, regardless, it's like, well, if I can say to you, I'm a success in a way which didn't involve drugs and crime, or even a stereotypical side of stuff. I'm not a sportsman. I'm not a musician, you know, but I am a success. Let's look at that. I think children and young people, particularly nowadays have his own entrepreneurial spirit, which most young people have. And they want to learn them, without trying to sound like too much of a capitalist. They just want to see how you make money, you know, and and there's fortunately, there's people around me and in my circle, who, if it is a money conversation, I know people who have made lots of money, legally. But if it's even a case of well creatively I've got, I know people who have, who are footballers, who are musicians, who are doing positive stuff. Okay, we can we can give you those examples as well. So I think it's just about making sure you've got a wide enough network of people to present different options, which isn't always a case of, I have to do the street stuff, I have to sell drugs, I have to do this. Provide the different examples. And I think we like networking is one of my superpowers, I would say, and therefore, because I've got a wide network of people in different sectors, I can use that to inspire families and young people to move in a different way. Zoe Amar 24:49 And that experience of burnout that you talked about earlier. That feels like such a common thing with many of the leaders actually that we've interviewed for this podcast. People are very passionate about what they do. And often they're, you know, and I speak for myself, you know, trying to do almost too much. And the other week, we had Soma Sara, the co founder, Everyone's Invited, and she talks about some of her experiences with that. You mentioned that you'd experience burnout, have you got any advice for leaders out there who might be on the brink of it? Ben Lindsay 25:23 Yeah, absolutely. So I've experienced burnout, probably twice, actually, the first time would have been around 2010, 2011, I just started working at Camden Council working on a youth violence strategy. But I'd worked five, six years prior to that in the Lewisham Offending Service, working with very vulnerable young people, high risk young people, families. And I notice, we were dealing with death, we were dealing with young people being incarcerated for long sentences, we're dealing with street level violence in the community. And it just wasn't the therapeutic support, there wasn't a clinical supervision, there wasn't a space where you could really unpack the impact of the violence, which was impacting the communities around you. And because of that, by the time I got to 2010 2011, I was just like, I, I'm traumatised, for what I've seen, I've seen young people lose their lives. I've seen, you know, extreme levels of violence and criminality, sexual violence, I've read the crime reports and stuff which are going into courts. And it's just, it's just too much. So that was the first time the second time was then in my role as a pastor in the church, and you're dealing with hundreds of pastoral issues. That time is when I caught it, actually. And I was like, actually, I need clinical supervision. I need supervision, which is outside line management, where I can have therapeutic support. And I brought this to the church I was working for at the time. And it was a very new concept, they were very much like, what is this? We're not sure we want to pay for, you got pastoral support, Ben you're Christian so if you really have trauma, just pray and read your Bible, and God will swear and I was like, Nah, I'm not saying those tools are not necessary. But actually, what I require is somebody who's trained, who understands trauma, and I believe the church should be paying for that. So that was my first push. And eventually, they agreed it went to the trustees, and the trustees said, Look, Ben is calling for this, then we should do it. Ironically every other member, every other pastor, later on ended up having clinical supervision. So I pioneered in that space. But that was the moment where I felt I needed somebody who was not connected to the work that I was doing to give me honest conversations and honest support. And yeah, strategies. And my advice really would be, yeah, definitely, if you've got an opportunity, push your employer to give you that clinical therapeutic support. You know, I think if we look at TV shows, like, I don't know if you remember that show, Begins, which was, I think it was on Sky or something like that. And they had like a psychologist being employed. I think it's happening a lot more nowadays. And there's, there's lots of examples where I think it's saved something like 1.4 billion of businesses when you have that type of therapeutic support in space. But yeah, I think you just have to catch it. And what was helpful for me, actually, I did this for eight, I started. I think it was like 2013 After having a conversation with my employer at the time, which was Emmanuel Church, London, and I spoke about all sorts stuff. I thought, initially, it was just going to be about work. But actually, I found myself talking about race as well, and racism and my own history and what I was feeling at the time, I didn't realise it, but it was preparing me to write my book. And then actually, when I wrote my book, and it came out in 2018, when George Floyd happened in 2020, I felt an immense calm it was very, obviously, it was horrific, which was going on, but while everybody else was like, oh my goodness, we're having to have this live conversation about racism. I just felt at peace because I dealt with my own issues with race and racism for the last eight years. And it was fascinating. So definitely my advice for people is, and I always say this, get therapy even when you think you don't need it. That is my advice to everybody I meet, but it served me well. And then it served others well. Zoe Amar 30:12 I completely agree with that. Ben, as you were describing that earlier, everything you said really resonated with me. And I was trying to explain this to someone I mentor, actually about the value of leaders and therapy, and I, I just feel that everything is connected, isn't it? So it's really interesting what you were saying about the professional and the personal. And before I had therapy, I would kind of put those things in different baskets. But actually, everything's connected up, isn't it? Ben Lindsay 30:42 Yeah, absolutely. I think you. Yeah, this idea that you can somehow separate your personal life from from your professional life, I think is a myth. My organisation Power The Fight, we like to say that we are trauma informed, which means for us, we're in this space where every single member of my team, whether you're my EA, to my frontline workers, gets clinical supervision. Now, that is expensive. If I'm going to be honest, that is like an extra 40k a year to my budget. But because of my own personal experiences, I really value that highly that my staff have an opportunity to talk to somebody else outside of line management supervision. And I think we also create reflective spaces as well as a team. So we're very much like how can we learn from one another, which is really important. We have this employee scheme as well, which is outside of the organisation where if there's things which people want to talk about, and they don't feel like they want to talk about it in the context of Power The Fight, then they can go there as well. At every single space and moment, we want to create trauma informed opportunities, and therapeutic opportunities where my staff feel that they can get the best level of support. And we always have a check in even in my senior leadership team meetings, we spend the first 15 minutes just we ask the question, how you doing? Let's talk personally, if you want to share, but let's also, before we get into the tasks, what's the emotional measurements of how you are feeling in your job as well? Are you feeling overwhelmed? Are you feeling stressed? And if this is the case, why, and we do that we go around the table to do that. So I think we have you know, I these are things I never really experienced working in Youth Offending Services Community, in statutory organisations like these, just you haven't really got the space to do that. But when you get an opportunity to build your own culture, these are some of the important things. Zoe Amar 32:48 That's great. So you're really normalising this conversation about mental health and creating space for it. Ben Lindsay 32:54 Yeah, I mean, it's a lot of new things in there. So, for example, the first time, so one of the things at my age of 45 years old, it means that I'm in this space where I get to manage younger people and older people. So what's new for me, for example, is I'm now managing older women. And we're having conversations about menopause. And, and the desire for a menopause policy, and menopause groups being set up, which I think is brilliant. And, and I've said, Yeah, cool. Let's let's let's let's look at, we've got a menopause policy, which we're just looking at at the moment. And there's maybe three members of staff who are going through the menopause at the moment. I just think this is not something I experienced 20 years ago. These are conversations which were not being had. But I think it's so important that if there's anything which has the potential to make your work life, not brilliant, not great, or there's things which are hindering that. And it's complicated as a man, it's complicated, because I don't, my first thoughts were, I don't want any, I don't want anything that somebody is going through for me to feel like that has a potential to stop you from doing your work well. So it's almost part of me kind of feels, I almost don't want to know, so I don't have stuff in my mind. And then another part of me was like, no, no, no, this is brilliant. We need to get stuff out. And we need to have honest conversations, and then create the work environments which make and help people flourish to the, to the best of their ability. So that just gives you a bit of an idea of where my head is at that type of organisation were trying to build. Zoe Amar 34:49 That's such a thoughtful way to approach leadership and to think about how you support your team through these different life transitions. Ben Lindsay 34:57 Yeah, I mean, we... Yes, I mean, whether it's pregnancy or the other thing we, something else we've just recently done, which I've never seen before. But you know, we're up for trying other things, that a friend, well she is, she's a friend who ended up working for Power The Fight because when you start a small organisation, you just try and get your friends to work with you. And then it's kind of like, okay, now you have to go beyond your friendship groups. But she, she recently got married and, and said to me I had this incredible opportunity to go to Uganda, and to work, and I wonder whether I could spend three months remotely working in Uganda. I was like Oh, wow, the two hour time difference, I was like it's not too bad. Yeah, the Internet can be in and out. But you know, you get that in the UK as well as it's been demonstrated. So we've really thought it through looks at the policies, looked at insurance. And yeah, she's out there for three months with her husband and their son. And yeah, I like to create the flexibility. She's having an incredible time out there and it has not really impacted the work, she's a digital content lead, so she could still gets to run our socials and stuff like that. But it's things like this, which I think as a smaller organisation, you can attempt to try these things out and see how it plants, how it works out. Paul Thomas 36:21 And I think we've all been through that, as you mentioned, the pandemic when we were talking just before recording, and Zoe and I have noticed that when the conversations that we started with leaders, and we've had you know, this is, we've done over 50 episodes now and had lots of conversations with lots of many, many people. And the common trend is that we're all starting to ask more questions of, you know, what is it that I want from my life, whether it's a sabbatical away from the office, and you want to keep good people, you want to give them access to that if you possibly can, all the way through to even bigger life changes, people moving away, and it's all about that retention of talent, you don't want to lose the people that are there. And you know, that there will be other organisations of similar size out there who are looking at all of these things. There's a pressure as a leader, I think, to try and keep up with those trends that people will come into the office and ask for. Ben Lindsay 37:17 Yeah, and I absolutely... the pandemic change everything, you know, hybrid working, you know, what you can do online, I just, it was just an opportunity for people just to reflect on what's important. So, yeah, it was a strange moment, as we know, but I think it was also the force moment for everyone to say, right, what matters? How much productivity can I realistically achieve? How does it impact my emotional mental health. And I think as a small organisation, we've had to adapt to that, you know, a lot of my team works 4 days. So my team take, like every other Friday off, you know, that's been it's been agreed, so they can have a longer weekend. For me, I mean, you can't see our offices but we're in Peckham in a shared kind of office space, but we have three offices here. And it's a it's a very nice space, you know, aesthetics is important for me. But I think sometimes when you think about the work we do with young people, you think you've got a youth centres, and I didn't want that I wanted us to be in a space where you'd actually want to enjoy come into work, we've got lots of plants around this, a wine bar on the top of our on the fifth floor, there's spaces where you can just, it's a very nice space, equipment wise, I've always said, I want people to not have broken equipment. So people have, like nice mobile phones, and in some of this stuff, some people might think, doesn't matter. But I actually really want to honour and respect the people who are doing incredible work. We're talking about working with very high risk families, very high risk young people going above and beyond to keep communities safe. And the least we can do is give them a phone, which doesn't break down. So it's kind of these things all, for me matter where you've got an opportunity to be, to get present the best version of yourself when you're at work. Paul Thomas 39:39 Yeah... You're certainly giving me food for thought because I'm a trustee of a local organisation here in Hertfordshire. And what we do is help people in crisis. It's that, it's that battle between whether they're paying for power or whether they're paying for food literally, and being able to help people with that sort of thing. So the people that work in the team are constantly faced with conversations really difficult conversations with people. And we brought that up as a recent trustee meeting about mental health and well being and it was, no, it's not that we want you trained in how to recognise it, is we want you to go into some kind of therapy session yourselves because you're dealing with this stuff day in and day out. So it's really, really important. I just wanted to pivot a little bit, but sort of staying with a mental health angle, I guess. So I tried to do a bit of research over the last couple of days. And it's, it's one of those things, I think I'm dipping a little toe in and it's just gonna go deeper and deeper and deeper. So forgive me, but I'm sort of not all there. But I was listening to your interview with Guvna B on your Power Talk Podcast. And it was fascinating, there was a couple of things that sort of really resonated, and it comes back to the mental health and well being, I can walk out my front door here, and I can walk down to the park. And I don't feel threatened, I can put on my running gear. This is something that I thought was very funny when you talked about running, but I could put on my running gear. And suddenly, I'm conscious that I'm running behind people, and I might scare them and beat them out of the way. But one of the things you mentioned, one of the things that Guvna B mentioned was stepping outside your door in your local community can be, your on a constant watch. And you talked about things like you know, when you go running, you put on brightly coloured gear, so you don't look threatening running behind people. He talked about going to Parliament and changing his look by putting his hair up. And what I'm interested in just exploring for a minute is that mental toll that that must take on young people living in your area where every time they leave the house, and this isn't just work related, every time they leave the house, there is that thought in the back of their mind that something could happen. They're always on watch. Can you just talk a little bit about how that sort of presents itself in the work that you're doing, that constant threat of something could happen that perhaps I don't feel, as a tall white man. Zoe probably feels going out where you've talked about, Zoe when you go out for a run or when you go outside of your front door that vulnerability. Just talk to me about that for a bit if you don't mind. Ben Lindsay 42:22 Yeah, so it's a great question. And I think context is everything really. So my context very much was growing up in the 90s as a teenager, in the shadow of Stephen Lawrence being murdered, and Stephen was a friend of some of my friends and, and he was murdered a mile away from the school I went to, and I was 15 at the time. So for me, it was a moment, maybe the most important moment of my youth. And it was at a time when the National Front before the BMP and before EDL, the National Front were the people who were after mainly young black boys, and were prepared to really harm them. So that was my context. And our parents would say it's better that you walk in a group than on your own for safety now that would have been deemed as a gang nowadays, but it was literally like, yeah, we're just gonna walk together, can we feel safe, Fast forward 30 years, and it's a slightly different ballgame for young people now. Where was my biggest concern was why young men who wanted to kill black boys, a lot of the kids in a South East, in a London context, you know, we have to be careful when we talk about race and violence in a London context, violence affecting young people disproportionately impacts black and brown communities. That doesn't mean that this is a black issue. And always say this if you take a place like Cleveland, in Middlesbrough, or near Middlesbrough, in Newcastle and those places, which is a population where percentages is 98% white, they have the highest rate of knife crime in the country. Second is West Midlands, that's a Asian population. And then you have London. So we have to just, I have to always clarify that it's not like race or violence doesn't necessarily correlate in that way. However, what I engage with a lot of kids, a lot of black children that are black and brown kids is a fear and anxiety about children who look like them. So when I'm in school contexts, and I hear a young person say, Do you know, Ben, are you honestly saying that when you see someone who looks like you, you don't fear them? And I'm like, well, no, as a 45 year old man and if I see somebody who looks like me. I'm lightly to just either ignore them or politely smile or whatever. That's not what they face. They said, Well, if I see someone who looks like me who I don't recognise, I look at them as a threat. And that's black children, that's white kids. That's boys and girls, I've been in school contexts. So there is an anxiety and a fear which young people have, which we did not have growing up. And yeah, so there's that level of it's kind of like young people are just fearful. This is why our therapeutic work we do in schools is so important. We're trying to go beyond the headlines. The headline is knife crime, someone's lost their lives, what you don't see is what's led up to that, you've not seen the fear and the anxiety and the concern, which the average young person will have. Not necessarily because of experiencing direct violence, but because of the social media. There's a lot of indirect things which kids will pick up through Snapchat and stuff like that. So there's there. But then there's a population of like, I can only talk from my perspective, but there's a population of black men who, let's say, up between the ages of 35 and 45, maybe even older, who do struggle with the racial profiling, which will come from the police, or where it will come from in the form of academics or teachers. And in my case, I live in a very gentrified area in southeast London. And yeah, when I'm running, I am very conscious of the views that my white middle class neighbours will have of me. And I know the difference between me walking down the street with my three very cute children. And the smiles I get and I can then be wearing exactly the same stuff. And I'm on my own. And there are no smiles there are people looking very concerned, some people might be like, Well, no one is forcing people shouldn't have to feel like they should smile. That's, I get that. But you can also tell when there's a little bit of kind of, yeah, feeling of angst, which you pick up very quickly. And in Guvna B's context. Yeah, he recently had a situation where he was attacked in Blackheath, which is a very gentrified area of southeast London and completely unprovoked attack where he almost lost an eye, just because he was walking past some white builders. And as shocking as that is, it doesn't actually surprise me, because like you said, we are always on guard. And I think going back to the whole mental health stuff, a lot of actually black men, at least in my friendship group, therapy is a new thing. You know, again, the pandemic meant that we had to have these conversations on our WhatsApp groups. But so many of my friends still don't go to therapists, don't have therapy, don't engage about their own trauma. We're getting there. But this is a real thing, which is still impacts us today. So yeah, I think when you look at context, we look at age ranges, the common denominator is fear. But it plays out differently, depending on your age, context, and stuff like that. Paul Thomas 47:58 And it's expensive, right, isn't it? And that's something he talks about, you know, go and get therapy? Well, it's easy for people to say, I mean, I've listened to a lot of podcasts, and the BetterHealth is constantly trailed on these podcasts. And again, you know, I looked at it, because, you know, my issues are my issues. But you know, that I looked at it and thought, well, how much is this? And it's even that's prohibitively expensive for somebody that doesn't have readily available money. So I know, you talked about some of the stuff you're doing to sort of try and get through that. Can you just tell us a bit about what you're doing? Ben Lindsay 49:04 Yeah, I mean, you're right. So we put out during the pandemic, actually, we got some money from the Mayor of London, to trial, this therapeutic approach because I think, there's a couple of things, one is expensive, but from a black and brown perspective, there is, in some cases, a lot of distrust about white authority. And therefore when you go to look for clinical support, most of these people are most of the doctors, most of the clinicians, most of the therapists, most of the counsellors, most of the psychologists tend to be white and middle class. And we will go into trial this approach in a school which was, could we get culturally sensitive therapists, counsellors, psychologists, youth practitioners, in a school context to kind of produce, a co-produced, co-designed mental health approach for young people. We got some money to do that then the pandemic happened. And we were like, well, actually, Should we turn it into a research project? Let's actually talk to 100 kids, some frontline practitioners, som families, and let's see about what they feel around therapy, and the connection to violence affecting young people. And what we got back was we, the community, do not trust white authority. We appreciate that might be therapeutic support, which is needed, but often the waiting lists are too high. There's a lack of trust, and this term cultural sensitivity or cultural competency kept on coming back, that we don't believe that actually the people who want to support us are culturally sensitive. And then what does it actually mean? So do you understand the culture and the context that you are serving in, and what we kept in coming back was actually you've got young people and family saying, You're not culturally sensitive. But you've also got practitioners saying, we don't feel confident, we don't understand the culture that we are working. So you got teachers who are saying, I'm in this diverse community, this racially diverse community, different class, to what I'm used to. And I don't feel I've got the tools to engage on that level. So that's a massive problem when you've got the young people and family saying you're not culturally sensitive. And then you've got the teachers, police officers, therapists, doctors saying, I don't understand the culture. So for us, we were like, well, actually, we need to bridge the gap here. So yes, we on a practical level, we can create these co-produced approaches which are engaging with young people, teachers, and parents and carers with our culturally sensitive therapists and counsellors, etc. But there's also this element of how do we train teachers, and therapists and doctors and police officers to become more culturally sensitive in a very hyper local way. Now, one thing, which I don't think you mentioned in my, in my bio, was the fact that I'm doing also a PhD at Durham University. And I'm looking very specifically at the lack of cultural sensitivity in teaching. So how did teachers become...? Did they get that in their training, and when they then land in a school, which is very different to what they're used to, what did the school do in terms of their policy to help them become more culturally sensitive and more culturally aware? I've just started that as well. So for me, it's really important that we do present as many spaces and opportunities as possible for therapy for families and young people, but also appreciating that our practitioners and teachers don't feel confident in that space. And we have to upskill them to understand the communities that they're serving better. So that was very long winded, but I can't unpack it in any other way. I think that's brilliant Ben, because everything you just said there. And also everything you described this morning is that there's something there about the spaces for therapeutic approaches around the therapy isn't there. So there's the I'm going to support a resource, you know, very sort of well, and quite rightly, for my staff to access therapy, but it's also about reinforcing that through we talk about mental health in meetings, we think about some of the kind of, you know, cultural challenges that may exist within the work that we do that will affect people's mental health and well being so yeah, I really like the way you've approached this in this very sort of joined up fashion so that you're thinking about how everything connects with everything else. Yeah, I think what we call this ground engagement and air engagement. So we have this thing at Power The Fight where we say okay, the ground is very much around the community, therapeutic support, pastoral care, mentoring, how do you effectively get the community voice heard. And then you've got his air engagement is very much around policy and decision making, the local government and central government and strategy and if Power The Fight is anything we are the conduit between the two, we try and get the community's voices and experiences to move very much a little bit like a water cycle of, you know, the water impacts the ground and then it impacts the air and it's kind of like this ongoing kind of circular movement. This is what we're trying to attempt to do with the communities who have been impacted by violence and for me, there's not enough conduit organisations who have got the trust of the community, but also have got the trust of the decision makers. I think this is what separates us from most organisations, most organisations probably fit into one or the other of those spaces, the air engagement, the ground engagement. What separates us is that no, no, we're well respected with policymakers and decision makers and MPs. But we're also known on the ground level on really supporting communities around this issue of violence affecting young people. And I think you've got to keep asking yourself the question, does the community actually have a say, in how their communities are governed and supported. And so often it's not that case. So you have to have people who can speak on their behalf, and empower them to have that fluidity in those spaces. Zoe Amar 55:54 I love that point about ground engagement and air engagement, it feels like the secrets are really good collaboration. Ben Lindsay 56:01 Yeah, I think collaboration is one of my, my values. And, and I love and, but it's, you know, I always say to my children. But you know, when your kids are arguing with each other, or there's situations which happened in the school context, and I always say, like, just being likeable, will open your doors, more than anything else, that you can have all the intelligence and you can have all the creative ability. But ultimately, if people like you, they're more likely to give you an opportunity. And for me, I think the likeability of my team and who I am, is meant that we've been able to build not just networks, but diverse networks. And I think when like, I'm at a charity, for the moment, we have a mixed funding model, where it is very much around classic funding, like grants and foundations. But we also work well with corporates. And yes, we have high net worth individuals who want to give, but we have to mix it up. And sometimes the money which comes in from places, which you wouldn't even think would engage with the type of issues that we're dealing with. But we have to widen it up, widen our collaboration and partners, because in the cost of living crisis, it's really difficult, like our on the ground donations have been cut by 50% in the last year. And because we've got that mixed funding model, I mean, it impacts us but with other sources of funding. So it's really important from a strategy perspective that you do have multiple funding streams. But a lot of that does come down to relationship and experience and I've got 20 years in this. And that is, that helps. Zoe Amar 57:58 D-efinitely, it's all about the relationships and the network isn't it. Ben, this has been fantastic. Thank you. We've learned so much from you this morning. I really loved hearing about your really thoughtful, really innovative approach. Is there anything that you'd like to share about power the fight before we wrap up? Where can people go to find out more about you and your team's amazing work? Ben Lindsay 58:21 Yeah, and I thank you for having me. It's been really great talking to you guys. You guys are brilliant. So yeah, you can go to our website, it's www.powerthefight.org.uk. You can follow us on all the socials which is powerthefightuk Instagram, Facebook, I feel we might even have a TikTok which I don't get involved in, apparently we've got one. You're not on there dancing Ben? No... I'm good at many things but if you noticed dancing was not in my bio. So that's something which you will never see me do even though my team of content lead would love me to do that. But yeah, you know, there's things that we are always trying to engage with, we've got Crowdfunder at the moment, which we're trying to raise 30k for continuing our therapeutic support. So yeah, there's lots of different things that you can connect in and engage with Power The Fight. Zoe Amar 59:15 Amazing. We'll put some links in the show notes. Ben, thank you so much for coming on. It's been wonderful. Thank you for coming on Starts at the Top. Ben Lindsay 59:24 It's been brilliant. Thank you so much. Yeah, I follow you guys on LinkedIn and Twitter. So I learned a lot from you guys as well. So thank you for having me. Paul Thomas 59:35 Thank you to Ben for making the time to come on to the podcast. You can find more information about Power The Fight via their website at powerthefight.org.uk. That's powerthefight.org.uk. We'll be back in a fortnight with our episode with Sarah Hughes. Zoe Amar 59:50 You can support the podcast by leaving us a five star review wherever you listen to us, whether Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Google. Paul Thomas 59:58 And thank you very much for listening! Zoe Amar 1:00:00 Thank you and bye for now! Paul Thomas 1:00:02 See ya! Transcribed by https://otter.ai