GROW Your Way Out of PR Workplace Stress

Emily Page (00:01):

Sometimes strength isn't about starting flawless. It's about how we rebuild when things fall apart. In today's story, we go back centuries to find a lesson that still shapes how we lead people. Today.

Doug Downs (00:18):

500 years ago in ancient Japan, a prized tea bull slipped from the hands of a mighty warlord and shattered into pieces on the floor, heartbroken, but unwilling to discard it. He sent the broken bull to the finest craftsman he could find, hoping they would somehow restore what was lost. When it returned, it didn't look the same. The cracks hadn't been hidden. They hadn't been patched up to pretend that the bowl had never fallen. Instead, every fracture had been filled with lacquer mixed with powdered gold. Thin gleaming rivers now ran through the bull, making the once shattered object even more beautiful and infinitely more valuable. This became known as KitSugi, the Golden joinery, an art form that celebrates repair, resilience, and history. Instead of erasing the evidence of failure, can Sugi honors it. It tells the story of what's been broken and what's been made stronger because of it.

(01:22):

In leadership, we often believe we must fix people's mistakes, cover their flaws, steer them away from missteps, but true leadership, lasting leadership comes when we coach people through their cracks. When we show them how to rebuild with pride, not with shame. When we help them see that every setback, every stumble can become a golden thread in their own story of strength. We don't erase the hard parts, we help them own them and grow stronger because of them. Today on stories and strategies, how coaching your team, not controlling them is the golden thread that holds a great organization together. My name is Doug Downs

Farzana Baduel (02:17):

And my name is Farzana Baduel.

Doug Downs (02:19):

Hey Farzana, did you see that note on LinkedIn this morning from Isobel Camier mentioning the episode with Jo Carr?

Farzana Baduel (02:26):

Yeah, I thought that was lovely actually. I thought it was a really lovely shout out to Jo Carr. I mean, she was super insightful about how to manage cultures

Doug Downs (02:36):

From Hope and Glory and giving your team space and challenging them the right way at the same time. Isobel, that's so kind. Thank you so much. And if you have a chance, Isobel, give us a five star rating on Apple that boosts the algorithm, not that I'm fishing for anything.

Farzana Baduel (02:50):

Now, our guest this week is Sarah Waddington joining us today from Newcastle. Hi Sarah,

Sarah Waddington (02:57):

Hi Farzana. Hey Doug. Good to see you.

Farzana Baduel (02:59):

Now, how are things on the Tyne?

Sarah Waddington (03:02):

Well, do you know what? It's the start of May and we have a beautiful day outside. It's probably our early summer. I dunno whether it'll stay, but we're going to take it and especially if we're heading through the weekend

Farzana Baduel (03:15):

Now, Sarah, you are a communication strategist, executive coach, and social mobility advocate with over two decades of experience in public relations and management consultancy. You're the founder of the Future-Proof community and co-founder of Socially Mobile, a not-for-profit PR training initiative aimed at supporting professionals from underrepresented backgrounds. I'm very lucky to be on the steering committee now as the interim CEO of the Public Relations and Communications Association, the PRCA and a Chartered Director, you continue to influence the industry through your leadership and commitment to governance and ethical practice.

Doug Downs (03:55):

So Sarah, for those like me who are new to it, the Grow model, which was something where were you when I was in high school, I really needed that grow model at the time. How does each part, goal reality options and way forward, how does that work in practice?

Sarah Waddington (04:15):

Yeah, so thank you for that lovely introduction. Farzana As part of all that work and the chartered director, CPD that I did, I also became an executive coach, which is when I first learned about Grow Doug. And ultimately I decided to do the coaching because I realized that I could be better as a leader. And when I delved into coaching, I understood that it's actually a process of transformation. So it works by helping people find their own solutions to challenges rather than telling them what to do. And in the past I've probably been guilty of telling people what to do. And so because it's a particular process, it can help unlock high performance to help people find their own way forward and that can unlock high performing teams, which is what everybody wants in an organization. Now grow as you ask the question is a model that was developed and popularized by a fantastic leader called Sir John Whitmore, who actually worked in Sports first.

(05:15):

And it's a really brilliant team for helping build teams and helping individuals do better at work, but also in their home life. And as where whole people who come to work and have lots going on, anytime it can really help people just manage day to day in a very positive way. So like you said, grows about four areas so you have a structured conversation with the other person, and that's about goal setting, reality checking what options are in front of us and what does that way forward look like? And then we can delve more into that. So lots of curious questions in terms of what might stand in the way, what people's values and beliefs are, what they think the solutions might be, where they have examples of things that they've done really well before in the past that they can bring to the table to build their confidence. And ultimately it's just a fantastic way for leaders to raise, help their team players raise awareness, increase their responsibility, and it just means that people are more empowered to move forward more quickly and consistently using their own thinking rather than being dependent on someone telling them what to do all the time. It's as simple as that. It's quite a complex model when you get into it, but it's beautiful in its simplicity.

Farzana Baduel (06:29):

So Sarah, you have always said that coaching isn't about giving advice, it's about helping people unlock their own thinking, but I wanted to understand that within a high pressure PR environment, where does the grow model support that mindset? I mean, it sounds wonderful in practice, it sounds wonderful in theory, but I just want to know how does it work when you've got the sort of the thrust of the PR industry and the deadlines and demands and so forth, how do you balance the nature of the PR industry and the cultures that we operate in with the grow model?

Sarah Waddington (07:04):

Yeah, I think it's interesting because like I say, it's beautiful and it's simplicity when you talk about and just set those four areas out. But it is complex because when you start to apply it, you can see how and how many different ways it can be applied. So what's really interesting, regardless of sector, why it's useful is it's really invaluable because it helps with people's self-actualization. And if you think of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, that's right at the top. We all want to belong and we can belong in a workplace and we want to have our self-esteem needs met. And often that's by getting approval from others, but also then finding our own approval from within because we're proud of what we're doing now. Coaching helps people understand their values and what they want in terms of meaning from life, and it's a really great way of creating a plan to achieving that.

(07:52):

So that's really helpful in a career setting. Now we all think about where we are in life and perhaps our career journeys. They may have been linear, it's highly unlikely, but we might have chopped and changed some areas might have been quick to achieve. We might have had stumbling blocks at different times where coaching can help as it delivers results more quickly and consistently because it gives you that defined goal and it helps the person think about how are they going to get there and break it down step by step. So if you're struggling, for example, in a PR career to get the next step up or promotion, that blocker could actually be your mindset, I'm not good enough, I don't look right, I don't fit in. Now you mentioned socially mobile, RC IC that we're very grateful to have you on our ceiling group for valana, but often those are the conversations that we have with those with our graduates.

(08:44):

Maybe I'm just not good enough, but it's not that in the slightest there is a mindset issue that we need to deal with and that's what coaching can help with. Now, again, back to the workplace grow and coaching is really useful because it can really help reduce stress. And you talked about PR being an incredibly stressful environment. It's fast moving with often dictated to by the news headlines. I mean it could 1,000,001 things, just even the pressures that come with running a business. But if you are increasing through the grow model in coaching someone's feelings of personal control, that's immediately helping them to reduce their stress. It can also help reduce the opportunity of a blame culture. And I've been in many organizations where I've seen it, well, something doesn't happen or that client doesn't get this and they're making a complaint and the people will point fingers, well actually you can reduce that because coaching is all about asking curious questions, being completely non-judgmental, understanding the situation, active listening and prompting people to find a different way.

(09:46):

So understanding why is it happening and how else can that issue perhaps be approached. Now, I would argue that in the public relations industry we can be people pleasers. We're certainly problem solvers. We're supposed to be business partners. So that's really important to be able to go into an organization and ask sensible curious questions about how the work will be doing will be supporting the organizational objectives and what results they're looking for from that. And I think crucially, because we often think about PR tactically, but we're generally business people. I work a lot with management teams where I really love grow as it can move an organization or culture from being one of dependents where people are just waiting to be told what to do and are not particularly bought in, not particularly empowered, not particularly interested because everybody's just a bit lethargic to one of not just independence, where you've got individual high performers who are doing well, but in a kind of silo or just on an individual basis, but where teams are actually interdependence, not just focused on their own performance, but actually how you're performing within a department, within the actual group or the team itself.

(10:55):

And in that that's a change of mindset. So they're thinking, well, I know how to do my bit, but how do we unite around a common goal and what the questions that we need to ask,

Doug Downs (11:04):

Having worked amongst the cubicles, I know a big part of that lethargy that you mentioned is people are afraid to raise ideas, afraid of being told that's a waste of time, or you're moving in the wrong direction.

Sarah Waddington (11:15):

Oh, we've done that before and it didn't work.

Doug Downs (11:17):

Oh my goodness. Yeah,

Sarah Waddington (11:19):

That's right. I hate that. That's my worst one. Oh, we tried that, that I'm like, I have to really work very hard on my zen at that point.

Doug Downs (11:26):

And you can flip that around. We've done that before and it did work. So right, you're driving by looking in the rear view mirror. It's the same thing. Let me create a scenario here. I'm a manager of a small team. We're working with an internal client and the freaking client keeps changing either the timelines or the, I don't like blue anymore. Now I want the

Sarah Waddington (11:49):

Heart rate's going up already. I've been here before. Exactly.

Doug Downs (11:52):

So how do I as the manager use the grow model with my team to manage that situation?

Sarah Waddington (11:58):

Yeah, and it's great. So you sit down in the team and you want to create that psychologically safe environment. So there's no bad ideas. You can talk to each other. You want honesty, and like I said, there's no judgment and this is where you really have to employ your active listening. But ultimately that's about setting out the scenario. What is the issue that you're trying to achieve and where do you want to be with that issue by the end of the conversation that you're having as a team. And that's really, really important. How will you know that the conversation's been a success and how will it make you all feel as a team and hopefully with an issue like this where you've got a nightmare client who's changing the boundaries of the project all the time or just being generally difficult, you are in part to feel relieved and empowered and trusted to be able to handle the situation appropriately.

(12:50):

So the questionnaire is if you go through this is the beauty of it in its simplicity, and you can see how applicable it can be, but this is, you start with reality, okay, what is the situation? What's happening here? Where are we with this goal? So we're talking about we want this client to what we're saying here that they finally stick to some boundaries in terms of we agree a deadline, they've got to stick to it. Okay, where are we with that discussion is, well, we've had five conversations, they've done it five times, we're now over servicing by this much, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever it might be. Question is, okay, so what have we tried already? So then everybody goes through, well, we did this, we did that, or did the other, or actually haven't, they're just bloody awful to deal with. Everybody's hiding from her.

(13:37):

We've all stopped emailing or we've had three meetings, wherever that might be. Okay, what has worked, what hasn't in terms of what's contributed to any successes that you've had? Has anybody else on the team had a good interaction with this person? So you're starting to look at bringing all the details in terms of, okay, who gets on well with that? When's that success be? How urgent the situation, how much do we need this? How impactful is this going to be for us as a team? Those are the kind of questions you're going into. The reality, what is going on here? It's basically getting into the minutia of it. And then part of that can be listening very carefully, which is why the active listening is so important. So listening to what people are saying and what they're telling you from the way they're wording it. So have they got limiting belief about this person or there's no point because she's not going to respond, or actually I don't believe we can do anything with them. I think we should just stitch the client and move on. And that's really important because that's very instructive in terms of what they're saying and their mindset going into those conversations too, and we'll come back

Farzana Baduel (14:40):

To that. I wanted to talk about the grow model in terms of resilience, because we all know that the PR industry is a very stressful industry. It's very fast paced, it's very deadline driven. A lot of the outcomes that we're responsible for we're not necessarily in full control. And that I think also leads to this drumbeat of a stress that permeates our industry. I wanted to understand the grow model. Is it something that can be applied to prs, working in-house agency, freelance in terms of really avoiding burnout?

Sarah Waddington (15:20):

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you can bring anything to a coaching session and I see anything and everything when I'm doing my executive coaching, and it goes from things that are very career related to things that are very personal. But that's important because like I say, we come as our whole self. And I always say to people, imagine that we're like, say you've got five marbles in front of us. People think that we need to front up like we're fully colored. Imagine they're all blue and everything's that. They're a hundred percent blue, all of them. It's like the full color, but that's not how we ship up. Sometimes we have bad days and we might be only there might 25% blue of us, do you know what I mean? Just because we're tired and we're harassed still, there's family issues or the dog's sick or we haven't slept and we've just got to get away from that mindset.

(16:03):

But people can bring anything into these sessions and a lot of it will come back down to setting actions and setting boundaries. So it's the boundaries in terms of helping people bring their awareness to what is in their control. So you'll get people coming in and say, I've got an awful boss. How do I make them nicer? To me? You can't make anybody nicer to you. What you can do is change how you interact them, understand them, your response. Put boundaries in if there's some toxic behaviors that are creeping in. So again, it's changing your mindset and how you respond.

Doug Downs (16:37):

Sarah, just last question and briefly, if you could give me one baby step that a senior leader could do this week to start coaching their middle managers on how to use the grow model with their teams.

Sarah Waddington (16:54):

I would say firstly, there's three steps. Go look up the grow model. If you want to go down that route, do the formal training because you see a lot of people out there about qualifications and they don't necessarily employ coaching in the same way. So that was my first one. The second thing is notice what you notice yourself. Start with yourself. So I'm a much better leader because I've been through the coaching qualification, but employ active listening. So listen really, really, really hard and then frame your, don't go in with questions or trying to jump in with solutions. Frame your next question around what they've said. You might think you do that already. Most people don't. It is revolutionary. Then the other thing is employ silence. Well will tell you, and you can tell right now, I'm an avid talker. I don't shut up very often.

(17:45):

I'm better at it now. But in work situations, actually I do. I listen and when I need to, there's a power in employing silence and it will create discomfort for others. So they will think of something else or they'll come back with another response or they'll find a different solution, but also makes people rethink about what's going on for them and notice what's going on. Just so notice, notice about how you approach things. Notice how you feel physiologically as well when you're approaching meetings and check your own bias. So back to that difficult client. A really great tip is just to think about your mindset before going in there. Go in thinking that that woman will meet you halfway.

Farzana Baduel (18:22):

So Sarah, how would you persuade middle managers to take on the grow model with their teams when they already feel flat out and they've got a huge to-do list and they've got very limited Headspace to learn about the grow model, let alone apply it.

Sarah Waddington (18:40):

I think it can demonstrate very quickly that by applying the grow model to their work, how can we do this better? What's the issue we're facing? Well, we're all flat out, we're all overworked. The deadlines are getting away with this. You can use that as the rationale for employment, the grow model. Let's go through that. Let's apply it. Let's see what happens. Test it. Test it.

Doug Downs (19:03):

Sarah, thanks. This was awesome. Thanks so much for your time today.

Sarah Waddington (19:07):

Thank you very much for having me on. It's a pleasure. And sorry I could go on for ages about this. It's so good. I'm absolutely obsessed.

Farzana Baduel (19:13):

Now, Sarah, in our previous episode, our guest, Mark Borkowski left a question,

Mark Borkowski (19:20):

How important does your work define you? And if it doesn't define you, how do you define yourself?

Sarah Waddington (19:31):

Wow, it's massive.

(19:33):

It does define me. I've always worked. I worked through both maternity leads, not by choice, but me being a working parent is a big pillar within our family, and I think for me is about legacy. I think we should all leave the society in a better place than how we found it. There was big existential questions right now, some wicked problems within society, and I've been lucky to work myself up in the position of influence and authority now, and I believe it's my responsibility to do what I can to take us all forward in a direction that I think will help things better for my kids in the next generation and leave that ladder down. So yeah, I think work does define me. I don't know. I think the only way, other way I can answer is I dunno who I would be without work.

Doug Downs (20:24):

I'm on the same page to be totally honest, it is a big piece of who I am. Take it out. And it's not that I don't know who I am, but I am different for sure.

Sarah Waddington (20:34):

I love the job as well. I'm passionate about it. In this house. We are PR balls. I mean that's the long and short of it. If we take that away, I dunno, maybe even the marriage would fall over.

Doug Downs (20:48):

I'm going to practice the grow model at home, see if it works.

Sarah Waddington (20:52):

Do it

Doug Downs (20:53):

Your turn. Sarah, what question would you like to leave behind for the next guest?

Sarah Waddington (20:57):

Well, I'm going to link it to how I feel about things, so I'm going to ask the next person if they also believe we have a personal responsibility to help change society for the

Farzana Baduel (21:05):

Better. I think it depends. I think people have different drivers in life and also I think people have different drivers in life at different phases of their life as well. That's true. So when I was, I think in my twenties, I was very self-absorbed and it was all about me and very sort of, yeah. And then as I got older, I started thinking about people around me and then in my forties I think about society at large. So I would say that I've actually gone on a journey where I didn't start out as purpose led at all, and it's come quite late in the day for me. Actually.

Doug Downs (21:42):

There was a poem I read a long time ago, and I sort of remember the ending to it. I don't remember the title or the author, but at the end of it it said to have succeeded is to have left behind those who have loved and cared for you and they knew you cared for them or a healthy garden patch or a redeemed social condition. To have done that, that is to have succeeded.

Sarah Waddington (22:12):

I have, that's something very similar on one of my Insta posts.

Doug Downs (22:16):

Yeah, you don't have to change the world through big strokes

Sarah Waddington (22:21):

Sometimes. That's the key. Everybody's got influence. It's how you use that in small ways. And even if that's making someone else happy who you're walking past on their way to the supermarket, a small smile, a check in is more than

Doug Downs (22:31):

Enough. Yeah, the little things sometimes they're the big things.

Sarah Waddington (22:35):

Well, it is the kids. I think about it all the time. Someone once said to me, pay attention to your kids, because those small things are their big things, and if you don't pay attention to the small things, they won't come to you with the big things when they really have the big things, can't get past it.

Doug Downs (22:51):

Amen. Thanks again, Sarah. Thank

Sarah Waddington (22:53):

You. It's been pleasure. Thank you so much.

Doug Downs (22:57):

Here are the top three things we got today from Sarah Waddington. First grow is much more than a formula. It's a mindset shift. Sarah explained how it empowers people to find their own solutions instead of being told what to do, which raises confidence and unlocks higher performance. Second, the model is incredibly practical in high pressure industries like public relations. By creating a psychologically safe environment and structuring conversations, it reduces stress, curbs blame culture and gives teams ownership and clarity even when deadlines and client demands are piling up. And finally, grow isn't just about work, it's about resilience, whether tackling burnout, self-doubt, or career hurdles. Sarah showed us how this approach helps people reframe challenges, set boundaries, and regain control over their mindset and energy.

Farzana Baduel (23:51):

I really love the conversation with Sarah because what she's teaching us through the Grow Model is actually to move away from being sort of responsive and reactionary to being very considered and creating an environment for people to thrive and grow and taking the drama out of pr.

Doug Downs (24:11):

It's the natural way of communication, serve and return, serve and return, and that's what it's building in.

Farzana Baduel (24:17):

Love it.

Doug Downs (24:18):

If you'd like to send a message to our guest, Sarah Waddington, we've got our contact info in the show notes. Stories and Strategies is a co-production of Curzon PR, JGR Communications and Stories and Strategies podcast. If you like this episode, could you please leave a five star rating, possibly a review, mention us on LinkedIn. Thanks as always, to our producers, David Ide and Emily Page. Lastly, do us a favor forward this episode to one friend. Thanks for listening.