Belonging as a Measurable Driver of Resilience and Performance with Andrea Carter

[00:00:03] Hi, I'm Dr. Russell Thackeray and welcome to Resilience Unravelled, a podcast with new ideas, new thoughts and new thinking about resilience. Guests with remarkable stories, products and services that can really power up your own mindset and resilience. You can also go to our site for more information, to ask questions or to access some of our resources at resilienceunravelled.com. Let's get started.

[00:00:32] Hello and welcome back to Resilience Unravelled. And we've got a fascinating episode, I think, tonight. It might be interesting, it might be contentious, it might be, who knows what it's going to be, but I do know that Andrea Carter, who's joining me, is going to be a brilliant guest. So first of all, good evening, Andrea. How are you? Oh, thank you so much, Russell, for that great introduction and thanks for having me. I'm great, happy to be invited here on the show.

[00:00:57] So, specifically, I think, because you're one of the few people that is saying that resilience has softened. And I love that you treat your listeners like adults so that we can have a conversation and dig deeper into action steps that we're seeing behind a lot of fluff and a lot of apps. That was good to me. First of all, before we get started, where in the world are you? Because I can hear a twang. I haven't heard of the boot yet, but where are you? I'm in Canada.

[00:01:27] So I'm just outside of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Yes. Very nice too. And tell us a bit about yourself. Tell us a bit about you. Sure. First, I think my professional designation would be that I'm an organizational scientist. People know me as the belonging expert here. I validated the first way of actually measuring belonging. And I led Canada's largest belonging study with 3,500 people across 13 publicly traded companies.

[00:01:55] That was peer-reviewed, validated, and published in 2022. And then I went on to validate the findings across eight different industries and over 150,000 employees. So short version, basically I've spent about 20 years proving that belonging is not a soft thing.

[00:02:17] And that it is a thing though that decides who can take a hit and keep going, who can keep performing, who keeps succeeding. And so that's exactly why I thought being on your show would be such a great opportunity for us to talk really about resilience. Okay. Yeah. Tell me a bit about your background though. Tell me a little bit more about that. Sure. My background is actually in psychology.

[00:02:44] I did a lot of performance training, performance coaching for the better part of my career. Then in 2017, we really got pulled into gender diversity. And that's where we actually did a study that revealed that the way that diversity, equity, diversity, inclusion was being rolled out would actually create more division than inclusion. And so that was the prediction was 10 years.

[00:03:11] We'd have greater friction, greater conflict, greater division. Here we are. Again, that was also before COVID. I think COVID amplified a lot for us. And then I went back and looked at, so I had done some neuroscience and belonging to essentially look at, you know, what makes us feel that we belong versus feeling like we're ostracized or excluded.

[00:03:34] And then because I wanted to be able to put measurement to it, because there's such a felt sense that people relate to belonging. I wanted to be able to measure something. And I went back and did another master's in industrial and organizational psychology. And from there, that's where we actually validated what do you need to have in order to feel belonging? Can we measure this within workplaces, within schools, within communities, even within individuals?

[00:04:03] And so that was essentially what I did in 2022. And then we've just continued to grow it since. Recently, I was in London, UK as a partner for the Global Workplace Happiness Index, because all of their research across 140 countries essentially showed that happiness and workplace performance is based on whether or not they can produce a belonging environment.

[00:04:32] But nobody had done the research. So that's where I was invited in to provide some of that information and share the research. Interesting. So it flowed from DEI or DE&I. And I always thought the problem with DE&I was it wasn't a failure of concept. It was a failure of measurement, wasn't it? Because actually no one could prove it worked. And it just became soft and fluffy. Because the classic thing is people measure what they can measure, not measure what they need to measure.

[00:05:00] So you measure things like ethnicity or gender or something. So that's fascinating. So you better tell us a little bit about what you mean by belonging. Yes. Let me go into it. Let me use language that we're already used to on this podcast, if you don't mind. I think we can talk about resilience in how a lot of language has been used. And what we see often is that resilience is often treated like a solo sport.

[00:05:29] So you get hit, you go away, you bounce back, you come back tougher. That's the whole story we've been told, right? But when you think about what that story actually asks of a person, we take someone at their lowest point. We send them off on their own and we tell them that it's entirely their job to figure out how to come back.

[00:05:56] And then it's entirely their job to carry them the conformity of what is then needed to come back. That's really not resilience training. That, in a way, is exile with a deadline. Sort of personal resilience, isn't it? Sure. Absolutely. Now, before we go really into it, one of the things that I would give your listeners off the hop that they can actually use,

[00:06:21] because what we're about to talk about, it's not just a workplace idea, although some people confuse it to be that way. It works the same in your family and with your closest relationships. It works the same in schools. It works the same in workplaces. But I essentially built an assessment because what we found in the research was that belonging happens at the organizational lens or the broader perspective.

[00:06:47] It then happens at the team level and then it happens at an individual one-to-one level. And so I built an assessment that actually allows people, gives them language so that they can break down between yourself and another person what you need to do in order to give belonging and also receive belonging. Because what the research shows is that this is not a solo sport.

[00:07:13] And you can go onto my website and you can go to andreacarterconsulting.com. And in the menu, you can click on Experience the Science. That's the page where you can find this. So you can gain access to the actual tool that will help you uncover what you're giving and what you're getting as it pertains to belonging and the research.

[00:07:34] The thing that is really interesting that I found in my early days of the research is that belonging and resilience doesn't break by that one last straw. So the thing that breaks people, for example, is never the hard thing itself. It's facing a hard thing while also having to do it alone.

[00:07:56] And when we get pushed out, which is interesting post-COVID because it's actually way easier than I think most people want to admit. Illness does it. Grief does it. Disagreeing does it. Being different does it. Change does it. Anything that creates a break in the pattern where there's a change in the unspoken rules.

[00:08:24] That's actually where this kicks in. And the rule says, basically, that the burden of getting back inside is 100% on you. Conform or stay up. And we call that fitting in. And we've confused it for a very long time with what it means to belong. So fitting in, think of this, this is the framework that I built the indicators from.

[00:08:52] So fitting in is 100% on the individual. Belonging is shared. We co-create it. So you and I are creating, co-creating the environment right now for belonging. And the person brings their help. And the system, the team, the family, the other person brings the other help. So things like clarity, fair conditions, repair, not throwing people out the moment they step out of line.

[00:09:21] All of that becomes a footnote unless we actually look at how we're showing up for people. And we see this across all different problems right now in society, too. So we have a loneliness epidemic right now. We have trust, institutional trust, personal trust, relational trust falling across all. It's a global fall. Empathy is thinning.

[00:09:48] What we've been doing in our workplaces, in our communities, in our families, in our schools, we can't keep doing that much longer because we're seeing the fractures and we're seeing the breakage happen. Belonging, it's not a feeling. It's really a performance metric and it measures whether a group can move a person through something that's hard without ejecting them.

[00:10:15] And a group that can't do that is not strong. They're actually really brittle. And brittle things break under pressure when they otherwise would be able to survive through it. And I think the good news is that belonging, because you can measure it, you can fix it. And that there are five indicators that can make it work that each one of us can think about and go, am I giving this to you?

[00:10:45] Am I receiving this for me? Which then allows us to actually co-create together. And each party holds the accountability and the responsibility within that relationship, within that team or family, within that broader organization or family dynamic community. If you will. Okay. I just need to unpick some things in that, if I may. Yes, please. So definition of belonging, just for those who didn't catch it.

[00:11:15] Belonging is a performance metric that allows you to show up at your best and allows you to co-create the best for other people in your environment. Okay. And how did you measure it? Okay. So we looked at initially first, what makes belonging? And it's interesting because it was very much a felt sense that was described.

[00:11:42] What we soon discovered was that it actually wasn't. So you actually need five neurological indicators in order for your brain to experience belonging. So the first is comfort. The second is connection. The third is contribution. The fourth is psychological safety. And the fifth is well-being, which is also essentially where resilience falls in. Different things. Psychological safety is a very different thing from comfort.

[00:12:10] You might argue that's an organizational measure, not a personal measure. Absolutely. Let me go through them just a little bit to give a little bit more substance to them, if you will. When we think about the five indicators, comfort isn't about you and I being nice to each other, like the coziness of things. Comfort is clarity and predictability.

[00:12:35] So if we're clear, we actually have our neurological and brain physiology will function better. And what that means is that your prefrontal cortex, which is like your thinking brain, it's where executive function happens. It's where decision-making happens. When we don't have clarity and predictability, that part of the brain shuts down because it's scanning for threat.

[00:13:06] And when we do have clarity and predictability, that area then shuts down the threat and we can think better. We can perform better. We make better decisions. We interact with other people better. When we have connection. So connection is not just proximity. Connection is beyond transaction. It means that there is relational need. It means that there is trust.

[00:13:36] It means that when you show up for the other person or the other person shows up for you, they are listening to understand rather than shame or blame or condemn. They are listening for ways that they can get to know you better, get to know the problem better, and look at how you are both coming to the same either working relationship or personal relationship. Contribution. Contribution. Let me just leave a minute. Yeah.

[00:14:06] No, no, no, no. Because I'm linking this very clearly to some of the work David Rock did with Scarf, and I can see the in-group-out group stuff and some of his dimensions working in this, which is great. But the trust thing is tricky, isn't it? Because there's more than one definition of trust. So you're not talking about reputational trust here. You're saying you listen so you won't. But that's all purely subjective, isn't it? Because the idea of being shamed is down to the individual's own mental fortitude, isn't it? But yes and no. So that actually develops over time.

[00:14:36] So connection, when we look at those two different elements, and that's why I had also indicated to the listeners to use that assessment in the fact that you're asking specific questions to understand the development of trust before you get there.

[00:15:24] So both. So we validated them across peer-reviewed publications. So they were, you can go into the Adler University. Adler University is where I'm a adjunct professor. And you can look up all of the research online. So it's all been published. You can look up the survey.

[00:15:41] You can look up where we've then brought the survey into a variety of different industries, run the same tests within our first 3,500 participants, and then across 150,000. So that number grew across the last 3 years after we had validated initially within the mining industry. So all of that you can either get to through my website or through the Adler University. You can look me up there from that gen prof.

[00:16:09] So when we look at comfort and connection, and contribution is an interesting one because from a neurological perspective, the brain actually needs to have hard evidence that you matter. It needs to have hard evidence that you are not only needed but also seen.

[00:16:29] And when there isn't evidence that translates into meaning, most people experience that indicator of contribution as not mattering. And so that indicator is also a very important indicator because if we look at the work plans right now. Sorry to jump in. But you'll also have people who don't care who they master. Well, that is part of the inconsistencies right now as well.

[00:16:59] Because if you look at mattering is also very inconvenient. And so the way that a lot of our society had moved post-COVID was actually where people are opting out. So they likely attempted to be reintegrated into some sort of group or some experience within the family or the workplace. And it didn't work.

[00:17:24] And so once a person tries numerous times to matter and they are not provided with that evidence, they actually stop caring. And that's why right now we have such a high propensity for quiet quitting or the great detachment or the engagement data within workplaces is so robust where we really only have a 30% engagement rate. And that's global.

[00:17:51] You can look that up on Gallup, I think, just produced the most recent one. But when we look at contribution and we look at how people are showing up, it's the fact that there has been such a 100% reliance on the individual rather than that co-creation and the co-responsibility and accountability within those elements. And a lot of organizations have really honed in on psychological safety.

[00:18:19] That has been such a massive area of training. And yet what we found was that if you can't create comfort, connection and contribution first, you can't actually get to psychological safety. And psychological safety is only a fifth of what belonging actually creates.

[00:18:38] So in order for us to get to psychological safety, which is that ability to say out loud, I'm raising something hard or psychological safety being what keeps people willing to admit or speak or try or change. Right. Without that fear of social punishment. When you're only in a fitting environment, social punishment will always be present because it's 100% on every single individual.

[00:19:05] So the breakdown happens quickly within those environments, specifically with psychological safety and why it's been so hard in order for us to measure psychological safety changes, especially within the organization. And then the last one, of course, is well-being. Can I leap in there?

[00:19:24] But surely the point there is to equip people to deal with social exclusion, social anxiety, because otherwise I can't quite see the role of the individual versus the role of the other in that, because some of these seem to be mixed between both. Or are you saying there are different balances for each of the different factors? So each question has a, am I giving and am I getting?

[00:19:49] And that is where when you look at the perception of the individual, you take that perception of it being a sole interior experience and you look at how much are you actually then providing. And that is a step that most spaces don't do. They look at what the individual is doing and they put their own experience and life expectations on that. And that's where that gap then ends up widening, if you will.

[00:20:19] So if we look at it through the neuroscience, think of comfort, calming the system through clarity and predictability, connection, bonding through systems of trust, contribution, activating the system through that mattering element. And psychological safety, psychological safety, protecting people through challenges and then well-being is actually meant to help renew the system.

[00:20:42] So there should be a renewal period that actually is built into what's happening within we measured in the workplace. But most systems and spaces are extractionary, meaning they're taking everything that they can without actually building in a recovery system. And resilience without recovery is just delayed collapse.

[00:21:07] So when we can measure those five indicators and we can measure them from our personal perspective, we can actually then fix or repair relationships because belonging isn't just an organizational perspective. It works the same way between two people as we're talking. So whether that's at work, at home, in your closest relationships. So is this a function of teams working well or is a focus of effective leadership?

[00:21:37] Both. So the way that we had measured it was originally through the organizational lens back in 2022. Then what we understood was that, wait a second, okay, who's assuming the responsibility? And what we found was that in a lot of spaces, it's the leader or the manager, the people manager, if you will, who then assumes the responsibility.

[00:21:59] When really, yes, they model, but the team also has to be modeling and showing up as well. And so what happens is that let's say you have a poor leader who doesn't necessarily understand the relationship element of workplaces. You then have teams who opt out as well very quickly. And this is where we see the connection with the performance.

[00:22:23] So if you're not teaching the people leader how to actually create belonging, and then you're not actually teaching the team how to individually create belonging, both places fail. So in order for us to shift belonging within an organization, we actually have to measure it at the organizational level, which then allows us to look at the functional level. So functions or departments or divisions.

[00:22:50] And then from there, looking at it through the lens of how much is the leader creating belonging? How much is the team also creating belonging? And that comes down to language as well. The conversations that aren't happening rather than the conversations that are, where a lot of that conflict, a lot of the places where there's friction, what people are now doing is they're opting out of them. And they're opting out because they're inconvenient and they're hard. And cancel culture says that we can.

[00:23:19] And so when we look at those elements, what we understand then is that those courtesies are not being derived. So what I find genuinely interesting is that people walk into a room expecting a certain courtesy. But what counts as a courtesy is not universal, right? Being in Toronto versus being in London, you have different courtesies that are expected. And those aren't universal.

[00:23:48] And even within those two cities, everyone is measuring what they get against what they've learned to expect from someone like them in their rooms based on every room before. So two people can treat the same introduction very differently based on what they've experienced. And that's exactly why a lot of the metrics didn't work before.

[00:24:17] Because we were measuring them based on a system versus an individual perception when actually we need the combination between those two. And so what you were initially looking at was looking at it through a perception, through an individual perception.

[00:24:37] And when we looked at the research, what we wanted to understand was that if you walk into a room, let's say of five people, and nobody looks up, nobody acknowledges you. One minute later, somebody else walks in and the same type people look up and they greet that other person. And that acknowledgement itself is tiny, but the differential is not the same.

[00:25:05] And so even though it's the same room, same people, one minute per, there is a ranking that just got transmitted without words. And here's why that small moment is not actually small. It's because the brain is a prediction machine and it doesn't stop with one unacknowledged entrance as a one-off, right? It files it as data.

[00:25:31] And after a few repetitions, it stops waiting to find out and it starts forecasting. Now, the person who walks in and had the negative experience of not being seen, they have it set up so that they're bracing. And that bracing becomes expensive. It's that threat system that is running before anything or everything has actually happened.

[00:25:59] And I get that, but this is surely to do with expectations because, as you say about prediction, if you expect to walk in and not be greeted, then that's fine because you haven't been. So that's fine, isn't it? And of course, different cultures work in very different ways. But the fact that someone's greeted and someone's not greeted surely is based on the perception of need of greeting and the expectation of having had it or want it. Sure.

[00:26:23] And the comfort indicator collapsing is collapsing because of predictability and of clarity. So if that predictability is that I expect with my clarity that somebody is going to greet me and I can't and it doesn't happen, then that actually creates the predictable outcome of exclusion. But the reverse must also be true then? Yes, of course it is.

[00:26:50] And so when you look at being able to measure it within a system and then individually, you're also looking at where that differential response reliably lands on whoever is currently outside or inside that path. If you're measuring a team, I'm guessing this is a team score at some stage. You must have people who have. So the classic thing is you get an average team score that you put that, which shows that some people have very high levels of belonging.

[00:27:19] Some people have very low levels of belonging. But I guess what you're actually saying, it doesn't matter what level of belonging is there as long as the team is performing. It does because the belonging level inevitably leads to the performance level. So one of the things that you had just said was actually really important because most survey data only looks at the mean average of whether or not that score is acceptable or not.

[00:27:49] And this was also one of the things that we measured within the research was that, yes, we measure the team score, the average. But then we also look at the outliers of that so that we look at the gap score. So who feels belonging versus who doesn't feel belonging? And from that, the goal is not to increase the average mean. The goal is to shrink the gap between those who experience belonging and those who do not.

[00:28:16] And that actually, the shrinking of that gap is actually what leads to increased performance. So when, sorry, go ahead. You look like you were about to say something. I was actually. The trouble is that most organizations can't measure team performance. So how do you link the assertion that increased belonging increases team performance? Yes. And there was a number of different ways that we've looked at it over the years.

[00:28:41] One of the most, I think, easy to understand is looking at discretionary effort, whether or not safety issues are shared early in advance, whether or not you have an excess amount of sick days or people are taking their sick days, not needing their sick days. And with those three, I would say one of the most significant studies that we did was we looked at a manufacturing plant.

[00:29:10] And they had two buildings or manufacturing plants. So plant A and plant B was how we labeled them. And we essentially did a beta belonging intervention with plant A and plant B we left as is.

[00:29:27] And after six weeks with plant A, what we noticed was that we not only reduced the belonging gap by 24%, but the discretionary effort increased by 20%. When we measured against plant B, discretionary effort went to an 82% versus discretionary effort with plant B, which sat at 34% and did not change.

[00:29:57] Discretionary effort is one of the main elements that we are seeing within engagement survey data and why that effort is actually really important. So the specific question asked is, would you go over and above within this plant if needed? And so that's where the difference between those two plants greatly showed that tie into performance.

[00:30:27] The other thing that was noted was safety was reported three times faster in plant A over plant B. How the teams from a cross-functional perspective were working together to solve problems. So imagine you have a safety issue that was highlighted early.

[00:30:49] The way that they solved it was actually through more people being involved and getting it done faster. So those were just some of the ways that we looked at it through a specific example. So then you can see how they come together. Yeah. And that makes a lot of sense. And I'll come back to that in a minute, if I may. Because classically, the way you increase or you think about team performance is either you get synergy, which is effectiveness, which you're talking about, versus the cost of cooperation.

[00:31:19] And I just wonder whether something like this really does add to the cost of cooperation, because that's what makes the classic example of five people pulling on a rope together. And that, you know, it's too much. One always takes it easy. Was it loafers and cofers? Have coasters appeared during that sort of thing? I've always loved that because I've seen it so many times in business. So I wonder if there's that much work, is there more work for individuals to be able to increase this? Don't get me wrong. I love the whole concept and the idea and I think it's great.

[00:31:48] I just, I'm asking to understand. But it sounds like there's quite a lot of work to increase belonging. So is that cost of cooperation actually going up? I think that initially the belonging is inconvenient. And it's inconvenient because things that used to be norms are now friction points.

[00:32:10] If we look at, you know, anything that is inconvenient, having to have a conversation with someone, having to learn about belonging, having to think about or consider somebody else's perspective, those elements are friction points.

[00:32:29] And if we look at what's happening now within the organization, the greater distance between somebody actually taking effort or taking responsibility and accountability for some of those inconveniences is really what is shrinking how friction is impacting the team or the relationship.

[00:32:57] And there's friction that harms you. And then there's friction that grows you. And the problem is that most have looked at friction as all friction harms when we simply know that's not true. And they feel similar. It's going to get things smooth, isn't it? Exactly. And so from, you know, from a learning perspective, that friction is going to be there. And they will feel similar in the moment.

[00:33:24] But they are very opposite in what you do when you understand friction that harms versus friction that grows. And those five indicators of belonging help people tell them which they're in. If you look at comforts, the inconvenient version is clarity you would rather avoid. Someone tells you the hard truths about your work or names the tension in the room instead of just letting it sit there.

[00:33:55] That's uncomfortable. And it builds you. And people aren't skilled at doing it, particularly it is. Sure. And so the toxic version is actually the opposite, where that unpredictability is used as control. And you never know which version. To your point about the leader, you never know which version you're going to get.

[00:34:19] Where discomfort in service of clarity, that's a specific deliberate move. That's a specific deliberate way of showing up for people. And if we remove that clarity, that's really where we see the detection of threat increase because the predictability has decreased.

[00:34:46] So if friction makes things clearer, it's inconvenient to begin with. And then guessing is actually what causes harm. Yeah. You mentioned cultural norms earlier. I can't, I'm finding, I work in China, Japan, I'm sure you do in different parts of the world. I can't see the cultural, that will be so different culturally, India as well.

[00:35:11] Is this, is this applicable right across the world or, or is it mostly a Western hemisphere type? So far from a localization perspective, we have seen that it has worked across. Where we often see the discrepancy from the cultural perspective is where it breaks down from the relational to the transactional.

[00:35:33] And so the Eastern culture, we see a lot more transactional trust is built through transaction rather than through the relational element. And, but there's still indicators and language that you can use that lands across culture.

[00:35:48] And so I think those are the pieces that, you know, from an organizational lens where we've measured in cultures that have been more Eastern in nature and the organization has either had headquarters or something that is out of the East versus out of the West. You still see that there is discrepancy in who belongs and who does not belong.

[00:36:11] And what I found, I think the most fascinating was when we initially started my research, my research began in the mining industry. And so 75% of the population was male. That wasn't by design. That was just what we ended up with. And what was fascinating about that was that there was this belief that, oh, all men in mining speak the same language and act the same and behave the same.

[00:36:39] And they all should therefore experience belonging. And what we found was that it very much depended on level of leadership, team norms, our dynamics. And so what was fascinating with that was that a lot of the mining companies, they just wanted their, they wanted their average. Give me my average. If I fall within 68 to 72, I'm gold. I don't care. And what we realized then is that there is massive in Canada.

[00:37:09] This really matters because mining, of course, is one of our main economic drivers. And you have mines that are completely imploding because you don't have belonging. And so the performance, their ability to meet their KPIs has gravely decreased because of that and because of very much command and control leadership behaviors.

[00:37:33] And so when that starts at the top, it always bleeds through the entire organization because of what is modeled. And when you start shifting just even some of these basic language elements, you start noticing how a leader can safely then think of, okay, what have I done to provide comfort? So where have I not been clear? Where have I not been predictable? And even just shifting something as small as how we're going into a meeting.

[00:38:02] This is the agenda. These are the three things we're talking about. This is the one decision we have to make. Even something as small as that, setting that as the intention so that everybody knows it before they go into the meeting, stating it at the beginning of the meeting, making sure that those three things are done by the end of the meeting.

[00:38:20] That clarity and predictability very much shifts how quickly teams get on the same page and start co-creating, and keep using that word, but really aligning themselves on what needs to be done for that specific vision or that specific KPI that needs to be achieved.

[00:38:43] And so simple things from that line of thinking in the initial piece of training and development seems large. But the cost of not doing it at this point in time is actually outweighing the inconvenience of having to learn it now.

[00:39:03] And I think that ability to measure, okay, yes, this is the norm or this is the average, but here is what the people that don't feel belonging are experienced. That changes what you're able to innovate, changes what it is that you're actually even talking about. And it changes that engagement rate, of course, as well. I think it's interesting. I've always been a great believer in how you build adult relationships between adults, obviously.

[00:39:31] And half the challenge in parenting is people are trying to create adult relationships with children, which is where things seem to go wrong. And I suppose that is at the root of this, isn't it? Because having those honesty is one of the key things. And I like the word accountability as you used it before. And I can see how this pans into it. I can also see how if you're in that group, one imagines it would be better to be in that group because actually what's great, and I can see what's great for the organization because they can get more output without paying you more.

[00:39:59] There's a sort of win-win in all of this, which is fine because that's why organizations buy stuff. What's the next iteration from this? Where does it go next? Yeah, what's been fascinating about that is that there's been a great demand within the school sector. And this is because, so in Canada right now, and we're certainly seeing the data that has rolled in from London as well, from England,

[00:40:23] where we're looking at the Cambridge data on well-being, on what our youth are going through. For the first time ever, we have a J-shaped curve rather than a U-shaped curve for happiness, well-being. Anxiety is much higher. Overwhelm is much higher. We certainly are now looking at it through the lens. I haven't investigated the lens of earlier education. I do see that there is a demand for it.

[00:40:50] One of the things that I noticed from a personal perspective, our public system and schooling has broken down across all provinces in Canada over many years of a variety of different reasoning. And so now we have systems where children are just opting out. And that is something that as adults, we need to be accountable to these children.

[00:41:19] And we need to ensure that our next generation is supported in a way that people are just walking away from these children who are either neurodivergent or different in some capacity that then create this massive disruption.

[00:41:36] And how we've looked at that from a systemic perspective, we have not done our due diligence in ensuring that every child has the capability to learn and to grow and the potential to succeed based on baseline learning. I think that social media is an issue here because we're seeing experiments in Australia at the moment.

[00:42:02] And actually, social media has become parenting, hasn't it? Which is the root of many evils one suspects. And I would say what I find fascinating, so both my children are neurodivergent, both are athletes. We very much adhere to the fact that children who are active learn better. That is just how I was brought up. It was how my husband was brought up. And we have always very much believed in that.

[00:42:29] So some of the research that I've done personally for my children to learn from them. And if I had relied on my family or that many of my family members don't even believe ADHD exists, that it's actually a valid diagnosis.

[00:42:46] And what I see from the sports side of it is that when athletes watch social media before they perform, and there's data to actually back this up, there's wonderful research on it. They perform poorly within their sport.

[00:43:03] And so we know that there is an inability to create a giving-receiving experience through a social media lens. Because the social media in of itself is predominantly formed through a negative lens of shame, not enough, comparison, rather than judgment. Exactly.

[00:43:33] And so when you look at those elements, it immediately causes the brain to go into that fight-flight-faint-freeze. And so from that, athletes can't perform. And when you look at what's happening within a team, some of the greatest teams, they have the indicators of belonging to the extent that they are able to be incredibly honest.

[00:44:01] Yet the way that it's delivered is using language that actually allows people to perform rather than be shamed. And that, I would say, is one of the biggest divisions that you see within families and that you see within workplaces and that you see within schools. That thing about shaming. Because actually, that is a choice to be shamed, isn't it? So that's part of our resilience, isn't it?

[00:44:29] To understand that we have to be able to deal with those things. That's part of the friction you were talking about earlier. And do you know what? I'm really frustrated. I've just seen the time. And I have been incredibly selfish with your time. And look, I get the sense we've only just begun. I'd love for you to come back if you could bear it and maybe do a part two on this. But how do people get in touch with you, Andrea? Yeah. So the easiest way to get in touch with me is either on LinkedIn. You can find me at Andrea D. Carter.

[00:44:57] Or you can go to my website. So andreacarterconsulting.com is my speaking website. And then belongingfirst.com. It's just going through an iteration and update so that you can have more of the science and methodology. Yeah. And earlier you said your website was andreacarter.com. But it's not. It's andreacarterconsulting.com, isn't it? Oh, forgive me. Yes, if I gave it wrong. No, no. It's the right one. For consulting.com. Not that.

[00:45:27] I had to look it up just to see where I was going. Look, it's been an absolute pleasure to talk to you today. And forgive everyone listening. Forgive me, because I got interested and didn't represent the audience very well. But I got fascinated. So there you go. Thanks for being with us, Andrew. It's been absolutely brilliant. And hopefully you'll come back. It'll be very much like that. You don't have to answer that now because I don't want to put you under pressure. But thanks for spending time with us today. Hi. I hope you found that episode useful and entertaining.

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