Series Thirteen, Episode Six: Juggling the balance of work and rest- the power of switching off, the role of faith and importance of wellbeing

Julia: Hello. My name is Julia Streets and welcome to DiverCity Podcast, talking about equity, inclusion, and diversity in financial services. On the podcast, we seek to shine a light on positive progress, call out areas requiring further focus, and offer lots of ideas to help drive change.

Before we get started today, I just want to take a moment to thank our friends at City A.M. for all their support. In supporting DiverCity Podcast, they have a dedicated page on their website, they publish and promote both our episodes and our supporting blog series, so their readers can stay at the very top of the latest diversity and inclusion debate. Now, you may want to check out City A.M.’s own podcast called The City View. It has all the latest news and opinion from the City, and we at DiverCity Podcast are great fans, so thank you to our friends at City A.M.

Now, today I’m delighted to be joined by Eli Albrecht and George Bettany. Allow me to introduce them to you. Eli Albrecht is an M&A lawyer who joins us today from Washington D.C., from the firm Gibson, Dunn, Crutcher LLP. He has a particular focus on private equity, mergers, and acquisitions, and has advised companies on a range of private and public mergers, leveraged buyouts, joint ventures, venture capital investments, and various other corporate matters.

He’s very committed to the diversity and inclusion conversation. He particularly engages in the conversation regarding working parents, and is involved in diversity groups, both within his organisation and across the industry. One particular area that matters greatly to him is the conversation about his experience as a Jewish man, and also the industry’s engagement with the religion as a whole, thinking about bias, and particularly thinking about the importance of education. Eli, wonderful you could join us. Great to have you on the show.

Eli: Hi, Julia. I’m absolutely honoured to be on, and thank you for all that you do for the diversity and inclusion conversation, but particularly your exploration of how faith has played a role in diversity and inclusion.

Julia: I have so many questions. We’ll get into much of that, for sure, as we go through it. Before we do that, welcome to George Bettany, who’s the co-founder of a business called Sanctus. He co-founded it back in 2016 with his best friend and business partner, James Routledge.

After closing down their previous business, a business called Matchchat, he struggled with his mental wellbeing, and that has led George and James to set up the kind of brand that he wishes that he could have turned to when he needed it. Always deeply passionate about entrepreneurship, business, and wellbeing as a whole, and Sanctus partners with businesses, supporting them to drive forward the mission of giving employees a safe space to work on their mental wellbeing, and to thrive in the workplace. It sounds very timely, George. It’s great to have you on the show.

George: Thanks so much, Julia, thanks so much for having me. Really looking forward to the conversation today.

Julia: It’s so important, and there’s a lot in here, I think, particularly about the practise of Shabbat, for example, the importance of rest. We’ll get into some of that discussion as we go through, but let me ask you both the question I ask all our guests when they join us on the show, which I’m dying to know. What are you focused on right now? George, can I come to you first?

George:  We are on a mission really, and have for the last five or six years, to change the perception of mental health, change the way that we approach it, talk about it, and especially do that in the workplace, really making it a topic conversation that’s more accessible.

Then, we have a team, we’ll partner with the business to give employees access to Sanctus support, which comes in the form of one-to-one and group coaching, and other bits as well, workshops and content. At the moment we, especially over the last couple of years with the pandemic and what’s going on in the world at the moment, I think there’s a lot of change, a lot of uncertainty, and a lot that people are going through on a human level.

For the last couple of years especially, we’ve been supporting individuals, employees, people through that, and businesses through that. At the moment, we’re really focused on doing more of that. We’re predominantly based in the UK, and have been working with UK-based businesses, but we’re growing at the moment and partnering with more diverse businesses, different types of organisations, and reaching people in different parts of this country, and across Europe and the world.

It’s a challenging time for us as a business and team, as we go through that, but it’s also, for me, this is why I started the company, to reach people and support people. So, it’s also an exciting time for us as well, as we grow.

Julia: Certainly, the whole conversation about wellbeing clearly is taking a much more dominant position, not only in the minds of employees, but the minds of leaders, and also right the way up to board level, in terms of culture and how are we doing, how are we doing as high-performing teams and as organisations as well? I’ve got so many questions to follow up with on that, but before I do that, Eli, a similar question to you, actually, I’m really interested to know what you are focused on right now.

Eli: Right now, today, and every moment of the day, I’m tenaciously focused on being an amazing husband, and father, and private-equity lawyer. That is my moment-by-moment focus. I, in my professional life, represent mostly private-equity funds that are buying other businesses, or large companies buying other companies, and merging them together.

I’ve done this for quite some time at Gibson Dunn, which is one of the top law firms in the world, working with many of the clients that are household names. It’s a demanding profession. Many of the people in my field, many M&A lawyers, are 100% dedicated to their craft, and must be in order to play at this high level.

I am deeply focused on staying engaged with my family while being successful at this challenging task. I do that by engaging in my religious practises, and allowing those faith practises to guide me and help me find a balance, while achieving professional success.

Julia: Just exploring that a little bit further, and I know you’ve been very active on social media, posting about the importance of family, faith, and also your profession as well. Expand a little, if you would, in terms of your thoughts about why this matters, and also some of the engagement you’ve been having on social media as well.

Eli: Absolutely. I’m in a field that is not well known for its wellness and balance. I think that many of my colleagues and co workers are really trying very hard to find a balance to move forward, to prevent burnout, but also to just achieve their greatest success. I started posting about this on LinkedIn, which is the only social media platform I’m a part of, a little while back.

Just as a way to vent my thoughts and critique the industry that focuses on making sure that lawyers, and M&A lawyers, don’t have an outside life, don’t have a balance. I was trying to push back against that attitude, that’s been prevalent in the private equity community. I’ve found great success. I’ve connected with many others in the community that have been frustrated at the lack of balance, and focused on achieving that balance, and maintaining a close family relationship, and maintaining their faith.

Julia: On the faith question, I mentioned earlier that you observe Shabbat, very, very important to you as well. I’d love to hear why this is particularly important to you, and also tell me your thoughts about, how do you maintain that balance?

Eli: Shabbat has been one of the more challenging points in my life, throughout my career. Just a little bit of a background on Shabbat. It’s been a conflicted relationship with Shabbat, but I observe Shabbat, which means that for those unaware, Friday night at sundown to Saturday night at sundown, observant Jews shut off all electronics. We shut off our phones, we shut off our computers. We don’t drive, and we’re restricted from a myriad of other work-like activities.

The idea is to completely disengage from what we’re producing throughout the week, and focus on other aspects of ourselves. So, what we do do, affirmatively, is we get together with family and friends without the pinging and the ringing of our phones. We focus on self growth, we contemplate the bigger questions of life and the world, with our family and our kids.

Most importantly, a practise that I’ve developed is, we ask ourselves, have we upheld the ethical standards this past week that we would like to uphold? And how can we be better citizens this next week? That moment of reflection, this 25 hours of reflection every week, has brought me closer to spiritual fitness and advancing my mental wellbeing.

That’s Shabbat for me. Jews do not have a monopoly on Shabbat. Everybody could observe Shabbat, and I encourage everyone, in my LinkedIn post, encouraged everyone to find some Shabbat in their life. To observe a time where they’re shutting down, and affirmatively focusing on those things that help them achieve the balance.

Julia: George, while you’re listening to Eli talk about that, obviously, I imagine there’s much of that which you’d advise your clients to think about. We talk about switching off, we talk about reflection, time to think, and time to contemplate as well. I’d love to, if I may, just explore a little bit further, your journey. I talked about your previous business and why Sanctus. And also, how you help other businesses. Let’s get into that a bit more.

George:  So much of what Eli is saying resonates with me, but actually my upbringing, I guess, is different, coming from the Midlands in the UK, in England, and my family upbringing. I think the conversation around, for me, spirituality, religion, mental health, these weren’t conversations I had growing up.

I actually got into the world of university, and then wanted to start something. I just had this entrepreneurial itch, I guess, to create something in the world, and through starting an app at Uni very young. I think I’d watched The Social Network, which a lot of young entrepreneurs did.

Then, thought that was the key, you start an app and that will lead to happiness and success, and that’s what you do. We did a version of that. We started an app, two computer science students at uni. We raised some investment. We dropped out of uni, and before I knew it, we had a team and a logo on the wall, and we were building something.

I think everything that Eli was saying there, we didn’t have on a business level, a strong purpose, a strong mission, a strong vision, a strong problem we were solving in the world. Then, two, we didn’t take any time to reflect, to pause, to stop, to process our feelings and emotions, to understand, build a level of self-awareness in ourselves. That, after two or three years, caught up with us. We were trying to present a front in the world, that I was trying to present what I thought the business world perceived as good, which was a version of myself, but not really me. Trying to keep that front up for three+ years eventually caught up with me, and led to myself and James, my best friend, co-founder, struggling in different ways with our mental health.

It was the first time that we’d had conversations about that. There weren’t very many role models in the industry, in the business world at that time, that were speaking to the things you’ll talk to, Eli, on social media and in the business world. All we heard were the stories of, “Push, work harder. Success is just the other side of that.” And that’s what we did. It caught up with us, as I said, and got to a place that I think many people do with their mental health. You have to talk about it, because you’re in such a difficult place, and we did, and Sanctus was founded from a blog post that James wrote that resonated with thousands of people.

Hundreds of emails came in to us of people saying, “Please keep speaking about and sharing your journey, and where you are at. I’m feeling similar. I’m going through something similar.” It felt like a real taboo, well, it was a taboo subject at the time. From there, this mission within us to, I think, one, therapeutically, we were getting a lot from it, but two, the feeling of helping others just became this burning thing inside us, of we have to keep talking about this.

It’s funny, just to wrap up, the vision that we spoke to, that really resonated with people, was the analogy or the idea of a mental health gym, a place on the high street where you could go to work on yourself, your mental health, as easily, as normally, as aspirationally, and as accessibly as your physical health.

It’s interesting, that vision and analogy has really worked for us over the years, because I think it’s helped people connect with mental health. But the more work I’ve done in this field, the more I’ve seen it as a religion, a faith, more of a church or synagogue, or place of shared belonging, values, purpose, a place of reflection, and a place to pause and build self-awareness.

I’m so fascinated to hear some more of your story, Eli, because I think so much of it, I’ve seen in the work that we do, and then bringing that to businesses where that conversation is something that has been so new over the last four or five years. I’ve really seen it evolve, and we’ve helped businesses do that too.

Julia: It’s incredibly important to have the conversation, and to allow space to have the conversation. You’re absolutely right. In the world of entrepreneurialism, and again, I’m an entrepreneur, it’s just never discussed, really. Increasingly so, but also, I burnt out at the age of 26.

I came into the industry, straight into work. It was work hard, play hard, work hard, play hard. This is in the early 1990s, and I completely burned out, and there was never a conversation about mental health or stopping. That just wasn’t an option in the mix of that. I also love the fact that you bring in this gym analogy, because as human beings, we so often pay more attention to our physical health, more than we do our mental health. Of course, it needs as much care as our mental being as well.

But let me just pick up on some of these points about, I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but it almost feels like the discomfort with the conversation. You can call it stigma, in some cases even go as far as to say discrimination. We’re watching the world of financial services change. We are watching the conversations open up, and I think the pandemic’s been good for that in many ways.

Also, to bring in more conversation about the role of mental health and faith in diversity, equity, and inclusion. George, I’d love to hear your thoughts about, when it comes to addressing some of the stigmas that might exist, how do you define what they are, and then how do you address them and, essentially, move the dial?

George:  I think the biggest stigma is fear, on an individual level and on a company-wide, organisational level. It’s fear of opening something that you haven’t faced or opened before. On an individual level, for me, that’s what held me back from facing the things I knew were holding me back in life. It was a fear of, where might that go? I’ve never explored that before. It’s a brave step for anybody to step into that. It takes courage to admit and accept maybe where you’re at, and how you’re feeling. Then on a business level, it’s the same. Most workplaces, businesses, haven’t had this conversation before . In most leaders’, let’s say CEOs’, minds, the business has been working perfectly well, in most cases. “Why do we need to have this conversation? It’s all good.”

I think there was definitely a fear, but then I think for many individuals and businesses, it got to, say, a breaking point, and I think that’s the journey most people have with their mental health. There is a moment where you can’t not face it anymore. You have to step into it. I think for a lot of businesses, that was coming out in one way or another, whether it’s individuals leaving the business, employee engagement surveys, people stepping up and being brave, and speaking out loud to their team or to their manager. Moments of courage and bravery from individuals, I think, have led to businesses not having a choice, really. This is a conversation we have to face.

The other piece is vulnerability, as well. It always takes a level of vulnerability when somebody steps into that. No matter, however much work we do on removing that stigma, vulnerability is difficult no matter how many times you practise it. I think it’s recognising that for individuals and for businesses, that it is a difficult step to take, but a lot of businesses I’ve seen, take that step forward, and seen the positive results of allowing people to bring more of themselves to the workplace. There’s still a long way to go on that stigma, on that piece. But I think we’ve made a lot of progress, definitely since I’ve been in the industry, for the last six years.

Julia: When we think about enlightened leadership, I talk a lot at various events, and on platforms and stages, about enlightened leadership. The courage, the bravery, the leaning into what’s difficult, are those attributes that leaders would naturally embody.

It’s the vulnerability piece that people are feeling less comfortable with, but it’s proven, it’s proven time and time again, that if you do embrace vulnerability in your leadership style, and then what that does in terms of your engagement with your employees, and your team members, and your peers, and also your bosses, but then also the culture that that drives is incredibly powerful, but it does take courage. It really does take some courage.

I wonder, Eli, in the opening remarks, and I talked about your lived faith, and I also talked about the fact that a lot of what you focus on in your diversity and inclusion conversations, particularly around the Jewish faith. There are two words I used very specifically, one was ‘bias’ and one was ‘education’ as well.

I would love to, if you would be happy to share, is do you have some examples of where you faced discrimination, bias, lack of education, and how has that revealed itself, and what should businesses be paying attention to?

Eli: I think that’s an incredibly important question. George pointed out the aspects of fear and vulnerability, but there’s a real risk that by taking moments off, and focusing on your mental health and on your balance, you’re viewed as less of a team player, and you’re viewed as less dedicated to the firm, less dedicated to your clients.

When really, it’s the opposite that’s true. It makes you a better team player by focusing on your own balance, and a more innovative co worker. But yes, in my career, there were many times that I faced bias or a lack of education.

There were times where once I told the team members and the partners, I would specify, at a prior firm, I was removed from the deal teams and just told frankly, in no uncertain terms, that, “If you observe Shabbat, and if you go offline for 25 hours, you cannot be on a fast-moving deal.”

I’ve had mentors who told me that people cannot do M&A while observing Shabbat. Then, there have been countless snide remarks on Friday afternoon. Remarks like, “Can’t you make an exception this week?” Or, “Is it really that important?” Or like, “It’s great, we all believe in God, but like, come on, doesn’t the deal come first? Don’t you care about your team members?” Those kind of comments.

I do want to put this in the context of Jewish history in America, though. In case it sounds like I’m complaining too much. It was only in my grandfather’s time that there were Jewish quotas in major law schools, and Jews would not have been hired at any firm that’s a peer firm of mine, not so long ago. Jews had to choose between their livelihood and observing Shabbat.

Thankfully, the attitudes toward inclusion, thanks in large part to people like you in conversations like this, have advanced to the point that I can speak openly about my Jewish observances without fear of overt discrimination. This is not a luxury that my parents, and grandparents, and my predecessors have. We live in a place and time that allows me to be an individual, and accepted for my uniqueness’s, and that’s something we should celebrate. We should absolutely celebrate, along with focusing on continuing to educate.

Julia: Thank you both so much for sharing your personal stories and your personal realities, and also your points of view on what this has actually meant in terms of how you’ve done business. It’s so important, because all our listeners around the world are people who turn up for work every day with their own points of view, their own personal faith, and also the fact that this is generational as well.

Eli and George, thank you so much for that. I’m now going to welcome in Cynthia Akinsanya, who has some research to support today’s discussion.

Cynthia: Since 2019, Burn-out is now included in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) published by the World Health Organisation as an occupational phenomenon. Although it is not classified as a medical condition.

A 2021 study from Westfield Health sited that a fifth of finance professionals are struggling to get to grips with new ways of working and are in need of wellbeing support as the UK economy opens up. The report – Coping after Covid – also found that wellbeing-enhanced productivity could add £61bn to the economy by 2025, if UK companies can create effective wellbeing strategies and improve underperforming ones.

Financial services workers were said to be most likely to see their mental health negatively affected by the pandemic. Over half (52%) said their mental health had worsened.

Julia: Thank you, Cynthia Akinsanya, as always, for the research. Let’s just take a moment to remind everybody how to find DiverCity Podcast. Links to all our research could be found on the website. It’s divercitypodcast.com. Like diversity, but with a C, not with an S.

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I can’t help but think now, as we’ve been having this fantastic conversation, George and Eli, is when we think about benefits and best practises. What does taking the rest, what does taking the time, how does that actually become put into, and codified into, best practise, if you like? George, can I come to you first of all? Talk to us about best practise, talk to us about boundaries.

George:  I think we touched on it earlier, around that fear of being judged if you take time in your week or your month to rest, recover, build a level of self-awareness, work through things. Rather than just the classic, typical, hourly output version of work.

Connecting it back to the gym analogy of physical health, I’m a marathon runner, and run a lot. If you look at elite athletes, they don’t perform at their peak for twelve months, for seven days a week, for 365 days a year. There’s peaks and troughs to performance, and recovery and rest is built in. There’s a sustained period of peak performance. Then, there has to be a recovery and rest period to be able to do that again, and to do that multiple times. It’s just physical biology.

I think with our mental health, and with our wellbeing, and our performance at work, that has never been part of the conversation. It’s just been about hourly output, and that is how a typical week is built. We’ve been trying to educate businesses on, how do you build a week where there is time in the diary, and there’s time in your working culture, where there’s space for your employees to do that?

The way we’ve been helping businesses do that, we have a team of coaches, and there’ll be hours, there’ll be days, moments in the week, where employees can book in for a one-to-one 50-minute session with a coach. That’s a space completely dedicated for them. Then on an individual level, we’re trying to encourage individuals to take that time for themselves, which to be honest, is still a challenge to encourage people to do.

It’s so hardwired in people’s minds, that that’s not how to work, but we’re still learning that. The way that we’ve seen that work in a best-practise place, say in the workplace, is leaders doing that for themselves and role-modelling, and giving people permission to take a percentage of their time or their week for themselves, to help them improve, develop, work through things.

Actually, we’re starting to see how that leads to less burnout, more engagement with the business, a happier workplace, and as a result, the business benefits. We’re definitely starting to see that with a lot of the businesses that we work with as well.

Julia: Really fascinated by this whole role of having the coaches around, because leaning into the reality of needing to rest, and the role-modelling and the leadership that you’ve talked about as well, but also having somebody who understands what your daily reality is like, but isn’t family, isn’t boss, isn’t colleague, is incredibly interesting to observe, to bring that into an organisation as well, and give permission and space for it as well.

Eli, can ask you a similar question? Which is when you talk to staff, and when you talk out on social media, and to colleagues and peers in the industry about the whole concept of disconnecting and taking time as well, love to hear your thoughts on what advice, what best practise, how do you carve out rest?

Eli: Absolutely. Disconnecting has a myriad of benefits, but because I work so hard during the week, and like any type A person, me and my co workers work extremely hard and are extremely motivated, it’s easy for me to forget who I am, and identify myself by the job that I do, and that my value is somehow the sum total of my professional successes.

I think I can only speak from the male perspective, but many of the men in my life have always identified themselves by their profession, and their value is tied to their professional successes. I think we’ve all met people who when asked who they are, would answer, “A lawyer.”

I had a mentor in law school who was in the golden years, and he was an immensely successful lawyer. He told me something that stuck with me. He said, “If you have invested everything you have throughout your life in being a lawyer, when the time comes to move on, you’ll find that you have nothing, and you don’t even have being a lawyer.”

For me, that hit me really hard. It wasn’t just my mentor, it was many of my male role models who ascribed to that philosophy, and their professional role took over their identity completely. They suffered, their family suffered. While I’m committed to being an amazing lawyer, being an amazing lawyer is not the sum total of who I am. I have value outside of my profession. That shouldn’t be something that we’re embarrassed to say.

Julia: That all flows beautifully into the conversation about identity, which is an element that we talk about a lot on the podcast, which is belonging, identity, who we are. Actually, the words came out earlier about mission, purpose, and the value as well. It’s been a fantastic conversation. I’m going to ask you both to close us out with your final thoughts.

It’s a question I ask all our guests, actually, which is, we are navigating really interesting times at the moment, both geopolitically and economically as well. I worry that in this current business climate, the diversity, equity, inclusion could easily fall down the corporate agenda. I would love to hear your compelling reasons why it must remain high. George, could I come to you first?

George:  When I think about diversity, I think of difference and the importance of difference. When I look at the greatest teams of all time, from business teams in the business sense, but also sports teams, there’s a whole range of different personalities and types of people that come together to get through something, to compete.

I think, during this time where it is so challenging, so uncertain, it needs such a level of, I guess, creativity. That comes from challenge. It comes from difference. It comes from different minds of people working together through problem-solving and through challenges. It’s actually, arguably, more needed than ever right now.

When I look at the conversation around mental health in the workplace, because it was held back, people were bringing a fraction of themselves to their work. As a result, the business only got a fraction of that person, and what they could bring to the business, and bring to solving problems and solving challenges. So for me, it’s not a nice-to-have, it’s a must-face and must-address, must-have. I guess it is the difference, and will help so many businesses work through challenges, especially at this time.

Julia: Really important. Thank you very much for your thoughts on that. Eli, same question to you, if you would, which is why must diversity, equity, inclusion remain high on the corporate agenda?

Eli: It’s a great question. You drawing attention to what happens in difficult economic times, is really the operative question. In difficult economic times, in geopolitical times, we tend to lash out at each other and scapegoat those who are different. We retreat into ourselves, into our communities, and we build walls.

We may feel like retreating is the safer option, but in fact, we are much stronger when we reach out to others and connect with those who are different from us. We will overcome this economic and global uncertainty, and we will create stronger future relationships, and retain our humanity and ideals, if we do reach out and recognise all the uniqueness’s of those around us.

Julia: Both incredibly important and incredibly inspiring. I have to tell you, it’s been a fantastic conversation. We’ve covered not only an enormous amount in terms of what’s been important to you in your personal journeys, and also what’s important in terms of creating best practice.

Leaning into the conversation about rest, mental health, who we are as human beings. Faith comes through loudly and clearly as such an important element in life as well. Eli Albrecht, thank you for sharing all your thoughts. It’s been great to have you on the show.

Eli: Thank you so much, It’s been an absolute pleasure.

Julia: George Bettany, thank you for joining us. We wish you every success with Sanctus.

George:  Thanks so much, Julia. Thanks for having me.

Julia: As always, thank you to all our listeners. Tune in again soon, we’ll have another cracking episode for you. I’ve been Julia Streets. Thanks for listening.

Kieron: This episode of DiverCity Podcast was produced by me, Kieron Yates, on behalf of Julius Streets Productions. Thanks to Cynthia Akinsanya for her insights. You can find out more about the guests on this week’s show on our website, divercitypodcast.com, and that’s diversity with a C, not an S. Whilst you are there, you can also sign up to our newsletter for all our latest updates.

All our episodes are available in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favourite podcast app. If you enjoy DiverCity Podcast, remember to share on social media and give us a rating or review. It really helps promote the show to a wider audience. Finally, our Twitter handle is @divercitypod. Thanks for listening.