Compassion and Vulnerability in the Face of Career Transitions with Jean Balfour | E2

We explore the importance of elevating one’s level of self-awareness during career transitions. 

We speak with Jean Balfour, Founder and Managing Director, Bailey Balfour. She shares about the transformational journey through the change curve – understanding where you’re at in the journey can help you make sense of when and how you can best be supported. She also shares the importance of vulnerability and compassion through transitions. 

Connect with Jean

Listen to Making Sense of Work Podcast by Jean Balfour:
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Recommended Readings

·       On Death and Dying - Elizabeth Kubler Ross 

·       Growth Mindset - Carol Dweck

·       Self-Compassion - Kristin Neff

Connect with us on LinkedIn:

· Vanessa Iloste (Host)

· Vanessa Teo (Host)

· Aaron Wu (Producer)

Transcript

[00:00:00] Vanessa T: Hi everyone. Welcome again to Career Transitions Podcast with Vanessa Iloste and Vanessa Teo. Today, we invite to our conversation table, Jean Balfour, founder and managing director of Bailey Balfour. An international coaching federation accredited coaching academy based here in Singapore. 

[00:00:27] Vanessa I: With Jean, we'll explore three very important themes.

One related to the change curve that everyone experienced in career transition. One around vulnerability as well as one around compassion. So we feel like these themes are going to be very useful for all of us. And the reason why we wanted to have Jean on our show is because she has coached so many people in the past and she's still doing it today.

She has accumulated so much experience and she has observed and supported so many of our colleagues and we want her to have a voice to share experience with us. And we feel like we can all learn from her. So I hope you will enjoy the show today.

Hi, everyone. Welcome to our new episode of Career Transition. We are your hosts, Vanessa Iloste and Vanessa Teo. 

[00:01:24] Vanessa T: And we're so excited to introduce our guest for today, Jean Balfour. We have known Jean for a long time and we both like her very much. Jean, welcome to our show. 

[00:01:36] Jean B: Thank you. Thank you so much for inviting me.

It's really great to be here and, um, wonderful to be part of the starting of this, having had many conversations with you about it. So excited to see it emerging, this project. 

[00:01:51] Vanessa I: Thank you so much, Jean, for coming, and thank you for all the support you provided in the last few months. It's a great pleasure to have you, and I would like to take a little bit of time to introduce you to our audience.

So, you were born in New Zealand, and you originally trained as a primary school teacher. And you taught in New Zealand and then in London. After a short stint, uh, of teacher training, you realized that you love teaching adults and you moved into learning and development roles in organization. It took you into leadership and your last organizational role was head of organization development for a large organization.

You then became a coach and founded your own company, Bailey Balfour in London in 2001. And in 2015, you moved from the UK to Singapore. You have been a coach, uh, and a coach of coaches. And since December, 2021, you have, uh, added one more skills to all your mini skills. And you have launched a very successful podcast called Making Sense of Work.

[00:02:53] Vanessa T: Wow, Jean, we certainly have had such a great time getting to know you. You are truly a role model when it comes to making career transitions, from a teacher to a trainer to a leader in organizational development, then as a coach and a trainer of coaches, and now a podcast editor, you are quite the role model for us.

Well, like a chapter in the book, there, there are many different phases that I've seen from your career and from the many transitions that you've made. How would you define the different chapters in your career so far? 

[00:03:28] Jean B: Well, firstly, let me just say thank you for your kind introductions. Uh, it's, um, it's a bit strange listening to your own biography.

I think that's a, a kind of a strange thing to happen. When I look at my career, there have been a lot of transitions. There's no doubt about it. I'm somebody who's had many different chapters on, and I'd love that way of thinking about it. Perhaps start by saying there's a theme that runs through everything, and that's that I'm a teacher, essentially, so I trained as a teacher.

I knew I wanted to be a teacher from when I was really quite young. And I think that even though I've had many different iterations of what it means to be a teacher, it's still kind of a theme. running under my life. But the thing is that I get bored easily and I find myself wanting to express what I'm teaching in different ways.

And so I've done that basically in many different guises. And it was probably, if I think about one of the pages I turned, the transition from being a teacher, from being a full time teacher, into organization development began my transition journey. And I think often that first transition into something different is really challenging.

And it took a couple of years. I actually had to leave teaching and do other jobs that were not really very interesting in order to kind of find what I wanted to do. But I found I had two different career coaches, actually, I was remembering and a mentor, and took a lot of courage and then finally managed to make a transition into organizations, into learning and development.

And that was, that was a great transition, which actually supported the next few years of my career. Then I had another realization, which I think we have, which is, I was in a senior leadership role and I realized that I much preferred the work itself, the coaching, the teaching, the facilitation to leadership.

Particularly leadership in large organizations, because as you both know, there's a lot of bureaucracy and I'm not really good with bureaucracy. So then I set my own company up and that was of course, another transition. And then more recently, I guess there's been several moving to Singapore was one, moving into teaching coaching and setting a coach training academy up was another.

That was a significant transition because it's also meant that I'm running a business now. So I was thinking actually in preparation for today, that there's actually 10 people in the team, some full time, some part time, but that's quite a different role running a business like that. And then most recently, the podcast and doing more writing has been another transition.

And I kind of feel in the middle of that still, and I'm curious about that. Curious about the relationship between ourselves and our working lives. And I think that the next transition for me is looking at that through some writing and obviously through the podcast, which is about that. So I think my career, probably I've had many more transitions than some people might have, but I think in the future, this will be the theme.

I think that all careers are going to involve transitions and that it's good for us to learn to get good at them, basically. Yeah. So there's been quite a few. 

[00:06:46] Vanessa I: Thank you so much for sharing and thank you for your generosity in being very honest and transparent with this transition. When you look at these many transitions, which one would you say has been the most difficult?

Because, I mean, the jump from teacher to working for an organization is a big jump in itself. The jump of being a leader of leaders is another jump, which we all see with Vanessa T all the time and we're trying to support very hard in our organization. And becoming an entrepreneur is a big, big step as well.

So I was wondering, you know, among all these ones, which one was the ones that needed for you the most support and did you have this support as well? 

[00:07:26] Jean B: Yeah, I mean, first, I don't believe that any career transition is easy. So, you know, I've coached so many people through periods of transition, but for me, the hardest was moving to Singapore and setting the business up actually.

So even though I had moved from New Zealand to the UK. Coming to Singapore explicitly to set up a business, it was a more of an entrepreneurial move. So to that point, it was really hard. And I had underestimated how much my support systems were in place in London and how much I would come here and they wouldn't be here.

And that, I'm a very relational person, but I misjudged how much work was relational in Asia and that it takes time for people to build trust. So it was really tough, a really tough period. And it was a classic experience of all my confidence being stripped away basically, and then having to really dig deep to kind of make it happen.

I needed to be very creative, very bold to really make, make a success of it. But classic learning opportunity because I know that as a result of that, I'm more confident. Actually, it really helped build my confidence because I had to do things that took me really out of my comfort zone. I'm so glad I did it because it's been such an amazing experience here.

I wouldn't be talking to you, and so many things I wouldn't have if I hadn't made that transition. But at the time it was hard. 

[00:08:57] Vanessa I: And if you had to do it again, Jean, what would you do differently? I mean, is there anything that comes to your mind that you would say, I now see clearly what could have been done differently?

[00:09:09] Jean B: That's a really good question. I mean, because I'm a great believer in having some support and I've always had support. I think I probably would have put a little bit support for me personally in place before coming. So that might have been... actually having a business coach because I was coming here to set up a new business and that would have been really helpful to have had a business coach at that stage.

Yeah, I think I sort of boldly leapt out and did it with my partner, but it was, I was a bit naive, I think, actually. So if I'd had a business coach, they might've helped me through it. The only hesitation I have about that is they might've told me not to do it and that would have been terrible. 

[00:09:45] Vanessa I: So maybe that was a better thing not to have this business coach, if the business coach was actually advising against it, right?

So that's maybe a good thing for all of us today. 

[00:09:55] Jean B: Yeah. Also, the timing was good. It was quite easy to set a business up in Singapore then and to do all the legal stuff. So that was good. It was timing good and good decision to do it in Singapore. 

[00:10:07] Vanessa T: Jean, what was that pivoting point? At the point that you realized it was so difficult to the point that you realize I can actually do this?

What was that moment like? 

[00:10:17] Jean B: Actually, I know the exact moment. Um, so it was to do with relationships. For the first year, building the relationships was really hard and I was doing a lot of networking and I'd come from London where I had a very solid network and I came here and I was just constantly meeting new people and I am an extrovert, but this was very, very tiring.

And I remember I went to an event. I got out of the taxi and somebody turned around and said, hello, Jean, and that instant, I knew I was going to be okay because I knew somebody at an event, I knew that I would be able to build the network from there. And I remember, I remember that evening very vividly.

My confidence shifted. It was just really about relationships. And because I actually believe that relationships are at the heart of successful organizational life, it kind of was a nice mirror of my own experience. But yeah, it was, it was really to do with the network and relationships. 

[00:11:15] Vanessa T: Wow. Thank you for sharing that pivoting moment.

I think it's very important because as people go through those stages of transitions, oftentimes we're looking for that moment, but you realize it isn't always a moment. But it could be a series of, of experiences that leads you to it. Well, Jean, you are a really renowned coach and kudos to you for having built the business over the years.

You're a really renowned coach to many senior leaders in Singapore and around Asia. And you have coached individuals who wanted to either deepen their understanding of their career ambitions or people who are struggling with confidence, and you've also helped people who are perhaps also trying to achieve a good understanding of how to create the life that they've always wanted.

What are some of those career transition patterns that you've observed and you've worked with so many individuals and leaders? What are some of those patterns that you've observed people making and was there any particular success factors that you could share with us? 

[00:12:16] Jean B: Perhaps just to start by saying that I guess where we started from is that all careers have transitions, and in order for us to grow and move, we, we know that's going to happen.

But my own experience about this, and the experience of working with people, is that actually those transitions are hard, but they often bring a lot of challenges. And when I last had a proper job, when I was in a, in a leadership role, I had a particular experience that's actually, I think affected how I work with people on this.

And I thought perhaps I'd share that. So we went through a major reorganization as everybody's familiar with, and I knew my job was going to be made redundant. And so I needed to apply for new roles within the organization. And I actually got the job that I was... really, really wanted. It was like a dream job. And about six months into the job, I was experiencing quite a bit of feeling very flat. I'd lost all my motivation. I was actually a bit depressed. I was at that point reporting to the CEO and I very boldly looking back on it went and decided to say to him, you know, I've lost my way a bit. I don't know why I'm here. I'm feeling a bit depressed.

And he's actually now a good friend. The first thing he said was, wow, me too, which was a little bit startling. And then he also had his dream job. And then he said to me, I think we're at the bottom of the change curve. So let me explain a bit about what that means. There's work that's done based on Elizabeth Kubler Ross work about grief, death, and dying.

So she saw that there is a rhythm and perhaps stages that we go through when we have any sort of loss. And any change experience is a loss experience because we lose what we're familiar with. So in this case, in my case, I'd lost the job that I did, which I knew I did really well. I was really confident at, and I was now in a much bigger role, much more exposed.

I was on the executive team, and I had lost that kind of confidence in my ability to do the job well. So therefore, I had actually kind of plummeted down into this lower space and that the way we come out of that is by... things beginning to become familiar again, or, you know, we go around a cycle of okay, so I've done this in the job once and it worked. Okay. So I know how to do it again. And, you know, we begin to rebuild our confidence, I think. And that conversation that I had with Mark then was a bit defining, actually, because I've seen it again and again and again in coaching clients and friends that even when we choose a new career or we choose redundancy and are happy to be made redundant, there's often a real period of feeling quite low at some point after that, and it can feel a bit confusing because it's like, well, I wanted this, so why am I feeling like this? And it's even worse if people are made redundant. Without a choice or didn't see it coming, um, it's a horrible shock and you get the low as well.

And so it's really very impactful, I think, and, um, for me in helping people with this is really helping people to see that this is to be expected. It's to do with that loss of familiarity. And so we question ourselves and then to think about how to help ourselves move back out of it more quickly, actually, because I think if we're aware that that's likely to happen in the transition, we can put things in place to help us to come out of it more quickly.

And actually, what happened to both Mark and I was that the minute we named it, we were out of it. It was like, Oh, I'm fine now. Yeah, all I needed to do was just say, I'm in the bottom of the change curve. I guess we just realized that we needed to put things in place to come out of it. 

[00:16:17] Vanessa T: It's interesting, Jean, how you talk about naming it.

How did you get to that point where you're able to name that feeling or that experience? Because I think that's oftentimes where people perhaps don't even realize that you're at the bottom of that curve. And how do you put a name to it? And how did you come to that realization?

[00:16:35] Jean B: I don't remember then, but what I would say about now and what I would help people to do is that learning to listen to ourselves, learning to tune into ourselves is so fundamentally important to our ability to be successful.

And at work, I fundamentally believe that self awareness is number one in our ability to do that. And, but there's a second thing is that it's often very difficult to name difficult emotions. Because we can feel shame around it. We can feel that we should be being happy. I should be happy. I've got my dream job or I should be happy. You know, I've, I've retired, uh, whatever it is, the transition is. And so we can feel shame. So I think there's something about learning to accept it and name it and become aware of it is really important. 

[00:17:25] Vanessa I: You also told me, Jean, in one of our conversations about your focus and your research on career derailment, and I was wondering while I was listening to you, what would be the link between this change curve you described so well and the career derailment, and what can you share with us when it comes to career derailment?

[00:17:44] Jean B: What I've seen, and certainly when I've asked leaders about this, is that all careers have a couple of points where they come off the tracks, or one point at least, where they come off the tracks. And if you look at even very senior, very famous leaders, and if you ask them, they'll tell you, Oh yeah, did you see that point in my career where either I went backwards or something happened or, you know, I lost my way or I stopped moving so quickly.

I don't know anyone who hasn't had that moment. And it comes out of a lot of different things. It can either be that we've lost our way. We don't know what it is that we want to be doing anymore. We maybe feel like we've done this type of work for a while, as I apparently have had many times. Or it can be that we triggered or derailed by something that's happening at work and we're not behaving as we ought to be, perhaps that we're in the role that we're in and it has many different kind of expressions.

So I thought maybe I'll share some examples. So it might be that we're working for a boss who we're not getting on with, or we're in a role that we thought would suit us and doesn't suit us as often. I see for people, a major transition that we don't talk about enough I think is when somebody goes from being an expert in their role, so maybe a finance director to then having other functions. So managing operations or IT, for example, can actually derail a career because he wasn't ready for that managing in ambiguity. They could manage their expertise before, or maybe the pressure's gone up. You know, COVID I think was a trigger for many careers actually to be a bit derailed because having to operate in such different conditions, leading virtually, if you've always led face to face in and of itself was a big difficulty. 

Or something I've often worked with leaders around is when perhaps I've got to a point where they're not as competent as they could be as a leader, and they've started to get feedback through 360s about their behavior as a leader, and that's not working. Um, so there's so many different things, I think that can help derail us.

And when that happens, sometimes people feel like their world has entered it's because it's happening to ambitious people for whom work is really valuable and important. And I've spoken to some leaders about this and it would surprise you know some have found themselves crying for a week. Because they really felt that they were derailed at this point, they feel like they're a victim or a bit of blaming can go on.

But I think that these are massive learning opportunities. They're like a critical career moment. If we can lean into ourselves and say, okay, what's going on here? What can I learn from it? How can I grow? How will this opportunity or how will this moment be an opportunity for me for the rest of my career?

Then it can be okay. We can move out of it, but it is painful. I mean, it is really painful moment in people's lives, that derailment space. One of the things I've done a lot of work around is working with leaders who have had some very difficult feedback and the organization still sees them as somebody who's very high potential, but they're going to have to work on themselves in order to be successful in their roles.

And that's quite difficult. But I think what I've seen, and certainly with everyone I've worked with, Is that when they look at what's going on, they can work it out quite quickly. These are bright people who are very capable and all they need to do is to say, okay, what's triggering me to behave in a way that's not helpful to other people?

And how do I manage those triggers? So I also see that when this happens to us, we can come out of it. We can manage it. We can learn to manage ourselves and see it as a growth opportunity. It's like work from Carol Dweck, where she talks about, do we take a growth mindset or do we take a fixed mindset? So if we hold a fixed mindset, it's about, well, I can't change.

This isn't possible. But if we hold a growth mindset, it's really about saying, okay, this very painful feedback or this moment in my career, where it appears I'm a long way off track is a moment for growth. And I can move towards the growth. 

[00:22:03] Vanessa T: Well, Jean, thank you for talking about this acute sense of self awareness that I think many of us need to need to be able to develop better.

We've listened, both Vanessa, I and myself, we've both been avid listeners to your podcast and we love them. You in your podcast talk a lot about the importance of vulnerability. So can you share with us how vulnerability and this sense of self awareness and just knowing that it is all right. Normalizing of some of those feelings.

Can you tell us how vulnerability plays a role in career transitions? 

[00:22:37] Jean B: I think that career transitions, I was going to say always, probably not always, but often involves some sort of emotional upset, they form some emotions in us, whatever's going on. And research shows really strongly that when we repress emotions, they don't go away. 

The image of this I love and I think is really helpful is it's like having a ball sitting on water. If you imagine you're in a swimming pool with a ball that you're throwing around and you try and push that ball underwater and keep it underwater. It's really hard and you can do it but after a while you get very tired and the same is true actually of our emotions.

They're much harder for us if they're in than if they're out. So for me, I think when we're in a period of transition, learning to talk about our emotions and be vulnerable about them actually is only going to be helpful because as soon as we name them, it's a bit like the story I was sharing earlier.

As soon as we name them, we can move beyond them. Of course, that involves choosing carefully. who you're going to share them with and making sure that you're safe in that environment. Yeah, but in many work cultures, talking about emotion is not at all acceptable, so it is about finding that space. 

[00:23:59] Vanessa I: Can you share with us some advice when it comes to unlocking this vulnerability?

Because in my experience with some of my colleagues, when I want to support them in their career transition, one of the biggest difficulty I faced was the fact that they were closed. And even if I was, uh, trying to give them the safe space and trying to let them to open up, they didn't want or they were not ready yet to share.

So as a coach, I mean, uh, you were talking about, you know, the psychological safety, the trust you build very, very fast with your coachees, but are there other things you do in order for people to feel okay to reach out? 

[00:24:38] Jean B: I think anybody who knows me well will say, probably you will already know this, but it's partly modeling.

So I'm very open about emotion and feeling. And I think that if we're role modeling that sometimes that can help other people to feel okay, because it links to vulnerability as a leader, but there is, there is a kind of two sides to that because I don't believe that full authenticity and vulnerability is a good leadership strategy.

Because if we're frightened and we share fear about something with the people we're leading, that's not good. So it's about finding a way to share emotion in a safe way that's going to hold people safe is one way of doing that. 

Another thing I've seen happen quite successfully is sometimes if people don't want to talk about emotions, perhaps in the hierarchy, so perhaps with more senior people and creating small peer coaching groups or triads or something like that can help because then people will feel safer to do that, especially if those are created across the different parts of the organization so people are not necessarily working with each other. They can be very powerful. They don't need much organizing, but you just help bring people together so they can talk about things that are going on and share emotion there. 

[00:25:59] Vanessa I: It's very interesting because Vanessa T and I, one of the projects we did together when we were colleagues in the same organization is actually to organize the famous triads.

Yeah. So it's, it's so funny that you're bringing that into the podcast because we, we saw it together and, and the choice of the people, I mean, the careful choice of the people we are putting in the triads and the way we were selecting these people in order for them not to have any form of a hierarchical relationship was actually critical to the success of the program.

So I mean, what you were saying is also in our lives today, right? 

[00:26:32] Vanessa T: Yeah. And the power of group coaching. Jean, I think is, is absolutely critical because the support that you get from others in a very confidential way and a very supportive way is so crucial to making those big transitions. So Jean, you talk a lot about also in your podcast about the importance of compassion when it comes to change.

Tell us a little bit more about that, about compassion. 

[00:27:01] Jean B: One of the things that we see is that when we're in a period of change, we often need more compassion and empathy, but actually we lose it more. And the reason for that is because often periods of change or transition put us on in a bit of a fight, flight, freeze state.

We get a bit stressed and so we're functioning out of our amygdala, we're in short term mode and we're not thinking clearly and both for us as individuals or if and or if we're leaders, actually what we want to be doing is not that and compassion is a way out of that state. It's a way of dialing up our compassion and dialing up our empathy so that we can help people to get back to rest and digest, back to a good physical state so that we can think clearly, and move through it. 

So I think that compassion, and I put compassion and empathy together, because I think if we can kind of dial into that both for ourselves and for others, then we can help people to get into a good state going through transitions or change. And perhaps I'll, um, share a bit here about, I really love Kristen Neff's work on self compassion.

So she talks about self compassion, but actually I think it's really helpful for us. So she says there's three components of self compassion, seeing our common humanity. So seeing that we're all humans and things are going to be difficult, being kind to ourselves. And that's whatever that is for each of us and also for being mindful of what is so just noticing that what we've talked about that this is difficult transitions, this is difficult naming it, saying it's difficult it's okay for it to be difficult, I think can really help. 

[00:28:49] Vanessa I: Have you noticed uh Jean in your coaching that sometimes people in this transition, they become almost their worst enemies. They start, you know, self criticizing themselves to the point where sometimes they get frozen. I mean, I've seen this, this situation happening where, you know, in the realization of the transition and the fact that it's so hard, people might get frozen.

Is it something you have noticed as well? And do you have some advice for us about this moment? 

[00:29:18] Jean B: Yeah, for sure. Because it's linked to that, you know, amygdala reaction, I think we do get frozen, I think, and, and stop functioning at our best. One of the things that I do with people is help them to see that when that's happening, we often get into very fixed I statements like I can't do this, I'm no good at this. And one thing that can help enormously is finding a way to become the observer of that. So to say, Oh, look, I'm having that thought that I'm no good at this, or, Oh, I noticed that I'm stuck, or I noticed that I'm frozen. So it's almost like we want to separate ourselves from what's happening and become the observer of it.

And it sounds easy. It's actually quite hard to do in the heat of the moment, but having a conversation with a friend or a colleague can help to do that, to unfreeze by saying. Oh, look, I really, I'm really stuck. I'm really stuck. I'm really stuck. And asking that person to help us see that this is just a state that we're in.

It's not us that's stuck. We're just in a moment that's difficult. And so becoming the observer of that, I think is very powerful. 

[00:30:24] Vanessa I: That's really, really useful. This is a technique I've used with people and with my colleagues. Sometimes I paraphrase what they say so that I help them to see the concrete feelings that they feel being laid back to them.

And it's a very good way I found to help people to take some perspective and sometimes to also realize that maybe the situation is not as bad as what they think, because when they hear it being played back to them, they would... they will modify it or they will try to refrain from exaggeration and that helps them to go through the moment.

So this is really powerful, Jean. I mean, among all the tips you have about career transition, or on any other tip we have not talked about today that you would like to share with us that you think we have not talked about, you have such an incredible experience and it's so valuable for us to listen to you.

[00:31:15] Jean B: Thank you. Um, so much lived of the highs and lows I think of career transition. I have a few kind of things, final things that I could share perhaps. This might sound really obvious, but there's two ways of looking at it. So first of all, I'm a massive fan of journaling. So what you were just describing actually, Vanessa, about you talking to the person, journals can do that.

When we're in stressful situations, we get caught up in our mind going round and round and round and round and round. And if we write it down, writing by hand, actually we begin to become the observer. So I would say do two things. One is perhaps notice one thing that went well every day during the transition, because always something goes well, but our minds are not looking for that.

Our brains are looking for trouble. So, notice one thing that went well, but also give yourself permission to write down the challenges, write down the difficult emotions, what's hard about it, because that can also kind of cathartic. It can help to do that, I think. It's really good. Massive fan of mentoring.

So, find a mentor, particularly if you're transitioning into a role that you haven't done before, or you're making that transition from being an individual contributor to a manager, or the transition from an expert to managing a cross function, or you're moving into a new sector, any of those places are great space for a mentor.

So, for example, I moved from one sector into health care and I went and found a director in health care who mentors. She was very gracious. She mentored me for about six months and helped me learn the language and understand things that were really helpful.

And then a couple of things around self care that when we're in transition. We often feel that we can't take time off because we're so busy learning everything. But actually, because we're learning, our brains are literally rewiring stuff. That's very tiring. And so we need to make sure that we stop and rest, do the usual self care things, eat well, sleep well, make sure you exercise.

And then my final tip really would be to say, if you can, find a coach or join a peer coaching group. Or even just one other person, get into peer coaching with somebody, but find somebody you can talk to about it, because it's just really helpful. Talking works. 

[00:33:27] Vanessa T: Well, thank you, Jean. I wrote down so many things about what you were talking about today, and I have found this session to be so powerful and inspiring, learning from your experiences, but also the advice that you would give to any one of your coaching clients, I think is, is so, so valuable for us. Jean, thank you so much for joining us today and for, for sharing in your very, very valuable time. We've learned so much from you today.

From so many advice and experiences that you've shared with us today, we are really grateful for your time. And we really both look forward to your next podcast episode, Making Sense of Work. So for all of our audience members who have not listened to it yet, we highly recommend Making Sense of Work podcast by Jean Balfour.

Thank you so much, Jean, for joining us today. Thank you. 

[00:34:22] Jean B: Thank you. Thank you. It's been really wonderful to be here with you both today.