Good Leaders in Turbulent Times: Martin’s Reflections

People who are good leaders are motivated from a position of love. That's a little word with many different meanings.  These people are leading with the best of intentions; their personal life and their work life is driven by desire to do things for the best, they  screw  up  and mess up sometimes.

“Good Leaders in Turbulent Times: How to Navigate Wild Waters at Work”  has been a vehicle for me to find my voice and to use my voice in a way that I hope is of service to other people” says Martin Farrell.  

Episode Transcript

Paula (00:00):
Welcome everyone to "TesseLeads" with your host, Tesse Akpeki, and
co host Paula Okonneh, that's me.
"TesseLeads" is a safe, sensitive,and supportive place and space to
share, hear, and tell your stories,as well as your experiences.

(00:20):
We get super curious about the dilemmasshaping your future and our future
and the journeys that we all are on.
Our guest today is an author.
In fact, I'll let him tellyou more about himself.
His name is Martin Farrell, Farrell,and the book is "Good Leaders in

(00:45):
Turbulent Times, How to Navigate".
I'll let him read that for you.
Martin, please go ahead andintroduce yourself, and please
give us the title of your new book.

Martin (00:54):
This is lovely, I think we should leave this in.
Can we leave this in?
Because this speaks absolutelyto things going wrong, and things
go wrong in life all the time.
And hopefully they don't golike disastrously wrong, they
just go a bit wrong like this.
Okay.
So what we're experiencing now is stuffgoing wrong and we can put it right and

(01:16):
we can laugh at it as we're all doing now.
So my name is Martin Farrell with theemphasis on the Farrell and the title
is "Good Leaders in Turbulent Times,How to Navigate Wild Waters at Work".
Now I can say that fluently nowbecause I've said it many, many times.
But yeah, but to start with Ithought of many different titles, all

(01:37):
variations of something like that.
We landed on this onlyabout nine months ago.
I couldn't say it to start with, you know,I'd have to write it down and rehearse.
So it takes a while to getused to some of these things.
So it took a while toget used to that title.
So the fact that the portal, youknow, it's a jumble, it doesn't
matter, that's just how life is.

(01:59):
And it's absolutely fine.
And this book, if I could use itas a way of introducing myself is.
If I could think of the words thatSir Nick Young used at the launch last
Tuesday, here we are in early October,and, Tesse, you will have heard this.
When he said, I see this book as anaccumulation of what Martin has been doing

(02:21):
throughout his professional life, thatwas both an exaggeration, and it was true.
Because of course, there's loads of thingsthat are not in here, but it's somehow a
distillation, a condensation of that stuffthat I've done throughout my professional
life over pretty much six decades.
Well, if I include the volunteeringwhen I was a teenager at university,

(02:42):
and when I traveled to through Africaand the volunteering I did there
and the many different things, thedifferent jobs I've done during that
time, it's a distillation of that andI did it in order to be of service.
Because here I am at this stage in mylife, I guess I can say you can cut this
out if you think it's inappropriate.
I'm 74.

(03:02):
I'm an old guy, and yeah, and that's fine.
You know, the only bad thing about beingold is I'm going to die before most of
the people listening to this podcast.
I hope anyway, you know, becausethe average age is a load younger.
That's fine.
You know, I'm very wellaware of the span of life.
And that's partly a sort ofspiritual process, but it's

(03:22):
also just waking up to the fact.
So I want to use my time, the remainingtime on the planet as best I can.
And it feels to me that a way ofdoing that is to not be in the
fight, if I can put it that way.
Not in the daily struggle of work and allthat, but to support those who are there.
And to particularly support those whoare there who are concerned about civil

(03:46):
society, creating a society, which isdecent and civil for everybody, and a
society which encompasses the 8 pointsomething billion people on the planet.
Not just the rich people,not just the 20 percent of.
I gather that 80 percent of the people onthe planet have never been in an airplane.
And the numbers of people who are poor,but everybody, they want to sustain

(04:09):
life on the planet for everyone andfor that to be decent and wholesome.
So that feels to me like worth doingin the time that I may have left.
Then other aspects of that is, youknow, for you both and people listening
to this podcast all being well, youwill get old and when you get old,

(04:30):
you know, your energy starts changingand you don't have the energy.
I don't run so fast.
I can bet.
Well, I do run, but it's challenging,and your enthusiasm for things shifts.
I noticed some years ago, and it wasfive years ago when I first expressed
this, and I remember the moment I wassitting in this chair that I'm sitting

(04:50):
in now, there were some dear friends Iwas talking to, and one of the groups
that I'm part of, and I was in tears,I was sobbing, and what the words that
came through that time was, "I don'twant to be in the fight anymore".
Those were the words I used.
"I don't want to be in a fightanymore I'm tired I don't want
to be in the fight but I want tosupport the people in the fight".

(05:11):
And I remember that moment which in a waycame across me as a surprise, I just come
back from holiday and I was getting backinto the normal run of things and it was
painful and I remember it, and it's takenthat five years to, in a way, land at
the point where I think I'm doing that.
And anybody as they get older needs to paymore attention to the available energy.

(05:35):
Not just physical energy,but your desire to do stuff.
So I'm having to be more focused.
And it's a time also, as you get older,to have the potential for being more in
touch with the spirit, more in touch withthe ultimate, more in touch with, hey,
what's this thing called life all about?

(05:56):
What have I done with my life?
What could I do in the future?
So that's the point that I'm atnow and have been growing towards
that over the last, it feels likefive years and particularly over
the last year and a half, sinceI found a publisher for the book.
So the book has been a vehicle for me tofind my voice and to use my voice in a way

(06:20):
that I hope is of service to other people.
And that's becausethat's fulfilling for me.
I hope it's helpful to other people.
That will be really nice.
That would be cool.
I'm doing it, not out ofa sort of sense of duty.
Oh, I have to do that to be a good person.
I'm doing it because it's fulfilling.
It's where my heart isand it's satisfying.

(06:41):
This conversation now is satisfying,because you know, it just feels good when
I'm with people, coaching, supportingpeople, or if I'm facilitating a group.
That feels good.
If I get to the point where itdoesn't feel good, I'll probably
hang up my biro or my laptop orwhatever you, no I wouldn't do it.

(07:01):
But so i'm doing it becauseit's satisfying at this stage in
my life so I say i'm retiring.
The big difference betweenretiring and retired.
Retired is what my dad did and manyof his generation did, he worked he
was a probation officer and the chiefprobation officer and then he had a
party one day and they made nice speechesand they gave him some gifts and then
he was retired from the next morning.

(07:24):
Many of us now and not in that position,particularly those of us who have
been in consultancy for many years.
I started out as a consultant in 1999,which was after a particularly painful
experience in a job that I was in,it was in a mental health charity as
it happened, and that was a reallydifficult time, and that was after
I'd been made redundant from anothercharity, which was also very painful,

(07:47):
and I started working independently.
So, that experience of that last 25 yearshas been brilliant and fantastic and
enormously energizing and also exhausting.
I don't want to do that anymore.
I can't do that anymore.
So I'm retiring and I'm not retired.
Retiring means that I'm happy if thephone rings, I'm happy if they say,

(08:09):
you say, hey, come on my podcast.
Oh, that would be nice.
That seems that soundslike it might be fun.
And it is.
Big fun.
So that's what I do.
And the fact is I don't have thefinancial pressures that I've had before.
I understand that.
Absolutely.
Mortgages, children, two adultchildren, you know, I understand all
those realities, but they're not aburden now because it's more stable.

(08:33):
Yeah, so I think we need to bring inthat, you know, cause someone listening
to this, they may be in their thirtiesor forties or fifties thinking, how
am I going to pay my next bills?
And so it's okay for him, look, he'san old guy, but you know, I know what
that's like, I know what it's likedoing a monthly budget and then writing
down everything that we spend and youknow, how much have we got for this?
How much have we got for that?

(08:54):
I've done that.
I know that and full respectto the people who are in that
position, because I understand that.
Just so happens I'm not there now.
So I think how can I best spend my timenow, which is satisfying for me and it's
going to be of service to other people.
Now then, did you ask me a question?
Have I answered it?

Tesse (09:12):
I think you introduced yourself and a lot of things, a lot of threads there.
But I'm kind of curious aboutyour thoughts on leadership, as
per the personalities and thedifferent shades of individuals
that they bring to their leadership.
You know, we were talking as we weregetting ready for the show about

(09:34):
private truths and public faces.
So I'm really curious about yourtake on those shades of leadership.

Martin (09:44):
Hmm.
Those shades of leadership.
Well I can tell you what inspires me,and it may be also that if you were
to say think of some great leaders,people are going to be mentioning
those leaders who have integrity.
Those leaders who have resilienceand energy and staying power.
Those people who hold a visionwhich is inherent in their being.

(10:07):
And we can think of the big names.
We can think of Mandela.
We can think of Gandhi.
We can think of maybe personalleaders who we've had the privilege
of working with, and I've had theprivilege of working with one or two.
So Nick Young gave wrote theforward for the book, and I
worked with him at the Red Cross.
I found him a visionary leader.

(10:27):
I found him exciting.
I found him, you know, he wouldback me up when I screwed up,
you know, and that happened.
You know, actually, I rememberhe would kind of be there.
So that's one of thecharacters of leadership.
When things go wrong, theywill be there to back you up.
If you do something wrong, they'regoing to tell you about that in
private and when things go right, theytell you about that in public, you

(10:50):
know, everybody gets to hear that.
And they're there in service ofwhatever the goal is, and for me,
that goal needed to be somethingto do with making people's lives
better, solving crisis, helping peoplethrough some kind of tricky situation.
So that's why I work to the britishred cross, I work to save the children.

(11:11):
Worked in lots of smaller charitiescommunity groups and so on.
So, you know i'm not interested in theprofit making, nothing wrong with making
people who make profit, they do somenice, all sort of nice things that I
make use of, but is personally not whatinspires me, not what gets me out of bed.
Because I think that the capacity a goodlife is in a way part of a good life

(11:37):
and leading a good life, whether you'rea leader or it's just for yourself,
is that you not only don't somehowput too much burden on the planet in
terms of carbon and using resources.
But because of where we are, you'respending your time in trying to
reverse the damage that's alreadydone, in one way or another.

(11:59):
It might be small impact,it might be a big impact.
And that those people who are good leadersare motivated from a position of love,
that's a little word with a massive,you know, so many different meanings.
But those people you believe aredoing it with the best of intentions,
and that their personal lifeand their work life is driven by

(12:23):
desire to do things for the best.
And that's something that they'vesomehow managed to do that, which
includes screwing up sometimes.
It includes messing up sometimes.

Paula (12:34):
Wow.
Includes screwing up sometimes,includes messing up sometimes.
I love it because that makes us real.
You know, this is allabout your personal story.
This is about you.
I wanted to save the rawyou, but that's okay.
But I love what you said there, andwhen I read your book that jumped out

(12:58):
was about fishing for invitations.
About, you know, whether if you have theinvitation in your hand and you don't
use it, you don't do anything with it.
And that's kinda what you're saying.
You know, when we get to a certain age,we have choices and we have options.
And we can be instrumental in helpingchange the mistakes that probably

(13:19):
we, or collectively our generationhas done, and help young people or
younger people see where we went wrongand what they can do to improve that.
So when you wrote that particularpiece in your book, was there anything
in particular that happened in yourlife that led you to write that?

Martin (13:37):
Well, if I could answer that in a moment, but say a bit more about
invitations, because I had a challengewhen I started writing the book.
If I'm working with someone as a coach,and that's a crisis coach, because
often I'm supporting people who arein crisis, leaders who are in crisis.
It's really bad.
And it's one person at one moment of time.

(13:59):
Were if i'm facilitating theinternational facilitation and with
a low range of international bodies.
It's one group in one moment of thatgroups process, so you can work out what's
worth doing with that individual what'sworth suggesting, what might be a program
that you might develop for that group.
When i'm writing a book I have noidea who's going to be reading this.

(14:23):
I have no idea what stage they'regoing to be at in their what,
how on earth can I say anything.
I could maybe you know write a listof two hundred things that you might
consider and say pick one of these, butI thought that's not very interesting.
So then I came with the image of imagineyou're on a fishing trip which kind
of fits with the wild waters metaphor.

(14:43):
Which I could tell you aboutas well, cause I really had
a wild waters experience inSouthern Africa, which was crazy.
Yeah.
Anyway, nearly drowned.
Did actually nearly drown.
Yeah.
With my family in the year 2000.
But so fishing trip in this podcast,whoever's listening to this podcast
and maybe one thing that strikes you.

(15:06):
Great.
Oh, that there may be two things.
If you're lucky, theremight be three things.
If you read the book, there mightbe something you go through.
Oh, that's interesting,well, that's interesting.
It will be different for each person.
It'll be different from each person at theparticular point in which they read it.
That was my intention, that they wouldpick out one or two or three things

(15:28):
that work for them now, but then youneed to, as it were, go to the party.
You know, someone gives you an invitationand the invitation hangs on the fridge
door and you don't go to the party.
You don't have theexperience of doing anything.
So when that thing strikesyou then do something.
And it may strike you as aflash of something wonderful.

(15:49):
Oh god this is such an insight it's sowonderful yes i'll do that, or it may
be something that is like stubbing yourtoe against something, something that's
painful or irritating and whatever itis notice that and, so you stop and then
you notice and then you appreciate itmaybe you analyze it a bit and then you

(16:10):
plan what you might do next, and then youproceed, and it's you that has to do that.
Now, for those who are listening veryattentively, you will know that that
spells snappy, which is one of thecomments that I make in the book.
There's 138 pieces of commentary,advice, and there was one at the
end of chapter one, "Snappy, Stop,Notice, Appreciate Plan and Proceed

(16:35):
and it's you that has to do that.
So there's no point just noticingsomething you need to take some action
you need to embrace it in some way,whether it's something that's painful
to you or whether it's somethingthat's joyous and a great insight.
And that's kind of worked for mein a way, particularly if there's
something really unpleasant.
I can tell a little bit of a story,which is a very current one, which I

(16:59):
just today received a mail and emailfrom someone I know, he's just read the
book and I know that that person hadhad some challenges some years ago, and
that person said by reading the book,I realized it's not quite finished.
So I've taken some action,you know, emotionally, I

(17:19):
know it's not quite finished.
It dug up some stuff.
I thought I dealt with it many years ago.
So I've taken some action andthat action had a positive result.
I shouldn't say more than that, but ithad a positive result, because the book
stirred up a little bit of that mud thatwas still lurking around there at the
bottom of the, at the bottom of the lake.
So he stirred up the mud andhe did something about it and

(17:42):
that has proved to have been avery happy succession of events.
If for those, well, you can't see this,but if you were seeing me, you would see
that behind me, there is calligraphy.
It says no mud, no lotus.
We know that mud is pretty messy, butyou're feeding it, you'll sink into it.

(18:03):
It's messy.
Maybe it's smelly.
Maybe it's compost like, youknow, what grows out of that?
A lotus, that beautifullotus can grow out of that.
A beautiful lotus somehowarises from this yucky stuff.
And that's a powerful symbol I think.
A powerful metaphor for whatwe can gain from the troubles,

(18:24):
the difficulties that we have.
It's worth saying also that we couldjust have mud, you know, sometimes it's
just mad, because you don't work withthe mud and you don't grow the Lotus
because you're not working with itin a way that helps that Lotus grow.
So there's just mad, and there arepeople who are in difficult times,
who are staying in difficult times andthey're stuck in the difficult times.

(18:48):
They're stuck in the mud.
That happens too, but that's notnecessary because there are ways
of working and a lot of that is theway of community and people sharing
and really listening to each other.
And right at the beginning of thisconversation, you referred to,
let me just look, I wrote it down.
Yes.
Safe, supportive, sensitive place.

(19:10):
It's so centrally important.
If I'm not safe, I'm notgoing to do anything.
I'm just going to try to, you know,preserve myself, look after myself,
and that's for most of us, at leastwhere I'm living, the physical
safety is not really a question.
I might get knocked over.
I have someone might attack mein the street, but generally

(19:31):
I feel quite physically safe.
But the emotional safetyis a whole other story.
And we know how the words, whether it'sof anybody and particularly of a person in
a leadership position can be so powerfuland it can destroy a feeling of safety
very quickly just by a chance comment, andthat can come from anybody but if you're

(19:54):
in a position of leadership your wordscount a hundred times more than somebody
else because people are looking at you.
So that safety I think is so importantwhich then allows a degree of
sensitivity and appreciation, becausesome of the stuff that we have inside.
It's not just written ona back of an envelope.
It's just not written out, ohyeah the reason i'm feeling really

(20:17):
agitated today is because ofX, Y, Z, it's a muddle inside.
So this is a sensitive journey,a careful journey to understand.
I was very provoked by somethingtwo or three months ago.
It would take probably another halfan hour to tell the whole story,
so I bore you with the whole thing.
I was really troubled by it.

(20:38):
I mean, you know, to notsleeping and feeling provoked by
something that somebody else had.
It wasn't a physical thing,but something that they had.
And then someone in one of the groups thatI'm part of said, Martin, I'd be happy to
give you some time to think that through.
And she did.
And it was wonderful because shehelped me touch what was really
going on there at depth and itwas about birth and death, right?

(21:01):
So it was kind of really profound stuff.
And I needed that safety, which Iknew that she would provide because
I've known her for some years.
And also it needed that sensitive touchreally, because it was felt very delicate.
It was about my birth, what washappening at my birth and my view of
my death that this whole thing, someonethat had happened when I was with

(21:24):
someone I'd revoked, like a match beingthrown into petrol vapor, went off.
So she showed that sensitivity.
And that helped me understand itand that feeling then subsided
and I felt I'd moved on.

Tesse (21:38):
That sounds like therapy to me.
You know, Martin, thanks for sharing that.
At the beginning, you mentionedthat you were 74, or 74 years young.
And I was actually thinking aboutany thoughts you have for the
future, the present leaders whoare Millennials, who are Generation

(21:59):
Z, a lot of them kind of see lifedifferently from baby boomers and so on.
But your thoughts are so welcome on this.

Martin (22:11):
I might tell you my first thought, which is to be there for
them, if they want that to be inservice to them, because that's
where the action's happening.
It's not happening with me.
Okay.
We're on podcast.
I've written a book and allthat, but that's all in service
of people who are in the fight.
It's funny I say in the fight, and that'sbecause those are the words that sort of
felt resident five years ago and still do,because it was kind of brutal out there,

(22:35):
but it's not fighting, fighting, fighting.
It's just being active and energeticand having the energy to do that.
So I think it's well worth those peoplewho are somewhat older consider carefully
about how they use their time and tofind ways to be able to sensitively,
safely be supportive of those youngerpeople, because they are the ones with

(23:01):
our support, who are going to bring usthrough to a decent and civil society,
which is sustainable, which our currentsociety isn't, and to appreciate the
pain that we've delivered to them.
Because we have, they didn't ask for that.
I've got two children, well not children,young adults, late 30s and early 40s,

(23:22):
you know, they've picked that up.
So I feel also there's a kind ofresponsibility, but it's also a
heartfelt calling to be there,not to impose, but just to say,
here, if I can help, let me know.
That's what I think.

Paula (23:38):
Martin, thank you so much for saying that, because that's a
discussion I have and I keep havingwith my generation on a baby boomer.
And that is, you know, the youngergeneration, the Gen Z's, the millennials
all the other gens that I can't remember.
Gen X.

Martin (23:56):
Gen everything.

Paula (23:57):
Yeah, gen everything.
They need us, but theydon't need our criticism.
They need our wisdom.
They need our input.
And yes, I mean, sometimesyou can see things.
Sometimes there's a lot more said bynot saying things as opposed to like,
you generate, you do this, you do that.
Yeah, we sometimes forgetthat we were there too.

(24:22):
And how we felt when we told ourmusic was too loud and there was
nothing in our music but noise.
How we could feel the music,that was it, you know.
So, thank you for sayingyou're there to be service to
the other generation and not.

Martin (24:40):
And also, I think that's incumbent upon us to do the work, if I could use
that term, to do the work, to understandsome of those things, which some of my
generation may look at and go, what?
You know, I don't get it.
No transgender or, you know,neuro diverse or these things.
You know, this is close to home for meand so I really do that work as best I can

(25:02):
to understand getting into the mindset.
Because it's a different world, it'sa different world, but to really
understand that in a genuinelyengaged and not patronizing way.
Not in a kind of, well, you know what,that's all a bit, what do you mean?
But to really try to understandthat and that's work, that's work.

(25:23):
It's psychological work, which requiresus and need to be as open as we can be to
be as curious as we can be about some ofthose movements, which are happening now.
Which just reminds me, I heard a quotethe other day, which is quite nice
and "the end of the world will notcome because of the lack of wonders,
but because of the lack of wonder".

(25:43):
I think it was GK Chesterton, you know,maybe others didn't know that quote.
You know, so let's keep that curiosity,that curiosity and that sense of wonder
that we have as a child about all thesocial movements and all the stuff that's
happening now, not from a position ofcriticism, but from a sense of wonder.
Oh, wow.
Look what's happening now.
I could be interested inthat sense of wonder, yeah.

Paula (26:07):
Wow.
We're wrapping up.

Martin (26:08):
Oh, we've only just started.
We're just getting going, aren't we?

Tesse (26:12):
It sounds like we're having fun.

Martin (26:15):
Yeah, it sure does.
Yeah.

Paula (26:17):
Oh, boy.
So, Tesse.
Any parting questions for?

Tesse (26:22):
I think that Martin has sprinkled insight, wisdom, wonder,
and I'm going to reflect on that.
I hope that our listeners will as well,because, you know, I could listen to
Martin all day until it gets dark.

Martin (26:42):
Or if it rains, which it is outside my window right now.
And it'll be sunny tomorrow.
Yeah, well, it's been a real pleasure.
I'm sorry that time has gone.
See, I know we could have areally rich, longer exchange.
There we are.
Time's up.

Paula (26:59):
Yeah.
And so to our precious listeners andviewers, we want you to know that your
stories matter, just as your lives matter.
And we ask that you continue to sharethem with us, just like Martin did.
And we also want you to know thatwe support you, we encourage you,
and we try to nurture you throughthe guests that we bring on, so that

(27:22):
you know that you're never alone.
And with that we also, we would liketo ask you or encourage you to head
over to, if you haven't already, headover to "Apple Podcasts", "YouTube",
"Spotify", or wherever you listen toyour podcast and please subscribe.
And if you have found this episode orany of our past episodes helpful, we

(27:43):
ask that you let us know in your review.
And if there's any topic or questionthat you'd like us to cover, we ask that
you send us a note and please send thatover to us on our website, which is.
"www.tesseleads.com" and where you canapply also if you'd like to be a guest.

(28:03):
So thank you so much, Martin,for coming on the show.
Thank you.

Tesse (28:08):
Martin, you're special.
Thank you so much.

Martin (28:12):
Thank you for inviting me.