Ben Sawyer on facing fear and understanding risk

[00:00:00] Sarah Abramson: Speak to the Human is a podcast that explores how we build connections with people in their professional work. It's about the human experience at work and about how to foster that connection and belonging to support people and their organizations to flourish. I'm your host, Sarah Abramson, and I'm looking forward to you joining me in hearing from our brilliant guests.

[00:00:24] My guest in this episode is Ben Sawyer. Ben's background is working in bomb disposal and special operations in the British Army, and he now works as head of field continuous improvement at British Gas. In this conversation, he brings fascinating insights into a world. Most of us will never come close to experiencing in bomb disposal, in frontline military operations and war zones.

[00:00:47] But it also reveals a huge amount that is relatable and relevant to all of us around human responses to fear, risk tolerance, and how we can train our brains to handle fear. And how that relates to [00:01:00] control. Ben shares what he's learned about himself and about leading teams from his experiences and how a lesson in failure taught him more than previous successes.

[00:01:09] He shares what it's been like to transition from nearly 20 years in the Army into a corporate environment, what his work in continuous improvement involves and why mindset, empowerment, and leadership capability are key. Ben has so many incredible stories and insights. I really hope you'll enjoy listening.

[00:01:28] Please do like and share the podcast and feel free to drop us a line with your thoughts.

[00:01:36] Hi Ben. I'm delighted to have you joining us on the podcast today. We met at a conference on operational excellence where you were chairing the morning session, bringing experiences in your current role as head of field continuous improvement at British Gas.

[00:01:50] And since then we've talked more about your incredibly interesting and varied background in the military, working in frontline and special operations and specializing in [00:02:00] bomb disposal. You've clearly got such valuable insights from bringing this work into the corporate sector. I'm really looking forward to digging into some of these topics with you.

[00:02:09] So welcome to the podcast.

[00:02:11] Ben Sawyer: That'd great. Well, thank you for inviting me.

[00:02:12] Sarah Abramson: It'd be great to start with hearing a little bit about that background. I mean, can you, can you sort of tell us about your career and uh, uh, give us the picture?

[00:02:22] Ben Sawyer: Yeah, sure. So I, I joined the Army, um, after university. I studied enal engineering at university, um, and then went traveling basically until I, almost a traditional in the army.

[00:02:34] I went traveling, ran up so much debt from, um, traveling around the world and doing things that had to join the army for Dees prison. So kind of very 19th century, several approach to, uh, the army. I did, um, I spent a year at Sandhursts, um, through Officer Training and then joined the Royal Logistic Court. I joined the Army because I wanted to do bomb disposal.

[00:02:52] I wanted to do improvised device disposal, and that sits at the time it sat within the Royal Logistic [00:03:00] Court. , So I spent a bit of time there doing logistics, , and then went off to do my ammunition tech officer training, which is where all the bomb disposal sit. , And that was great because it's, it's a 18 month course, I think.

[00:03:10] , And it goes into a lot of the science and technology and you spend lot of time at kind of the military, uh, university trium, even making your own explosives and working with mathematicians on ballistics and all sorts of things actually. Fascinating. And then the more practical element of everything, and it's everything from how munitions are stored safely, how to investigate accidents, and then you also deal with how to deal with unexploded devices.

[00:03:35] Leftover chemical munitions from the First World War and all sorts of things. So yeah, absolutely fascinating course. And after that I joined, um, 11 explosive forms disposal regiment. So that's the British Army's leading bomb disposal regiment, , at the time for dealing with counter terrorism. And I spent, I was a good part of my career there, so I had a troop in Germany to start with.

[00:03:56] , And I did, tours out in Northern Ireland and Iraq [00:04:00] as a bomb disposal operator. So leading a team of , dealing with improvised exposed devices, um, that's ran right, Basra especially, um, spent some time do western intelligence there as well. So that's looking at how to exploit devices. So when you recover them, when someone's rendered them safe, they're recovering it for forensic and technical intelligence.

[00:04:21] Again, all brilliant experiences. And after I moved more into the special operations world, so I became the bomb disposal operator for various special operations teams. So looking at maritime counter terrorism, which is great. You get to learn to parachute into the sea and all sorts of exciting things and climbing up the sides of ships.

[00:04:41] But up from there I also did , four tours as an operator with Special operations Task force, three tours in Iraq in Baghdad. So that was hunting Al-Qaeda suicide, networks, and then one tour in Afghanistan. And I guess they, they were high informative because I learned so much from working in those networks [00:05:00] and also seeing kind of great leadership, , Ashim Paul leadership, which you learn, obviously learn from.

[00:05:06] And it was just, I guess that that was kind of what I joined the army to do. That was really, was kind of at the cutting edge of things. After that I went on to, command a squadron of pioneers. I did a couple of staff tours, kinda looking at how do we develop capability. Again that's actually fascinating.

[00:05:22] So you're looking at what capabilities do the military need and what are the gaps and how do we develop it? And we were looking at everything from what do we need to give to the soldiers in two weeks time, through to what sort of capabilities do we need in 30 years time Funding, kind of university research, a really blue sky stuff all the way up and that absolutely fascinating.

[00:05:43] Looking at all ends of the kind of technical residence levels. So, and then, yeah, so I, , when my first daughter was born, I decided to get outta the army. I left and went to work for Oxford University Press. Ended up there as the, their head of operation improvement and then moved over to [00:06:00] British Gas, a couple of years ago.

[00:06:01] Sarah Abramson: Absolutely. Amazing. I mean, so many questions coming out of that in my mind. Um, not least what a transition that was at the end of the Army career, but , I'm interested actually, what appealed to you in the first place about bomb disposal? You were obviously quite clear-eyed about what you wanted to do and you had that ambition from the start.

[00:06:20] What, what was it?

[00:06:21] Ben Sawyer: So my, I I come from a forces family. So both grandfathers were, military. My father was, uh, REF. So he was a navigator on phantoms and tornado. And when I was growing up, um, we were in the, in the eighties living out in Germany. There was a significant threats from the IRA who were very active in those, the parts of Germany where we were living.

[00:06:44] And things like at school we were taught how to search under a car because if you needed to go out and get a toy from the car you needed to take out, kind of search under the car before opening it. And that's it. I'd say six or seven you're learning those sorts of [00:07:00] skills. I remember at one point we had, we had armed soldiers on the bus, um, after the Americas bomb, Libya, because there was again threat to the British, , families out in Germany from a potential libyan attack.

[00:07:10] And it just seemed very normal. That's area where you learned about bombs and how to look for them, having soldiers on the school bus or lurking the bottom of the garden. And it's occasionally you would see the training element, so you would see the, uh, bomb disposal going on, either training or reactions to it.

[00:07:27] And now as get older, you see the, images from Northern Ireland, uh, pick someone kind of that deserted street and someone walking down the road. . It kind of appeal because it's, I think I, I really enjoy a technical challenge. I've got an engineering degree and, , always as a kid who enjoy pulling things apart, less so putting them put back together.

[00:07:46] And yes, I think the, the other to that technical challenge and also that there's one person out there doing it by themself and could I do that? So I, I wanted to, I wanted to see if I could,

[00:07:59] Sarah Abramson: I mean, [00:08:00] for most of us, it's an utterly terrifying concept. And the idea of doing it is it's, yeah, it, it's really scary.

[00:08:09] I'm interested in, I know that you've, you've talked a lot about your concept of risk and of fear, and how do you think those experiences have, have shaped your attitude to risk? Um. Or what your aptitude was in the first place that kind of appealed to you about going into that, that field?

[00:08:28] Ben Sawyer: I, I think my, my attitude to risk was probably formed a long time before that.

[00:08:32] Um, I think I'm very lucky. I have very, uh, trusting parents and so I dunno if you've ever seen Bluey. There's a, a wonderful episode where blueys dad is telling his kids about when he was in the eighties and he describes going out from the bike and he's not wearing a helmet and the kids are shocked at where have you, here's the eighties, man, and I guess he's playing up there.

[00:08:52] And I read things like, I think I was, what about 11 or 12? And, and my parents let me and my friend go off, uh, [00:09:00] for two or three days cycling through Holland camping by ourselves. Wow. Wow. Now I can't imagine letting a kid nowadays go and do that.

[00:09:06] Sarah Abramson: No, it's really changed.

[00:09:06] Ben Sawyer: So I think attitudes have changed, but my, my, my parents have brought me up kind of with the idea of gradual exposure risk and so they could trust us, go and do that.

[00:09:17] Um, so I think right from the start I've kind of had a healthy appreciation of risk and how you control it, and then got heavily into adrenaline sports. So all through school and university, uh, whitewater kayaking. After university I spent five months in Nepal, uh, kayaking some of the biggest rivers there.

[00:09:34] Uh, doing lots of mountaineering, ski racing, and things are also speed riding, so kind of skiing down the mountain with a parachute on so you can then ski off bit about that.

[00:09:42] Sarah Abramson: Oh, wow.

[00:09:43] Ben Sawyer: Uh, so again, all, all sorts of adrenaline in sports, which they, although people look at things and skydiving as well. Um, but again, they're all about controlling the risk.

[00:09:52] So if you see people about to jump outta a plane, there's a lot of control going into it. So people will pack their own shoots, so you know [00:10:00] it's right. You're checking your own gear before you get on. Then someone else is checking it, and before you jump out again, people are, you're checking each other's gear.

[00:10:07] You carry within your pack, there's a spare parachute if the first one fails. There's also an automatic release so that , if you're unconscious, so again, there's, people perceive it as that really high risk thing to do, but people are doing it and nor you often find are very controlled about risk.

[00:10:25] So things like, I'll do all those adrenaline sports, but the concept of do the bungee jump terrifies me because I'm not in control of the risk.

[00:10:30] Sarah Abramson: Right.

[00:10:31] Ben Sawyer: You're jumping off there on something prepared to control by someone else, right. Of unknown levels of training and then levels of competence,

[00:10:39] Sarah Abramson: right

[00:10:39] Ben Sawyer: so I think, yes, I enjoyed adrenaline sports, I enjoyed taking all the risk, but again, it was all about how would you control it?

[00:10:46] And then, so it's things like looking at, I mean risk, it's a function of, of the likelihood of something happening and the impact of it if it occurs. So what you do to reduce the likelihood of it happening and what you do to reduce the impact [00:11:00] of it. So things like, you wear a helmet, wearing a helmet doesn't change the likelihood of something, but it reduces the impact if something does go wrong.

[00:11:09] And again, all the way through my military career, that was, I guess I understood that as a gut instincts growing up as a kid and kind of then through a adrenaline sports. But then when it started going into bomb disposal, you start learning that a lot more formally about the concepts of probability and impact and how do you control the probability to mitigate the impact.

[00:11:29] Sarah Abramson: Mm-hmm. It's so fascinating and we'll talk in a moment about, um, army training to prepare you for that, but, I, I'm so interested in that sort of attitude, about controlling the risk and what's going on there and because clearly there's a kind of. There's a thrill seeking element, I think, to those extreme sports and adventure sports and that kind of thing.

[00:11:50] So it's sort of enjoying the fear, presumably that you're putting yourself into, but a sense of controlling the risk, that's fascinating in [00:12:00] itself. I, I wonder as well if there's some sort of element of psychology in the sense of control and to what extent that might change in different situations where you feel like you've controlled it as being as important as whether you actually have controlled for it.

[00:12:17] Does that make sense?

[00:12:18] Ben Sawyer: Yes. And, and I think that feeds into, so fear it has, there's two elements. Fear one is the kind of the physiological reaction that you get to some form of, uh, threat to your body or your, your emotion. So you kind of get the, the fear of the car suddenly turns towards you and heading towards you.

[00:12:37] You've got that fear kinda physiological reaction. Actually, I think I, I was looking at, um, when I, I did a talk a couple years ago on fear and dealing with fear, and especially around change. I was doing some research into causes of fear. So I think this was about three years ago. And the research was saying that the most common cause of fear in or, and phobia in UK's height, and the second most common is [00:13:00] public speaking.

[00:13:00] Sarah Abramson: Ah, wow.

[00:13:01] Ben Sawyer: So unless you've got a really hard audience, who are gonna be throwing beer bottles. Like there, there's no physical threat to, public speaking. So it's that, uh, fear of emotional damage, which leads to the fear of there. So, but again, any form of fear, there's a physiological reaction, which is kinda where you you start sweating, breathing hard pupils, dilating ever would've felt it.

[00:13:23] But then there's the emotional reaction. So the physiological reaction is common to everyone, and you can do things to try and control it. So you can do things like around you, how practicing breathing and things like that to control physiological reaction. The emotional reactions is personal to everyone.

[00:13:37] Um, and everyone's different and you'll get people who watch scary movies. Now, I don't particularly like scary movies, but some people love them. And again, it's, they've got that emotional link for it makes them excited, it makes them happy to see that sort of thing. My emotional, uh, reaction or fear of, for things like skydiving and, whitewater kayaking is I really enjoy it.

[00:13:57] It's, it's a rush, whereas other people actually hate it. [00:14:00] And it's, it's just a completely different kind of, everyone's psychological reaction to fear is different. I think the part of that is for I haven't really considered that. It's how you tie it in with the level of control. So yes, quite potentially, uh, my psychological reaction to fear is linked up to my, my under control.

[00:14:23] I actually think about it. Yeah, probably I don't, I don't think I would enjoy a type of fear that comes from not when I'm not in control. Again, that's the bungee jumping idea. It's just I couldn't to do it,

[00:14:32] Sarah Abramson: someone else doing it. Whereas I could imagine that another person might feel more confident feeling like someone experienced has taken control of the, of those risk elements and that you're sort of under expert guidance.

[00:14:45] So I could imagine it being perceived a different way.

[00:14:50] Ben Sawyer: Yeah. I think it also links to people who have different fears and I guess your reactions to different elements are, very personal. So for [00:15:00] example, absolutely love the fear that comes from maybe the adrenaline rush, um, adventure training from kind of adrenaline sports, and doing bombs disposal.

[00:15:07] Again, there were often, I mean often the time, yes, the adrenaline is going, but often you're too busy to be scared. And often it comes afterwards when you're kind of coming down off that adrenaline high and you realize the risk of it, especially some of the really dodgy situations. But you're normally too busy to be afraid at the time, but the fear comes afterwards.

[00:15:27] Sarah Abramson: How does the Army training prepare you for those situations?

[00:15:31] Ben Sawyer: I think it varies. So one of the, one of the things the Army does a lot of is events training. Years ago there was the adverts of kind of where, where's Frank and it shows him off skiing and kayaking and stuff like that.

[00:15:44] And, and, and people often perceive it as army going off taxpayers dollar. They're kind of

[00:15:48] Sarah Abramson: having fun. Yeah.

[00:15:49] Ben Sawyer: Off on a jolly and to be honest, sometimes it is, for those who enjoy that, but it is there for a reason because it's, it's difficult to teach people the fear of combat by putting 'em in a [00:16:00] situation and shooting at them.

[00:16:01] You can't really do that. So you need to put people in situations where they are going to be exposed to their fears and have to learn, not necessarily face those fears, but learn how to control, face any fear and control their emotions, control their physiological reactions in a situation that is controlled.

[00:16:21] So things like climbing, whitewater rafting, so exposing soldiers to fear, um, and how do they control it? But also the other thing about adventure training, it's great for team building as well. So if you are working together as a team to get down a river or to go for rock face and things like that. So again, it's that team building element, the leadership element.

[00:16:41] So it's, it's really useful across so many elements, but that exposure to fear is very useful. I think what it was often lacking, the training was teaching people the theory of fear and the control of fear and the mechanisms to control it so that they could actively practice it in those [00:17:00] situations.

[00:17:01] So it was things that some, some event training instructors did, some didn't. It wasn't as universal as it perhaps should be.

[00:17:08] Sarah Abramson: Yeah. It was so interesting and I, I, I can imagine that those situations where you're exposing people to, to fear. It's going to be so individual, a psychology , and the depth of the difference between somebody's immediate reaction, their response in the situation, but also going more deeply into what's going on behind that for different individuals and mm-hmm.

[00:17:31] I dunno, I mean, it'd be fascinating to understand a little bit about how you experience that in a team situation and whether you see different people responding in different ways over time and how that comes together. And if some people might initially seem like they're coping really well, but actually there's something underlying that comes out later.

[00:17:50] And I just, I just, fascinating depth there.

[00:17:56] Ben Sawyer: So, and also people's perception of [00:18:00] what's going on. So, for example, I mean, there was a, uh, a, a friend of mine, um, he was a much more experienced operator than I was when I was starting out. I guess he was this, the generation 40, he was one of my instructors and kind of mentors and very experienced bomb disposal operator.

[00:18:17] Done all sorts of tours, really kind of high threat, situations. And then we went off, uh, climbing and I think his feet were about three foot off the floor. And his his knees were shaky, he was frozen, almost couldn't function. He was on a runt, but he could just couldn't turned off and jumped from there.

[00:18:34] But his perception of the fear was just so outed in there. He was just so scared of heights and it's by no means kind of, this was a person who dealt with fear or like multiple times a day out in Iraq and Northern Ireland and things like that. So it's, people are scared of different things in different situations.

[00:18:52] I think the other thing is seeing how people develop. , I guess it's, so what we're trying to do in, um, adventure training is fear [00:19:00] inoculation. And I, I think when I was preparing for doing this talk where there was so much I knew I had in my mind about fear and risk just as background knowledge and just almost instinctual that it being built into me and practice over the years, that when I was putting this talk on fear, together, that I started really thinking about what I'd seen , and why we did it.

[00:19:22] And a few months before I was doing the talk , my youngest daughter had just, I think she just turned three, or maybe just turned four. And she was suddenly just big enough to go and do one of these tree top things where they go around. and get tied on and we went up and we were doing the first kind of crossing and she was almost paralyzed.

[00:19:42] Her fear, got her knees shaking and stuff like that. Within 10 minutes she was running across these things, lifting her legs up, zipping across, and it was there in really concentrated 10 minute gap or 30 minute gap off. Fear innoculation, she'd gone from being terrified to this is the best thing ever.

[00:19:59] Can we do it [00:20:00] again? Now everything with kids is happens at a hyper speed and it's, takes those shortcuts. It's like teaching kids to ski. They have no fear. And we start teaching adults to ski and one thing they've got further to fall, but , the fear is there. So yeah, I think fear innoculation, and you see that, and I, I was a, uh, kayak instructor and one of the great things was , taking people on, exhibitions out to the Alps and things like that and seeing people develop and how they would face that first little drop off where you've got, um, waters accelerating and then go through a little drop, off a rock and you can see them really panicking, the first one.

[00:20:35] And then kind of towards the end of the week they're, they're pushing over these things and they're facing their fears and they're dealing with it and seeing people develop like these Absolutely brilliant. And that was one of the nice things about being an instructor. I think where it can get on top of people and I, I, I guess this is still, I think one of, one of the elements of leadership I'm probably least proud of.

[00:20:54] , I was leading a perhaps intelligence team out in Iraq and [00:21:00] I had a whole bunch of my team who were going out on the ground on a daily basis, often coming under fire, like facing all sorts of threats. I also had part of the team who were, uh, based in the, in the operating base. So they never left but there was the risk of rocket fire.

[00:21:17] So we were getting rocketed a couple times a day, but again, although the threat was there, so we were getting rocketed. It's a huge area. So the actual risk, the likelihood of it affecting you was so, so, so small. But one of my intelligence analysts just didn't deal with that.

[00:21:34] And the, the stress levels had built up so that when he went on leave, he didn't come back because he just built up this, the perception of the risk being so high. And I, I hadn't caught this, so I've been kind really looking out for elements of stress, within my teams who were going out on the ground.

[00:21:50] And it didn't occur to me that for me, it wasn't a, it wasn't a factor, kind of the, the rocket fire just wasn't, it's just daily life. And it didn't occur to me that that would [00:22:00] be a problem for other people. And yeah, to this day I still remembering it kind, kind of the shame of, I didn't pick up on that.

[00:22:06] Sarah Abramson: So hard though, isn't it? Yes. To know what's going on inside another person's mind and how they're actually experiencing fear and how real that is for them. Yeah. It seems like there's a real gap and particularly in that that environment between real actual risk and perceived risk.

[00:22:23] Yes. But the perceived risk can be experienced as something extremely real for that person and they'll still have the psychological processing as much as if they were in a more actually more dangerous situation. I mean, is that, what, is that what was going on there?

[00:22:38] Ben Sawyer: Yeah, I think there's that and it's, I mean, I had someone explain it to me.

[00:22:41] Well, there's a difference between fear and anxiety and they can feel very similar, but the fear is based on a actual kind of, there's a risk here and there that you are facing. Whereas anxiety is, there's potentially a risk. So it's that, , you are walking down the street, a dark street, and the anxiety is [00:23:00] something that could happen.

[00:23:01] Whereas then you see a figure emerging and then that, that becomes like Red Cross over the fear. And I, I think that's kind of it is, it's always quibbling a bit. 'cause if they feel the same, you know, I kind of see. It is the same, but probably psychologically it is different. Yeah. So I, I, I, uh, I think, yeah, it, it is different for everyone and I think where it, where it becomes problematic is you've got the physiological reaction to fear where kind of it ramps up the senses it or the heightened the awareness, the kind of breathing, um, of maybe the, the muscles getting the extra energy kind of horse or shaking, ready to go, ready to do something like classic fight or flight reflex. Where it becomes a problem is afterwards, is if you can't come down from that. So if you, I, I think it's called the, um, a parasynthetic, reaction. It's something like that anyway, and it's basically when your body then comes down and it's that feed and rest thing. So you're coming down, the adrenaline's been flush out system, you're calming down, you're taking control of [00:24:00] the situation.

[00:24:01] You, you come down off that adrenaline high. And I think some people get so that they can't do that. And that's where the stress of it becomes overwhelming and you, you can't maintain that level of stress over long periods. So I think part of it is learning your body consciously and unconsciously, learning how to come down off that, um, come down from that fear, reaction and, um, yeah.

[00:24:27] So I mean, things that you can do to help that. So things like exercise, eating healthly, lots of sleep. It's just all, all the things that people shake out all the time. But it does work. I mean, the number of times where you, you come back off a hard mission, you'd be absolutely exhausted. The number of people who still go to the gym or go to the gym as soon as they get up.

[00:24:45] Every part of it is maintaining fitness. It helps you out on the ground when you're on operations and fitness is very important. It helps you, helps you run places quickly with lots of weight, which is obviously important when someone's shooting at you. But also that the exercise, it helps [00:25:00] deal with. The, the emotions.

[00:25:02] Sarah Abramson: That's so interesting. And so, and going back to what you were saying before about when you are going into a bomb disposal situation and you are almost presumably at that point you are so highly trained that you are working from a, a process and you understand exactly what you've got to do.

[00:25:18] So, and, but then you were saying sort of it's after afterwards that that emotion can be experienced more vividly,

[00:25:26] Ben Sawyer: I guess working with project. Yes and no. So I, it is slightly different now, but when I was operating, uh, we had the concepts of joint service operator where you could work in controlled environment.

[00:25:38] So in uk, where the police could hold a cord and normally the device that you see is the device you've got. And it's normally targeting other people. So often quite simple. There's no real kind of speed element to it apart from returning situation, normal kind of if the center of the town's blocked off.

[00:25:56] But then we'd have the high threat element, which is basically like Iraq and [00:26:00] Afghanistan, where you can't necessarily hold the cord and people might be shooting it cord. When you're doing it. The device you see isn't necessarily the device you've got. So there might be, it wasn't uncommon to find another device underneath it or within it to try and, , catch out the person dealing with the device.

[00:26:16] There might be other devices next to it, so it might have multiple devices around there. And by by nature there improvise explosive devices. So although they're often quite common design, so you often see the same sort of design popping up, every, every one would be slightly different. So you could, although we had our set of procedures, our standard operating procedures in a joint service environment. Because you're less experienced operator, you're expected to stick to those. If you wanted to go away from that, you had to ask permission, basically from a more experienced operator. Whereas Iraq and Afghanistan, you wouldn't have access to that experienced operator. So you, you needed the experience and the knowledge.

[00:26:56] You have to know when to follow the rules and when to break them. It, that old dog is [00:27:00] bar the quake. I, I dunno if you'd done his bar said World War II Fighter Race. You say what rules of the guidance of wise men and the obedience of fools.

[00:27:08] Sarah Abramson: Yeah,

[00:27:09] I like that. Great quote.

[00:27:11] Ben Sawyer: So when I, um, when I started, working in with the special operations teams, so working down in Baja, I was part, I was leading a bomb disposal team. So I had a whole team of people behind me to help, help me think and help me do deal with the kit and help deal with the device, um, and very much the team activity.

[00:27:29] Whereas in Baghdad and Afghanistan. I was the only operator, attached to the, uh, special operations team. So there's no, you don't have a team there there of operators to help you work with things. It's basically, you deal with what you've got, with what you've got on your body. You don't have a robot with you.

[00:27:47] You've got what you've got in your pouches and on your rucksack. So there you had to be even more experienced to do that and you had more advanced training for dealing with, because you often have to deal with devices by hand, um, or often having to [00:28:00] make up render safe procedures on the spot. 'cause you deal, you've got to deal with what you've got, with what you've got.

[00:28:05] Sarah Abramson: This might be impossible to answer, but do you, do you know which of those situations you found more stressful, whether you are on your own and only really have yourself to think about or whether you've got a team of people that adds to the risk, but also is there for support and input on decision making in the moment?

[00:28:23] Ben Sawyer: I think dealing with by myself was more stressful and, and often for different reasons. Although there was down in Basra, I had a team who I was kind of responsible for their safety as well. But when I was dealing with the device, we could always have people well away from it. So when we were exposed to risks from the device, it was only me being exposed to it.

[00:28:44] So I could leave my team kind of 50, a hundred meters back and we could clear the area so I could deal with it, hopefully with the robot to start with. But again, it's, it's one person risk. Whereas often in Baghdad, I'd be dealing with dangerous situations [00:29:00] on the target when everyone's still around me because we couldn't, you're having to deal with it live sometimes during an assault, and people are stacked up just behind you.

[00:29:09] So if you get it wrong, it's not just you, it's everyone around you. So the stress there and you, you haven't been able to use a robot first. It's often dark. There's often shooting going on around, or sometimes having to do with night vision goggles. So again, yeah, a lot, a lot more stressful. There's a lot more pressure on you to do it fast.

[00:29:28] Sarah Abramson: What an incredible situation to be in. What do you, what do you think you learned about yourself and about leading other people from those situations?

[00:29:37] Ben Sawyer: I, I think even to get myself into that situation, I think one of the, one of the, the things on there was how to learn. So all through school, university, I, I found things came fairly, fairly easily to me.

[00:29:52] I could do the bare minimum work and get good grades. And that happened all the way through and, and it was everything all through the ammunition tech officers course. [00:30:00] Again, I worked hard, but I could do the minimum amount and hard work and get the good grades and I never really failed anything. And then I went on my first high threat operator course, which was to qualify me to work in Iraq or Afghanistan, and I failed it.

[00:30:14] And this was, I'd been in the Army, what, nearly five years by then. And it was the culmination of, this is what I want to do, this is what I joined the army to do. So my entire career, at that point of being focused on, I needed to pass this course, I failed it. And the first time I really failed anything of significance.

[00:30:29] And that was a real shocker , because I treated it the same as I treated everything else because success had always been come fairly easily. And I, I think I grew up a lot from that. So going back on the next course and really focusing and really kind of making sure I learned and dedicating all my time to it.

[00:30:45] So yes, I think on from that, I, I, one thing I learned to fail and have, pick yourself up from, have I just wasted the last five years of my life? But yeah, to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and get back to it. And work much, much harder to achieve what they [00:31:00] wanted to achieve.

[00:31:00] Sarah Abramson: It's so interesting. It's, it's a theme that comes up again and again and, was the focus, uh, in, in part of the, speak to the human event that we had this year is the significance of failure.

[00:31:11] Permission to fail. Yes. Giving yourself permission to fail Yes. And allowing others room for failure, but how vital that is as a really meaningful, e effective way of, of learning and, and understanding things.

[00:31:24] Ben Sawyer: Yeah. I, I don't worry. I, I'd obviously, I've, I've failed small things before. I mean, no one, no, I'm perfect.

[00:31:29] Sarah Abramson: Sure.

[00:31:29] Ben Sawyer: Obviously, I've failed lots of other things before. I never failed anything that was career changing, kind of, so vitally important to what I want to do in my life.

[00:31:37] Sarah Abramson: Yeah. Yeah. And interesting that you pick up on that as being something that feels like an infl inflection point for you as a different way of kind of learning and reflecting and, and taking that forward.

[00:31:47] Ben Sawyer: And it, it puts you, it stands you up. So dealing with that element. I, I dunno if it's a song or some of that whole thing of when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. I mean from Oxford University Press, um, I, I've made redundant from there. And again, it was kind of, [00:32:00] it's devastating and it's the first time I've faced that.

[00:32:03] So yeah, obviously, give yourself a few hours to grump about it. Uh, feel sorry for yourself and then get on with life and kind of find something else. And I'm, it, it was, it was through public speaking that I think I, I, I landed this job now at British Gas. So, , about a month after being made redundant, I was chairing a, another operational excellence conference in London.

[00:32:25] And in the first break, one of the, continuous improvement directors from Centrica was there. So the parent company to British Gas and he came up during the first break and said, I've got a job with your name.

[00:32:34] Sarah Abramson: What a fantastic situation to find yourself in it. Just the right time.

[00:32:37] Ben Sawyer: And that's why I, I would always recommend people and, and I think I said it at the conference you were at that.

[00:32:41] I recommend it to anyone there who hasn't spoken at a conference. Get out, find an opportunity, and speak the, um,

[00:32:47] Sarah Abramson: yeah, yeah,

[00:32:47] Ben Sawyer: speak at a conference. It's great for your confidence. It, it makes you really think about what you do and how you do it. And you never know where it's gonna be useful in terms of kind networking.

[00:32:58] Sarah Abramson: Absolutely. I completely agree. It's so [00:33:00] interesting and going, going back to that point you were making earlier about different perceptions of fear and things that people are scared of. I mean, I, I actually quite enjoy public speaking. It's not that I don't get nervous of it, but I quite enjoy it. Whereas I'm known in my family for being absolute scaredy cat of watching anything.

[00:33:17] Even like my level of of threat for watching something on TV is ends about with the great British Bake off. Beyond that, I'm kind of like too much, whereas public speaking and some, you know, outdoor adventure sports, I'm like, yeah, bring it on. I love it. But then let's talk a little bit about that, that, , move into the, outta the army and into working in, corporate roles.

[00:33:42] How did that feel? How did you draw on those experiences, into kind of shaping. The work that you, that you do now and and that sort of transition into a really, really very different environment.

[00:33:54] Ben Sawyer: I think it was, it was, it was difficult. The, I think there's a [00:34:00] couple of the, the big elements was as a kind of doing bomb disposal as an ammunition technical officer, um, that was my identity. That's who I was. So to the extent where, uh, on operations, kind of my, my call sign and even even my name out in Baghdad, in Africa, uh, Afghanistan was ato. If, if you had asked, go around the, uh, the task force. Saying who uh is Ben around? Who the hells Ben? Um, it, so you go, name is ato. it's writen on your arm kind of, I mean, I've, I've still got a glasses case, somewhere with I, ATO written across it.

[00:34:30] That was, so if I lost my glasses case, people knew who to bring it to. And you get, you get so highly tied up in it identifies what you do, who you are, because you work so hard to get there and it influences your friend group. I mean, it's still some of my closest friends are from that fraternity, the ATO fraternity.

[00:34:47] So suddenly it's kind of, I've left there. I'm, I'm not that anymore. I'm now just another person working in a corporate world and trying to kind of reconcile that was difficult. [00:35:00] The, and the other end was that feeling of belonging. So it, I found it very strange. I I got so used to it in the, in the military, if you're single, you gotta, you live in the, in the block or the officer's mess with all the other single people.

[00:35:14] You, you work together, you play together, you go off on holiday together. Sometimes you go out drinking together if you're married. Lots of people live on, I think what it's called, the patch. So you're living in military accommodations surrounded by military families often from the same regiment.

[00:35:28] You have work dues, often involving family, so really frequent to have wives or girlfriends or, , husbands and um, significant others, all involved. You have kids events, so it's really is a whole kind, a whole family thing. , And then suddenly get into the corporate world, where that just doesn't happen.

[00:35:46] And when you have those conversations in the army around how's your family, especially when you're operations, it's a really meaningful thing because, especially within your team, because if someone's got a family problem at home saying it's, how's it affecting them as [00:36:00] on operations? , And also you've got great, you, you're living when working with these people and facing the same threats.

[00:36:06] It brings it, it brings about that real kind of levels of empathy, whereas you get into the corporate world and it's, especially now that people live all over the place, 'cause of remote working, asking after family is more, it feels like more of a, a politeness and no one's met, no one's met each other's families.

[00:36:24] You, you don't have those events. You don't, so people don't bring their whole self to work. It's, it's very much, you've got that work self and your, your home self. And I, I think I, I, I struggled with that. You don't feel like you've got that belonging. So yeah, so it's that, it's that lack of identity, finding a purpose as well.

[00:36:44] I think organizations are kind of latching onto that element of what's the organizational purpose. And I, I think it's great that it binds things together, but how much of it is, how much it do individuals actually feel is driving them as a person? In the military, I, I certainly felt it, [00:37:00] and not everyone feels it, but I certainly felt it.

[00:37:01] It's that feeling of belonging and that feeling of, we had a purpose, especially when we were kind of outta operations in Iraq, Afghanistan. And then now see, well, what happens when that purpose fails? Kind of when they got the taliban take back over control of Afghanistan. The purpose of what we were doing there, what we felt and how we colleagues, kind of friends and colleagues didn't come back, that that's difficult.

[00:37:23] But yes, I, I think changes to the environment was a struggle, but yeah, you, you, you adapt and you get on with it.

[00:37:30] Sarah Abramson: I, I suppose the, um, emotional present presence, the emotional intensity that you're experiencing in the Army is a, a completely different world, a different level from most people are going to work.

[00:37:48] To do a job. And if you are engaged with your job, you care about it and you care about the outcomes, and if you are working for an organization that, cares about its people and does that, well, then you'll be more [00:38:00] engaged. But it's a different level, isn't it? When you are in that intense environment where you are seeing and, and you're losing colleagues and you, you are experiencing things together that are life changing.

[00:38:15] It's a, it's a, it's a different level of, of, of sort of being present in your work. And I, I, I suppose it's really interesting hearing you talking about purpose, because I think that exists on an organizational level and a personal level. But there's so many, , organizations where. They talk about purpose and they'll have values on the website, and sometimes when it's done well, their values are more lived and more experienced.

[00:38:40] And maybe even there's some level of engagement with listening to how people are experiencing those. But it feels different in the environment that you are talking about in the army, that intensity is just present in a completely different way,

[00:38:55] Ben Sawyer: But not, it is not unique. I mean, you, you get other elements. So, uh, first responders, so [00:39:00] fire police.

[00:39:01] We just have to look at what the NHS, uh, and medical software around the world were going through, with COVID. , And you see a lot of reaction there. You get, , people living together in engaged environments on things like, um, offshore platforms and stuff.

[00:39:14] So yeah, I think it's not unique to the military. A lot of people face it.

[00:39:17] Sarah Abramson: Yes. I suppose I'm putting myself in, in your shoes of going from straight into a kind of private sector corporate environment. Must have been really sort of discombobulating and, uh, yeah.

[00:39:28] Ben Sawyer: Yes. Yeah. Very different. And I think it also didn't help the start at Oxford University press, which it, it was a nice place to work, but not very. It doesn't really attract veterans.

[00:39:38] Sarah Abramson: Right.

[00:39:39] Ben Sawyer: So I think probably two other veterans there, uh, in the office. Whereas now I'm working at Centrica and there are hundreds and they, one of the things I actually really, I, I enjoy about Centrica is they have a very active kind of forces, program for recruiting, veterans.

[00:39:54] So they have, people within the, HR team who are dedicated to going out and. Bringing veterans in, [00:40:00] they run placements where veteran can come and spend some time almost intern aid, internship, um, and

[00:40:06] Sarah Abramson: interesting.

[00:40:06] Ben Sawyer: A lot of them, them will end up with jobs there. The number of it almost seems every other meeting you're in with another veteran, which is, it's quite nice.

[00:40:12] Is that Yeah. More other people have done it. So it is also nice working for a company who are actively going out their way to help veterans.

[00:40:19] Sarah Abramson: Absolutely. Can you tell us a little bit about what continuous improvement means as a role and how you've been able to bring in some of those things that you learned in from the Army environment and particularly around risk?

[00:40:32] , What that means in, in terms of how you work now and how you kind of apply some of those concepts.

[00:40:38] Ben Sawyer: Yeah, sure. So continuous improvement, I ironically actually it's, um, it's one of the less least risky ways to do change. Because you, you look at the number of big transformational changes where people invest, , years of work, millions of pounds, huge teams.

[00:40:53] And, things then run over. They go horribly wrong. I mean, the classic big few people are doing kind of sap [00:41:00] and implementations or things like that where it's often not, they go horribly wrong, , after huge amounts of investment. So yeah, highly, highly risky. Whereas the nice thing about continuous improvement is it's iterative and you are often looking at small, iterative changes.

[00:41:16] So if something goes wrong, if the change isn't right, well, it is only a small change, then you undo it. And often you end up in the same place through these, but you've taken lots of iterative, small steps to reach that, that end point rather than one great giant leap. And I guess I, in, in bomb disposal, we were doing continuous improvement all the time, across the military.

[00:41:39] And but I never heard of Lean, lean or Six Sigma or anything like that. But we did have kind of that instinctive, you've got to improve. We have a stopwatch. , We're always doing training illustrations. So things like with my team and down in Badger, if we weren't out on the mission, then we would normally either, uh, maintaining kit, playing a bit or [00:42:00] going out and training, training.

[00:42:01] And after every mission and after every training series, we would have a hot wash of what went well, what would, didn't go well, what was going to change. And then often we would, we would go away, make those changes, come back, we rehearse those changes. And if it worked, it was good. Then it became our new standard operating procedures.

[00:42:18] And sometimes you go through that cycle several times a day. So yeah, really, really quick cycle. Whereas when I, when I left, um, past my retraining, I did, uh, some Lean Six Sigma courses and suddenly discovered, actually this continues improvement was a thing. And there were lots of ways to better understand it and try to reach better ideas and better controlled what gets implemented.

[00:42:45] And I, I now look back at what we did thinking like Badra and I think, well actually, even if I knew Lean Six Sigma there, we probably would've reached the same places. We may have got there a bit faster with all these talks, but we had that mindset and that [00:43:00] determination we were going to improve. So now when I, I do, I run foundation courses and I really emphasize that the most important thing is the mindset.

[00:43:09] That determination, that tr treating every process as flawed and that nothing is perfect. You can always make it better. And that leads onto the idea of kind marginal gains. So I guess the most famous case of that is in UK or British cycling. Where they went from I think, virtually zero gold medals in the Olympics through to owning it.

[00:43:28] , And then also you had the, the B sky, B team kind dominating the, tour de France for years. And there was no one thing in there. It was always, it was all those tiny little marginal gains that all added up to, uh, hundredth of a second here. And second that. And then the next big thing is empowerment.

[00:43:45] So you've got to know that you can go and make these changes. Now, whether or not you are, um, empowerment is an odd one. You, you often hear, and I've heard they said quite few places where leaders say, yes, everyone's empowered [00:44:00] to go off and do these things, but are they really? Because when someone goes and gets a change, it's like, oh my God, you did what?

[00:44:06] Bang, bang, bang. Good spanking. And it's, people don't feel empowered. So the main thing about empowerment is people got to know in their heart that they are, that they can do these things and that also that their leadership will back them up and. That idea that if it, if things go wrong, it's not about punishing, it's about coaching.

[00:44:23] It's what did you learn from that? So as long as people don't make the same mistake again, that's fine. Go off will find an interesting new way to screw up.

[00:44:30] Sarah Abramson: Yeah, yeah. Well it's back to that, that sort of failure point, isn't it? And, and in that circumstance for permission to fail, it's the, understanding that it's okay to take ownership, to try something, to, to push the boundaries of what you're doing.

[00:44:44] Because if it goes wrong, then your leaders, you, you are not on your own. You're not isolated. You've been given that, that room.

[00:44:52] Ben Sawyer: I, I haven't worked in a tech startup, but I read a lot. And a lot of the cases you read around from tech startups is that they do [00:45:00] have, that, they have those behaviors where failure is something you learn, learn from, and you, you pivot from that and go carry on.

[00:45:08] Whereas I think the, a lot of the bigger, older companies. Especially when you've got more formalized hierarchies and processes dating back into, back into history. It's a lot harder to to do that and face to have those behaviors. If you have an established hierarchy where you have different levels of manager going up, those different levels have to justify their existence.

[00:45:32] So you then have those levels of, well, we're going to put, authorization for spend, uh, down to here we're going to put, so this level can improve this amount, spend this level can improve this amount. Um, to make this change, you've got to go up to this level. So again, that immediately as soon you got formalized hierarchy, it's really difficult to implement those behaviors where people can experiment and, make decisions themselves.

[00:45:56] Sarah Abramson: Yeah, yeah. There's a couple of different things going on there so that, [00:46:00] leadership thinking, leadership culture I suppose, where, you've got a hierarchy, but how do you then enable and empower people and create that environment? And then aligned with that, what you were saying about mindset is so interesting.

[00:46:15] I'm interested in how, what you've learned about instilling mindset and different ways of thinking and what's worked, do you think, or, or hasn't worked?

[00:46:25] Ben Sawyer: First of all, going back to the, um, how would you lead, to empower people like that? So the British Army, leadership doctrine use mission command.

[00:46:34] So thi this came out of, the, 19th century when armies were getting so big that you couldn't have a general standing on a hill controlling whole army. So the Prussians started developing this idea that you tell people what you want 'em to achieve, then they go off and achieve it. And that became formalized over years and it was adopted by the British Army.

[00:46:52] The idea is that you, you give people a mission and that you want them to achieve and you tell them your intent. What are you as a leader trying to achieve? [00:47:00] Give them the context and then set them free to go off and do it. And you may set bounds. You see, you might give them what they can kind of good left or right or where, how far to they can go to.

[00:47:10] And then you as a leader, it's about what, how can you provide the resources? How can you provide the backup for them to achieve what you want them to achieve? But that was very much built on trust and, and the army builds those levels of trust by everyone working to that same doctrine and then training for it.

[00:47:24] Because if you're not off in a war in a combat zone, then you're training. And most companies don't have that. You've got a day-to-day job on, they don't have the luxury of spending kind of months and months on training or so that everyone has this similar way of leading and building those levels of trust. Between kind of leaders and followers and the different levels of leadership. So it, I think it's, it's a lot harder in a civilian,, organization. And also civilian organizations tend not to invest as much in leadership as the military do. Your first year in the Army is at Sandhurst where it's pretty much 12 months, or sorry, 11 months of leadership training.[00:48:00]

[00:48:00] And then you keep on getting leadership training, mentoring and coaching kind of formal and informal all through your career. So you keep getting extracted for various leadership courses and, you get lots of extra training. Again, civilian organizations can't, it's very rare where they can afford to extract people from, the business for months at a time to train them in leadership.

[00:48:21] Sarah Abramson: It, it can feel that those things happen by, fortunate circumstances where it's more dependent on someone having Leadership capabilities and bringing that in with them and having the, the aptitude, the emotional intelligence to be good leaders rather than it, it sort of being supported, developed, created.

[00:48:43] Ben Sawyer: I think that's why it's, I mean, certainly in America, that's it. highly recognize in the corporate world around, a lot of big companies have very big veteran recruitment programs so people like Amazon, they recruit huge numbers of veterans, especially in the US. And they're not, they're not doing it for charity.

[00:48:59] They're there to [00:49:00] make a profit and it's recognizing that the veterans bring years of free leadership, training and experience.

[00:49:05] Sarah Abramson: Interesting.

[00:49:06] Yeah. Yeah. So, and, and then just going back, the second part of that question was about how you can create and instill mindset in people that you're working with, perhaps in, within a team.

[00:49:15] Ben Sawyer: I think the, the biggest thing is the example. So actually setting the example of how you want people to behave. And giving people the opportunity to practice it. So for example, when I took over my team down in Baja, one of the training cycles we were going through, we were looking at if I was injured down in the target and what would my industry escort do to come and get me.

[00:49:38] And they told me that they would drive up in one of their land rovers and two of them would kind of what provide covering fire or watch the archer, make sure the area was safe. And two of them would grab a hold of me, uh, in my bomb suit and pull me up and lift me up into the back of the Land Rover. Now the back of the Land Rover was about the floor by thigh height, narrow [00:50:00] door.

[00:50:00] At the time I weighed about 85 kilos. So boots and clothing, probably about 90 kilos. The bomb suit is about 45 kilos. So I, right, so you, the two of you in your combat gear are going to lift me and all my that weight, that what. 130, 135 kilos plus of weight right? I put the suit on, I laid down.

[00:50:21] In fact, right lift me in there and they couldn't, and they got the third person round, and I think with three of them, they couldn't do it. They were like, go away, figure out how would to do this. So they got my spare suits. And so I pretty much knew how I could, how I could solve that. , But I didn't. I asked them to go off and solve it, and the next day they'd, they'd come back and actually they'd come up with exactly the same thing as I thought they should do.

[00:50:42] Sarah Abramson: What, what was it?

[00:50:43] Ben Sawyer: Uh, basically they set up a, um, a pulley system attached to the, to the front of the, the compartment at the back, and there was a, uh, ropes on there and then to a strop and the strop they could loop around under my arms, , with a carabiner on there.

[00:50:58] Sarah Abramson: Okay.

[00:50:58] Ben Sawyer: And then they just pull on the pully and that would just lift [00:51:00] me up into it.

[00:51:01] So basically getting, , the pully system using mechanical advantage.

[00:51:04] And then they'd also come up with an emergency one where they could put the strops and just attach it to the tow hook and then tow me down the road in an extremist, the suit would protect you against the road. We didn't practice that one.

[00:51:15] Yeah. So, and they solved it. And that was great. So again, it's like setting an example of I want you to go off and solve this.

[00:51:22] Sarah Abramson: It's both the empowerment and the mindset, isn't it? Because the mindset is, yes, I need to solve this problem, I can solve this problem.

[00:51:31] , I've been given permission to solve the problem. And, uh, yeah.

[00:51:34] Ben Sawyer: And giving and giving people ownership of the problem as well. Yeah. And ownership of the solution.

[00:51:40] Sarah Abramson: That's absolutely fantastic, Ben. I feel like there are so many things that we could explore and go further, and there's a whole topic around something that you call moral injury that, , I, I would love to explore with you, but I know that we, we don't really have time.

[00:51:54] And maybe we need to pick up a separate conversation. Yeah.

[00:51:57] Ben Sawyer: Moral injury, that's, yeah. I mean, it would be great to [00:52:00] do that. We could do a whole, a whole different podcast on that because it's especially more frequent. It used to be something that was being uniquely looked at in the military up until about time of COVID.

[00:52:11] I think there's what scientific papers, publishment, pre COVID, probably in the dozens.

[00:52:16] Sarah Abramson: Do you wanna just give us a potted sort of overview of, of, of what it is?

[00:52:20] Ben Sawyer: Yeah. So moral injuries, it's basically a, it's a breach of what you hold to be fundamentally or morally true. So it's a breach of your moral compass.

[00:52:30] So it's normally the element of if you've done something or been forced to do something or seen something happen, that breaches your kind of moral compass. And, and I'm not to say something you think is slightly wrong, but something you think is absolutely fundamentally wrong. So the, the terminology came out from a guy, it was a psychologist called Jonathan Shay, and he was working with Vietnam vets and he was trying to treat these Vietnam vets with PTSD. And the PTSD was essentially untreatable and [00:53:00] he realized you've seen them in lot of these symptoms that.

[00:53:03] Um, he had read about, he, he liked the classics. He'd read about Achilles, in the iliad and displaying similar symptoms. Now, Achilles kind of one of the baddest warriors in in literature. And he, he's not gonna be suffering from PTSD, but he's got these sort of symptoms and he looks, he's started looking at what had caused these, and this is common in other sort, um, Greek tragedy as well.

[00:53:26] And so he turned this idea moral injury, whereas Achilles, he'd been, he'd left the, uh, the Greek army because Aga Menon had basically taken away one of his war trophies, this, uh, slave. And I think an American had equated this to imagine if an American had a soldier, won the, uh, um, congressional Medal of Honor, like Victoria Cross, and then his commander went. Actually, no, I like that. I'm gonna take it off the soldier's chest, and he wears it instead, or in the corporate environment. So A CEO gets a massive bonus. And then has to pay tax on the bonus that it's not fair. I'm gonna [00:54:00] pay the tax. And then it takes everyone else's bonuses away from them to compensate.

[00:54:03] Sarah Abramson: Yeah,

[00:54:05] Ben Sawyer: you're gonna be, so basically that's the kind of, I guess, the corporate equivalent . So it's this breach of what is morally right. And he started seeing this, and again, up until, um, COVID people were only really researching it in, , military context. So things like Vietnam, it's people seeing their friends killed because, , the government purchased the rifle from the lowest possible bidder.

[00:54:26] Perceptions are betrayal by politicians, things like that. Post COVID, people started seeing this in the medical community. So many medics making decisions on who lives or died, but it being unduly influenced by the lack of resources. Politicians kind of weighing in with maybe, policies that weren't the right policies. Make decision based on money 'cause they don't have the right, the number of Inc uh, not ingra, uh, ventilators. And they started seeing this across the board. So there's been a lot of research going to, and now to do more and more research in other elements. So community workers kind of making [00:55:00] decisions on whether children stay with their parents, are they forced to make, uh, what they see as a bad decision based on policy.

[00:55:07] Police dealing difficult situations. , Corporate whistleblowers, things like, uh, Nestle. There's the issues in the nineties around baby milk. There's all sorts of things where they see and now realizing that, oh, this is the same,

[00:55:18] Sarah Abramson: are there less extreme versions of it where it's maybe not a life or death decision or, , taking a child from their parents, but it's something that any of us might experience in a more day-to-day kind of situation.

[00:55:31] Ben Sawyer: I think moral injury isn't about life or death situations. So the PTSD is more, is a fear-based reaction to a traumatic situation. Whereas moral injury, it's a breach of what you hold right so it doesn't need to be life or death. And to be honest, if, if you're faced with taking someone's child away mm-hmm.

[00:55:48] I mean, that could be even more traumatic. Yeah. I mean, that is life, , affecting. , And I suspect we're gonna see a huge ramp up in this in cases after, um, especially after Iraq and Afghanistan [00:56:00] because the number of people fighting in Afghanistan. And then it gets handed back to the Taliban that complete kind of political failure.

[00:56:09] And I think that's gonna have consequences in the future. And a lot of this takes time to, it takes time to come out. Jonathan Shay of dealing with Vietnam veterans. This was in the kind of eighties and nineties. So you looking at people 20, 30 years after the events.

[00:56:22] Sarah Abramson: So what might moral injury look like for those of us working in a, a more corporate environment?

[00:56:27] Ben Sawyer: Things like, breaches of ethics. So it might be something misuse of data, it might be selling a product that is not safe. , I mean in fight club, he describes, car companies costing up how much it would be to do a recall, a safety recall versus how much it'll cost to pay off an injured or dead.

[00:56:47] Sarah Abramson: Right

[00:56:47] Ben Sawyer: um, re relatives are dead and it's whichever one is greater,

[00:56:51] Sarah Abramson: right

[00:56:51] Ben Sawyer: you go, you make your decision cost base. Now that's obviously it's film, a Fight Club, but apparently it's based on kind of real life examples, in the [00:57:00] eighties and nineties in car companies. So people being faced with companies that are making decisions that are either immoral or not balanced with their, what they perceive as moral.

[00:57:10] Now things like anxiety about the environment, , it's again, if your moral compass is pointing towards minimizing climate change and you were working for someone like Shell, , that could be quite damaging.

[00:57:24] You could be setting yourself for some form, more an injury in the future. But then again, people tend to go work for companies that align with what they hold to be true. If they don't, they're setting themselves up for potential problems in the future.

[00:57:36] Sarah Abramson: And this is a topic that you, you've written about, is that right?

[00:57:39] Ben Sawyer: Yeah, so, , my wife, she was an academic, she was a classist at Oxford.

[00:57:43] She's now just a retrained to be a barrister. But yeah, we, uh, we co-published a, a chapter in a book. So the book is called Paradox and Power in Caring Leadership. And we, we, we wrote this chapter as a conversation between the two of us. So looking at the [00:58:00] differences in military leadership between ancients, uh, so the ancient Greek world, so specifically around the iliad, which my wife was an expert in.

[00:58:09] And my experience as in military and also it led on to other interests. So she'd, she was quite heavily involved with various. So especially in America, they read the classics a lot more than in uk, especially the Greek classics. And they had been doing most of work with treating people with PTSD and moral injury through readings of the classics.

[00:58:28] So they would get actors in to read elements of the classics, especially around Ajax or around the iliad treatment of Achilles. And then have group discussions with the soldiers and their families around what's going on there. And you'll see this all the way through. So you see lots of military sim symbols and where you'll have spartan helmets and, that whole kind of, classical warrior ethos is, is quite highly valued in the military, especially in the American military.

[00:58:56] So reading with soldiers around these these gracious [00:59:00] heroes from history, Achilles and Ajax and um, Odysseus and people like that. And they, they went through exactly, faced exactly the same things they are doing and kind of showing their mental anguish. I mean, to extent Ajax then committed suicide and show that they, just because they're feeling this doesn't make them any kind of weak or any less a warrior, uh, 'cause of it.

[00:59:22] Yeah. 'cause that's what Achilles was going through. So, and that's been quite a, a popular and powerful way of treatment, I think more so for the American military.

[00:59:31] Sarah Abramson: Right. Thank you. We'll, uh, we'll share a link to the book in the show notes, but, uh, so it sounds amazing. I, I, I'll go and have a read of it myself too.

[00:59:38] Gosh, this has been absolutely fascinating conversation, exploring so many different, angles and depth of experience. Thank you so much. I want to ask a final question that I ask of all our podcast guests, which is, . Speaking to you as a human, Ben. Um, what's exciting you at the moment and, , what are you looking forward to or motivated [01:00:00] about?

[01:00:00] Either in work or out of work, or both?

[01:00:02] Ben Sawyer: Yeah. So I guess, the biggest thing for me now, family and kids, , I've got two young kids who are growing up rapidly and it's fun to be with them. It's fun watching 'em grow up. And they're everything for me now. And for me, a lot of me, that that's taken over what my identity is now.

[01:00:20] . And now yeah, family takes priority of everything, including my career choices and what we do. So yeah, it is an exciting time. So I think one is 10 and one six and yeah, it is, it's a great time.

[01:00:32] I think the other thing that my. Um, I've, I've gone from all these adrenaline sports, skydiving fast motorbikes, and I've got rid of all of that. So now it's completely different perceptions of risk. So kids in hi-vis and lots of flash lights on the bike.

[01:00:46] My big personal development, I work on  Calisthenics , so after years of running around kinda army style training, and then doing that for years after the army suddenly realized I'm really bored of running. I'm really bored of gyms. So I [01:01:00] started  Calisthenics , which is more about kind of using your body to train. So lots of things like human flags and front levers and hand balancing and, and that keeps me entertained. It's something fun and interesting. Again, I have lots of skill-based and so I work, I've been working on that for years now and got a couple of things I want to achieve before I'm 50. Yeah, so that keeps me motivated.

[01:01:21] I guess workwise and general interest wise, AI. I'm doing a lot of work with AI and uses at work. And I, I really enjoy working with some of the, frontline engineers and, their, the line managers and just all the incredible ways they're finding to use it, and make their lives easier and make everyone's around live easier.

[01:01:42] So it, it's an exciting time.

[01:01:44] Sarah Abramson: Yeah, absolutely. So much to unpack there, but, uh, yeah. Well, amazing. Thank you so much. I've genuinely really enjoyed this conversation. It's been so thought provoking. There are lots of other avenues that we could have gone down and explored. [01:02:00] But, you know, thank you so much for the time and, it's been an absolute joy to, to talk with you and really fascinating, intriguing, thought provoking to hear the stories that, that you've got from your background.

[01:02:12] Thank you.

[01:02:13] Ben Sawyer: Well, likewise. Yeah. Very enjoyable. And thank you for inviting me.

[01:02:17] Sarah Abramson: Well, I hope that, , listeners have enjoyed this conversation as much as I have. Please do like, share and subscribe to the podcast and bye for now.