In this episode of Out of the Clouds, Sridevi Kalidindi CBE, or Sri, an experienced, multi-award winning, senior Consultant Psychiatrist and Leadership/Executive Coach, discusses her journey in the field of psychiatry and the importance of proactive mental health care. She tells host Anne Mühlethaler how she learned to become an advocate for the patients and communities she works for, emphasising the need for storytelling and narrative in communication. The two go on to discuss the impact of stress and burnout on mental health professionals in particular, as well as their own personal experiences of burnout. Sri shares how she became more conscious and proactive about her own wellbeing via the support of a coach.
Sri also tells Anne how she came to develop Klip Global, a startup she founded with the goal of focusing on key life indicators to monitor workforce wellbeing through coaching, masterclasses and mindfulness practices to promote proactive employee support in the workplace.
Sri explains how she built the startup to allow individuals to track their own progress, as well asr for chief people officers to be able to monitor the general wellbeing of their teams. Sri tells Anne about how wellbeing can be pitched to businesses, emphasising the positive impact on employee engagement, productivity and retention.
Always interested in scientific data, Sri highlights the importance of case studies and leaning on evidence-based tools to demonstrate the return on investment in wellbeing programs. Sri also discusses her role as a National Clinical Lead for mental health rehabilitation in NHS England and the positive impact of her work in improving rehabilitation services across the country.
Anne asks Sri to talk about her personal meditation practice, and she goes on to speak about the power of finding joy within oneself. Their conversation concludes with Sri sharing her favourite word, the importance of connection and what brings her happiness.
A profound and insightful interview. Happy listening!
Takeaways
- Burnout is a significant issue in the workplace, and organizations need to take a proactive approach to prevent it.
- Coaching can be a powerful tool for personal and professional development, helping individuals unlock their potential and improve their well-being.
- Investing in employee well-being has numerous benefits, including increased productivity, reduced absenteeism, and improved employee engagement.
- Data analytics can provide valuable insights into employee well-being and help organizations identify areas for improvement.
- Practices like meditation, breathwork, and affirmations can help individuals ground themselves and manage stress. Investment in community rehab teams has been a positive development after decades of no investment.
- Recognition and honors can help raise the profile of important work and acknowledge the support of others.
- Connection is crucial for personal well-being and living fulfilling lives.
- Enjoying the journey and finding joy in life brings happiness.
- Clip Global can be contacted via email at hello@clipglobal.com or through their website.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
03:03 Sri Devi’s Story
08:33 Early Desire to Help Others
13:17 Becoming a Psychiatrist
18:34 Challenges of Being a Psychiatrist
19:03 The Rise of Burnout
20:30 Managing Stress and Burnout
24:28 Introduction to Clip Global
26:48 Preventative Approach to Well-being
32:58 The Power of Coaching
36:25 Building Clip Global
42:25 Pitching Well-being to Businesses
45:21 Clip Global and Data Analytics
46:45 Practices for Grounding and Stabilizing
50:01 Personal Meditation Practice
52:23 Role at NHS England
53:50 Investment in Community Rehab Teams
54:47 Recognition and Honors
56:45 Closing Questions
01:01:14 Contact Information
01:02:13 Closing Remarks
Selected links from the episode
You can find Sri on LinkedIn
You can also follow Klip on Instagram and Facebook or LinkedIn.
To get in touch and ask for further information on Klip Global’s programs, get in touch at hello@klipglobal.com
Sri’s choice of song ‘I believe in miracles’ by the Jackson Sisters
Sri’s favorite book is The Prophet, by Khalil Gibran.
Full Episode Transcript
Anne Muhlethaler (00:04.878)Hi, hello, bonjour and namaste. This is Out of the Clouds, a podcast at the crossroads between business and mindfulness. And I’m your host, Anne V Mühlethaler. I am a communications coach and consultant and a mindfulness teacher. My passion is to bridge coaching, consulting, and storytelling to create purposeful strategies for my clients. So in the daytime, I help people in companies figure out how to talk about themselves and what they do in a way that makes them relevant to the people they care about. It’s kind of like my superpower. Evenings and weekends, I write, teach and study mindfulness, loving kindness, yoga and Buddhist practices. So in the middle, tying this all together, I host and produce this podcast, Out of the Clouds, a show which, like me, sits at the crossroads between business and mindfulness. Today I have the great pleasure of bringing you a very accomplished guest, Sri Devi Kalidindi. Sri is a consultant psychiatrist, a national clinical leader, a WHO expert consultant, and she’s also a leadership and executive coach. She also chairs the Association of Mental Health Provider, and lastly, which we’ll talk about today, Sri is an entrepreneur. SoIn our conversation, she tells me about how she became a psychiatrist, why she got into coaching, and we talk at length about the advances made by her team and the very real difficulties that she’s trying to solve for her patients, and how psychiatrists like her often are advocates for her patients. We also delve into burnout, we talk about the consequences of burnout and how to deal with it, and then, of course, we talk aboutKlip Global, the startup dedicated to providing top-of-the-line well-being and development services to help employees lead healthier, happier and more fulfilled lives. We talk about how Shri made the choice to offer tools and resources that are both holistic and science-backed. The idea being to bring preventative care to employees so that they can live their genius, as Shri says, achieve greatness.Anne Muhlethaler (02:30.13)and hopefully make a real impact in the world. It is in this context that we met Sri and I, as I’ve been offering mindfulness glasses to Clip Global for a few months now. It’s been a real pleasure and I’m so delighted not just to partner with her, but to bring you this interview so that you can find out about hers and Clip Global’s mission. So without further ado, I’m going to stop talking and bring you my fascinating interview with Sri Devi Kalidindi. Sri, it’s so lovely to have you here today. Thank you so much for being on Out of the Clouds. And it’s an absolute pleasure to be here with you. And thank you so much for having me on. I am delighted to be introducing you to our listeners. And as you may already know, I love to start the podcast by asking my guests to tell their story and to do so very freely. And that means pick up from as early as you’d like. I think it’s interesting to talk about who we are before reflecting on what we do. So I know it’s a big question, but if that’s okay with you, would you tell us your story? Sridevi Kalidindi:Thank you, Anne. Yeah, where to begin? Yes. So I’m a consultant psychiatrist. I work clinically in London and I have many other different hats, national and international work that I’ve done and do. I also have a startup.called Klip Global and have really come to this through some of my work and seeing how to help people in a more preventative way rather than necessarily waiting for people to become so unwell that they need to come and see me in very specialist psychiatric services. And I guess the reason that I’m telling you this is that there is a thread throughout my kind of story of wanting to help others, wanting to use my kind of knowledge and empathy to think about how I can support others to be the best that they can be and to relieve their suffering to the coaching part of me, to take them to their higher selves.And all that then brings into the world by kind of unleashing that with people. Thank you so much for sharing that. So when did you first become aware of this deep desire to help others? I think even early as a child, I would find myself helping others if they got stuck on problems, maybe more at school.But also, friends would often come to me with issues that they might have, and I’d be the person that they’d come and speak to, talk about things together. I’d empathise with them and help them think of what to do next, how to make a plan, how to deal with the situation, as well as process it. And it’s very interesting to me, looking back on that now, and thinking about the career that I’ve had, because I don’t think it was always apparent to me at all that I would then…end up in psychiatry, end up in the world of coaching as well, which is very related to helping people, you know, unleash their potential too. But there’s a definite thread from very early on that that’s what I found myself doing and interested in. Anne V Muhlethaler:Fascinating. And so did you have examples near you that you drew up from? Did anyone inspire you in this early instinct to become, you know, the go-to person to support others? Sridevi Kalidindi: I mean, there’s no one obvious that I’m thinking of that was an inspiration that I directly emulated. I guess that what I can say is that there are people certainly who’ve shaped my understanding of what really, you know, amazing mentors, leaders, supporters, some of the special kind of ways that they have about them. And I’ll give you one example.Sridevi Kalidindi:So Professor Robin Murray, Professor Sir Robin Murray now actually for a long time and very well deserved as one of my PhD supervisors. And very early on, I noticed that he had this habit of saying yes. When people came to him with a request, something they might be interested in, an area they wanted to follow perhaps in research, or more broadly, he would say yes.And I spoke to him about this because it was actually quite different from a lot of the other leaders, a lot of other people that I saw around me at that time as a trainee psychiatrist in London. And I brought this up to him. I said, oh, it’s just really interesting. It’s really inspiring, actually, because you say yes when people come to you with things. And I remember he said to me, well, Shree, unless there’s a very good reason to say no, I do say yes.because it gives people that belief in themselves and it gives people that permission to do something that they’re really passionate about doing because that’s where they’ve come and asked me about it. Who knows where that will go? That’s always stayed with me. And I don’t think I brought it up with him later, many years ago, and I said, oh, that was something that really stayed with me that was quite profound for me, actually, just noticing that way and style of leading and mentoring that was very different. And he didn’t even really recall the conversation, interestingly. But it was just the way he was. So I think picking up things like that, thinking, gosh, I’m going to be one of those people who says yes when others come to me and doesn’t say no and think of all the million reasons why we could say no, but say yes, let’s see where it takes us. Anne V Muhlethaler: Thank you so much. That’s such a vivid story. It’s interesting because I’m trying to be very present with what you’re saying and at the same time,You’re making me think about some of the first people, my first bosses, who actually inspired me and probably moulded my work ethic. So tell me, how did Young Sri make her way to becoming a psychiatrist? Sridevi Kalidindi:So how did I become a psychiatrist? Very good question. I was always surrounded by other doctors growing up. My father’s a doctor, psychiatrist in fact.Interestingly, many of them would try and put me off. They’d say, oh gosh, it’s really hard work. It’s not very well rewarded. People take you for granted. Lots of kind of negative things. And I think part of that was because a lot of the doctors I was surrounded by were people who come from abroad. There were other Indian doctors. And I think were not probably really well treated, particularly at that time. So I think that they did experience a lot of prejudice, a lot of being held back in their careers, a lot of doing the dog’s bodywork and not really being rewarded. And as I reflect on that now, I think probably that’s where a lot of that came from. Because actually, they did love their jobs at a certain level. They loved helping people. They loved being the person who could change lives and save lives. So I was surrounded by that all the time for growing up. Actually, they always thought I would be a doctor. It’s the only thing that I wanted to be other than very fleetingly a lawyer.And I quickly decided that I didn’t know anybody in law. I didn’t know even how to do that, what the career would look like in that space. And so I landed on medicine, went through, always loved sciences through school. So it felt very natural to me. Went on, got into med school in London and have always been in London since. From very early on, I found endocrinology really fascinating, which is the study of hormones, of things like diabetes, infertility due to hormonal reasons, pituitary gland issues, so many different thyroid, so many different conditions that arise from our hormones not working as they should. So I prepared for that, did summer jobs, research in the labs, etc. that were linked to that in order that I could go and do the professorial job, which I did in anthropology and carried on down that route.Very early on in my junior doctor years. I’d qualified as practicing as a doctor, as a junior doctor, they called them until your consultant. I found that it was just so busy on the wards to the point where I’d be rushing around, doing all the things I needed to do, listening to chess, writing in the charts, all of those things. Then I would not even have time to talk to people. I could find myself getting anxious as people would try and be speaking to me and asking questions about, doctor, what’s happening? What does this mean? And so on, because I would just be trying to rush around and get around everybody and get all the tasks done before the next day and obviously coming in again and often staying quite late in order just to get the normal tasks done. And it would usually be on the ward rounds with our senior doctors, the consultants, that a lot of the, that’s when usually the consultants would speak with patients andanswer them and so on. So as a junior doctor having to do that to all of my patients felt like something I just couldn’t fit in enough. And I paused and I realised that this was not why I came into medicine. I wanted to speak to people. I wanted to build that rapport and that therapeutic relationship with them. And so I decided to look around and think what else I wanted to do. So from this very hard to get into medical rotation in London.I moved to psychiatry at the Maudsley and I absolutely loved it. Having time to talk to people, really understand where they’re coming from, thinking about them really holistically. So when I was practicing medicine on the wards, we would be told to think about people’s social situation and think about how their emotional health impacted on what was happening to their physical health. But it was quite hard to do that in that busy, busy frame of work and it was a little bit tokenistic often. But here we had to know about what we call the biopsychosocial aspects of people’s lives and understand their illness in the wider context of their environment, their upbringing, their support systems. And it was really fascinating to me. Anne V Muhlethaler:I’m so grateful that you told me about your journey.Interestingly, it echoes, I don’t know whether you’ve read or heard about Dan Siegel, who wrote a really great book called Mindsight. And I recall that at the beginning of this book, he tells a rather similar story of a junior doctor going around and finding himself being told off for having asked a patient about how they were, and then turning to psychology and psychiatry. Now, you have been practicing for how many years now?Sridevi Kalidindi: (13:45.418)Well, for…more than 25 years. Anne V Muhlethaler: It’s been a minute. What have you found to be, let’s say, the most challenging part of your journey so far as a psychiatrist? Sridevi Kalidindi:I think the most challenging part of being a psychiatrist is when we feel we can’t do enough for people. And it harks back a little bit to what I was just saying that people’s mental health is related to their biology, their psychology, their social aspects. And when we know, for example, that what we call some of the social determinants of health, things like poverty, things like living in housing where you’re more likely to come across trauma of various kinds, for example, if there’s violence around you, criminality, because that’s the surroundings you live in, those things absolutely impact your mental health. There’s not a lot I can do about that as a psychiatrist directly, although indirectly we can do a lot. I think all psychiatrists have to be activists in a way, if we really want to help our patients, because it is by changing that sort of political and environmental standing or frameworks that we have the biggest impact, and we have to do both.We have to be at that sort of public health level, but we also have to be at the very specialist level in terms of knowing how to treat people who’ve got severe mental illness with very specific and evidence-based interventions and care and treatment. Thank you so much. My mind just got stuck on what you said about a psychiatrist needing to being activists. Yeah, I find myself being an advocate all the timeWe have to be. If I think about just, obviously without giving any kind of confidential information away, patients of mine who have been done really, really well and have been ready to move into their own supported flats from say residential care or hospitals, and then what we may find is that those particular settings are not used to taking people with mental illness and are worried or scared. There’s still a kind of stigma around it in many places.Sridevi Kalidindi (16:11.882)First of all, I didn’t even understand why they weren’t accepting my patient into their sort of special sheltered home. It was an older person. And this was, they’re amazing flats. You know, they’re places where you have staff around you all the time, but you have your own flat. So your own front door, which many of my patients haven’t had for many years as well because of the nature and the severity of their illness. And they weren’t allowing or accepting my patient, they were stuck in a residential care setting, which was not very conducive to their kind of wellbeing. And it wasn’t what they wanted. And they were much more able now to live more independently. I understood then from speaking with the manager that they didn’t feel comfortable about taking somebody with mental illness. So what we did was we worked with them closely. We did some training for the staff so that they felt more comfortable with it. They got to know us and trust us. And also, we were very clear thatWhen people call us for our patients because they’re worried in any way, we can come the same day. And over time, that is, so they did that for one person, they moved one person in. That person said to me, you know, thank you, doctor. It’s the first time in 40 years I’ve had my own front door. It’s the first time I’ve been able to have my own space, invite my own family, eat the food that I want to eat and cook. It’s a huge life changing opportunity for that person.In so many ways, I’ve really understood that we have to be advocates. Another example I’ll give you in terms of having to be an advocate is often people with serious mental illness find it challenging to get physical healthcare for all sorts of reasons. A very simple one would be not being able to get up in time because of the beds and because of their illness, maybe broken sleep, etc., to wake up in time to phone for a GP appointment in the morning when the appointments are available.Simple things like that mean that we have to help them to find work around so they can still access physical healthcare in a better way that’s more proactive for them. Thanks. I really appreciate you digging into this and I can already feel like it’s an important part of what I’m learning from our interview, from our conversation. Now I wanted to touch the subject of burnout. I’m wondering what you can tell me about what you’re seeing as a psychiatrist in terms ofSridevi Kalidindi (18:34.898)ample amounts of stress that our common society is currently experiencing and probably something that’s been pushed to its limits since the pandemic. Yeah, I mean, we know that burnout now is at just absolutely in a kind of epidemic proportions really in the workplace. And we also know that in the UK, the reason for being sick from work is that the highest levels are due to mental illness. We know the impact that stress and overwork has in terms of then developing burnout, but also developing mental health conditions, anxiety, depression, for example, being the most common. And I think that it’s really time to take a look at our workplaces, but also what we can do as individuals.So we know that the World Health Organization very clearly classifies burnout as being an organisational issue. It is something that organisations need to be aware of and need to put in the right strategies to reduce that likelihood of it happening. And I think that’s really important, to place that onus on employers to make sure that they are looking at people’s work, the amount of work they have to do.They’re looking at the environment that they are providing. That’s the only way that I think we’re going to really get to grips with this kind of epidemic that we have of burnout at a strategic, structural level. On a personal level though, as well, burnout very much has internal factors as well. If we think about how each of us individually manages stress, for example, stress in itself isn’t bad. It’s more if we have too much of it.and it becomes chronic and that results in all the release of all the hormones and chemicals in our body that if they are there chronically cause us physical and mental health problems. Anne V Muhlethaler:Sure. But I was reading not long ago the book of Dr. Amishi Jha who works out of Miami University. The book is called Peak Mind. And one of the things I noted and I recognize a problem in my own life, is many A types, so people who really push themselves, high achievers, do not recognize that stress is a factor. However, stress is still eating away at them. The physical effects of stress are happening, but they don’t realise that’s the case. What can we do for those people who simply do not understand that they need to lower the stress?Sridevi Kalidindi: I feel as though it’s about education and thinking about how we use our time every day. We brush our teeth every day twice a day for two minutes. We’re used to that. We grow up with that as being the norm. We know what happens when we don’t. It’s just a really societal norm. So in the same way, what do we do to look at other parts of our wellbeing and our health? If we can spend five or 10 minutes, a little bit more if we can.On something that reduces our stress levels, something like mindfulness, for example, that has an evidence base around it, there are breathing techniques that can be used to reduce stress as well. There are different things that we know work, and how do we just make that a part of everyday life? Anne V Muhlethaler: Yeah, I can speak from experience and say that for a number of years I said to most people that I picked up meditation by chance because I was on holiday and…When I think back on the day that I stepped into a meditation class that I picked randomly, I was having a great time, I was relaxed, I was getting a tan, I was in Thailand. But if I actually look back, which I finally did, and really examine the situation, the context that I was in, I was on the verge of burnout myself. And so I like to tell the story that at the end of the meditation class, which was a loving kindness or a meta.Our instructor said, imagine how powerful it would be if someone were to do this every day. And I really, really remember my internal voice going, challenge accepted. And I walked back. Yeah. And my inner voice was very nerdy. And I remember I didn’t go and I didn’t speak to the instructor. I just walked back to my room. And as I walked back, I strategized. How will I make sure that I do this every day?Anne V Muhlethaler (23:22.978)I’ve heard that 21 days is the minimum required to set a practice. I’ve heard 40 days. And so my very sharp intellect just decided to do it every day for six months. And I just thought that I should do it. At no point did I actually try to poke around the decision making. But I went back to Paris, where I lived at the time. And it really did change my life. But I wasn’t doing the work prior to that to actually examine the difficulty around my personal situation. So let’s say I was, I was going to say saved. That’s a little bit of an exaggeration. But to an extent, my life was certainly changed by the practices of loving kindness, meditation, and mindfulness. Now you mentioned right at the top of our conversation that you have a startup called Klip Global. And mindfulness is one of the items that you bring to people in a corporate environment to prevent the stress levels, the anxiety and the difficulties that we’ve been discussing. Can you tell us about Klip and how it came to be? Sridevi Kalidindi: Klip stands for Key Life Indicator Plan. So looking at the different key life indicators in your life, we have seven. Mental health, physical health, career, meaning, finance, and also relationships and communities. And it really came about because a couple of things actually. One was understanding what needs to do a lot more early on for people, not wait till they need to come and see me with very severe mental illness. You can’t prevent everything, of course, you can’t, you know, do mental illness, but you can certainly think about reducing some of the levels of it that we see now, the rates of mental illness. And that is, of course, by using evidence-based interventions that we know work. I also think picking up things early.Sridevi Kalidindi (25:21.834)and restoring people back to health as soon as possible. And also I saw the power of coaching after becoming a coach myself. So sort of several things together that happened. One was me getting to the point of burnout myself and having to get myself out of that using evidence-based methods. Two was just seeing this whole element of people not getting enough support and help early on and therefore ending up in more and more severe situations around their mental health. And then not then being enough trained psychologists and psychologists to even reach that gap.And the third thing was becoming a coach and understanding how the coaching aspect can really bring a different way of being more proactive and more conscious about one’s wellbeing and taking action early on. So this combination, I guess, of different thoughts, I hadn’t seen being all put together before. Anne V Muhlethaler: So the first piece was, you believe in proactive looking after people early on before any dramatic issues happen with their mental health. Secondly, you yourself have struggled with burnout. And thirdly, coaching. Now, I want to unpack all of it. I think you already spoke to the prevention side, but can you tell me a bit more? Did you have like, I don’t know, an aha moment a la Oprah, when you thought that’s it, we need to stop people from getting to this state? What was that moment for you, if there was one?Sridevi Kalidindi:I’m not sure that there was one moment, and I think there were lots of moments in different places. And it’s about that cumulative, okay, there’s stuff out there, but I think that we can do something better. And in terms of just what were some of those aha moments that made me think we need to be more preventative. One of them was I think having my kids growing up, realising that there’s so many basic skills around mental health that people just don’t know. And of course, if you don’t know them, you can’t implement them. And I thought having to have a mum as a consultant psychiatrist in order to learn some of these skills is not good enough. More people need to have access to this. And interestingly, over the years, I have had my kids telling me about their friends and me trying to guide them to where there are tools and support. I think for me, that’s probably one of the…Sridevi Kalidindi: (27:41.618)big reasons that I’m in this space. I really understand that if kids can have these skills and grow up with them and implement them from an early age, it just becomes the way things are done. Anne V Muhlethaler: Would you mind giving us a few examples of these skills that you then got to learn as a mum? Sridevi Kalidindi: So one of the skills would be around understanding about our amygdala and our higher functioning. So for example, when we completely lose it, we lose it emotionally and we might go into a fit of temper and behave in ways that are not really like us, they’re not our usual way of behaving. And we cannot then use our kind of higher functioning, our values, our compassion, et cetera, at that time. And we often do and say things that we regret. And that damages our relationships and often makes the world a bit trickier for us to navigate as a result as well. So that’s one thing. So just really literally talking to the children about why it happens, why do your emotions take over, and what’s the neuroscience behind that, drawing some pictures out for them, and showing them some of the things like the breathing techniques, like the counting to 10, trying to think about it from the other person’s view, all of these different kind of methods that we can use that then can diffuse the situation and move us from our fight or flight kind of sympathetic nervous system into our calmer, engaging our higher functioning brain, our prefrontal cortex, and into our parasympathetic rest and digest nervous system. Something as simple as that. Anne V Muhlethaler:I’m so glad you mentioned that because it’s true, the more we know about this, the more we get to understand ourselves and the more we can get to make different choices. I want to remember the coach I trained with called Martha Beck, who’s pretty interested in the amygdala herself, suffers from some anxiety. So she’s explored the theme on various podcasts and recently in a blog post. I think she calls the amygdala her thing.So when the amygdala takes over, it’s literally not her. It’s like the thing takes over. But I feel like she’s got another word for it and I can’t remember. It’s a shame. Now, you yourself have struggled with burnout and of course, that’s something I understand. There are, is there anything you want to share about the difficulties that the medical profession and you yourself have experienced with burnout? Sridevi Kalidindi: Yes, I think there are different elements to this. One is the workplace. When we have too much work, our hours are too long, we don’t have time to do those kind of things that we have to, to stay well, like resting, like enough sleep, eating nutritious food, all of these elements that keep us well, when they’re not there, we’re more likely to suffer from burnout. We all know about the workload of doctors, and particularly if we’re working in public health systems in the UK, the majority of us are in the NHS. So it’s really important to think about those structural elements.And to COVID, of course, a lot of that did go out of the window. Everyone was working as much as they needed to work to try and understand what’s happening and get on top of it. One of the other elements is people who go into medicine are generally pretty empathetic. They’re compassionate towards others. And what happens, I think, is that we can give and give and give and not understand or acknowledge or sometimes even have the skills to replenish ourselves.It’s so important and I have this saying of pouring from an overflowing cup because then we’re not going to burn out. So much of the time, particularly health workers, we keep giving and we keep pouring, keep pouring until we’re running on empty. And that is when burnout happens as well because there’s nothing left for us to draw on. Our resilience is reduced. I think another element of that comes into contributing to burnout is this wholeSridevi Kalidindi: (31:50.646)We know that we want to give a certain standard of care, but we can’t. And certainly through COVID, it was very difficult to give our normal standards of care because of all the things that were happening. When you have people who have a very heightened sense of responsibility for others, wanting to do well by them, and they’re not able to, it can cause a lot of psychological distress. It can be quite unconscious, actually, but it’s there.And over time, that can be really worrying and lead to problems for the person as well, depression, anxiety, contribute to burnout.Anne V Muhlethaler:Yeah, absolutely. Now, the third element that you brought up, which I am endlessly fascinated about, and some of our listeners know this already, is coaching. How did you come across coaching in the first place? Sridevi KalidindiWell, Anne, we were really lucky in the place where I work that coaching is offered to people. And as I became a new consultant, I thought, gosh, I think I’m going to try out some of this coaching.So I talked to others, I got one of the coaches through work who was such an eye-opener for me to have somebody as a thinking partner with that positive regard for me, who helped me to make some of those connections about why I think and behave in the ways that I do at a deeper level. It’s not therapy, but there are some for me.parallels I could draw with that kind of increasing one’s self-knowledge.Sridevi Kalidindi (33:35.346)increasing the understanding of what makes me tick and what makes me behave in certain ways. That was very powerful for me. And I could just see the utility of that to really kind of unlock people’s higher selves and higher potential and then how that impacts on how they turn up and the teams that they work with and even at home, of course, as well.So I was very struck by that. And when I had the opportunity, I took some of the different coaching training within my organisation and eventually did the whole one year with the 100 hours of one-to-one as well that it takes to become a practitioner level coach with the EMCC. I absolutely love coaching. It’s a privilege and it’s a joy. I coach different people, different kinds of people. I often get senior medics who come to me, but I do absolutely coach in the corporate settings as well, often execs or just about to be execs level. And that impact of being able to enable others to… I think the impact of coaching, of being able to be a thinking partner with others to really help them to understand themselves better and then I think for me a big part of it is supporting their self-acceptance and self-compassion. And often that is really transformational for people. And once they can get into that space through various practices and tools, they really turn up differently as leaders. And that then has a direct impact on their teams, everybody they work with, and starts to shift culture. Anne V Muhlethaler:Very powerful. Thanks. It’s really lovely to hear someone else like you talk about what’s beautiful about coaching. I love coaching too.I think it’s kind of magical. But I realised that particularly in different languages and in French in particular, there are many types of coaching out there. And so I think that what you and I are specifically talking about is framed by the International Coaching Federation among other things. And it is a very specific kind of practice. So I find what you’re doing with Klip kind of magic because I see the impactAnne Muhlethaler (35:55.586)of the environment, the work environment on the difficulties that many people develop in their lives, many issues, many mental health issues. Tell me how you built Klip Global. Sridevi Kalidindi:I built Clip Global by having the idea, looking at the evidence base and putting together what I thought would, where the gap was and what was needed. And I consulted with other people, you know.I consulted with people who were chief people officers, people who were responsible for the wellbeing of others in their organisations. And I also consulted with students and with frontline employees and said, what have you got now? Where are the gaps? What do you need? So through this kind of fairly rigorous way, I developed Clip. And then we ran a pilot. Ran a pilot for eight weeks with several different organisations had some really incredible results from, and again, this comes into the prevention, the restoration and the transformation, these kind of three elements that talk about it in CLIP. And I’ve got examples where people were able to benefit in all of those different areas. And one example is a social worker. He was a team leader. He had been off work for months with burnout stress, anxiety and depression. And he was able through the pilot to having tried lots of other things that his work had already provided for him hadn’t worked. But through the pilot, he engaged really well with the coaching, with the master classes, with the mindfulness and so on. And he was able to improve in terms of his symptoms. He was able to actually get back to work. And in fact, soon afterwards, not that long after being back at work.He was also able to go on to a national job, which is quite incredible. And then we also had other people who were really unhappy at work and were heading towards burnout, were thinking about leaving, were not able to work at the top of their game. And again, by picking up different skills and having the tools and support that we give through Klip, this particular manager, she was able to stay on in her role.Sridevi Kalidindi (38:15.438)And in fact, she started to really love her job after having been totally disengaged with it. And not just that, she really enjoyed working with her colleagues, which she’d been finding very difficult for quite a long time before Klip, to the point where her coworkers were asking her what had changed, what was she doing? And of course she told them what she’d been doing. So a complete turnaround for her as well. And of course that impacts other areas of her life. She’s happy at work, enjoying work. Of course that impacts how she is at home as well.Anne V Muhlethaler:Of course. Yeah, I remember reading a line from a book called Fierce Conversations where the writer, I think her name is Susan Scott says, we are who we are all over the place at work and at home. We are who we are. Yes, absolutely. Now, I know Klip, I know the app, of course, we’ve worked together for a little while now. But I think that what’s really unlike anything I’ve heard of before is how it works with how you partner, not just with the people in the organisations who are gonna benefit from the master classes, the coaching and the mindfulness, but what’s available on the other side for the chief people officer, the HRs, the people, as you mentioned, who are supposed to be looking after the wellbeing of the employees.Can you please tell us how that’s developed and the kind of data that people are able to get? Sridevi Kalidindi:Yeah, so individuals absolutely have their own personal dashboard. They can see what’s going on for them, the different assessments, how they’re progressing over time, all of that. And then for the chief people officers, what they can see is how many people are using it, how often they’re using it, what are the changes as anAt an aggregate level, it’s all obviously compliant with privacy regulations, so GDPR in the UK, so that nobody is identifiable. It is all anonymous. But at a group level, the chief people officer can see all of this information. They can see which kind of sessions are being attended, what kind of goals are being set and which of the key life indicators, and the progress over time.Sridevi Kalidindi (40:36.934)It also then allows the chief people officers to see where there might be particular regions or teams that may look as though they’re struggling more. So say their depression scale in a particular area may be worse than in another area. So by understanding some of that, it allows the leaders to go in and be proactive and understand more about the situation and do something about it. And this is not just about identifying where things are going really wrong, it’s also about identifying where things are going really right. And learning from that and saying, okay, well look, what are the ingredients here that are working really well and how can we then translate some of that to other parts of our organisation as well? And it’s really interesting to me because that’s what we call unwarranted variation is absolutely what I work with in my national role, national clinical leadership role with NHS England, is the same thing, looking for unwarranted variation and trying to up-level everyone at a national level through, with rehab services, which is my area of specialty in psychiatry. Anne V Muhlethaler: That’s really wonderful. Personally, I find this data is really interesting because, of course, as we mentioned before, not everybody shows up to work, showing everyone that they’ve got stress on their face, if that makes sense. So being able to track, as you said, as a group or have some data available is really interesting. Now, how do you pitch this to businesses? Because today, on the day that we record this interview, I just published a blog post where I talk about the future of leadership and benevolent businesses after reading the Simon Sinek book, The Infinite Game, and having conversations with business leaders who want good for their people. Not a lot of people, I want to say, seem to have this purpose at the core of their role as leaders. How do you pitch well-being as something that companies need to invest in?Sridevi Kalidindi (42:55.718)Lots of leaders in organisations do want to do the best for their staff. They understand that by supporting their staff to be the best and the healthiest they can be, it’s the right thing to do. It impacts them, it impacts their communities. But in terms of the bottom line for the organisation, it absolutely pays dividends. You’ve got people who are turning up to work healthy and not being off sick.You’ve got people who are engaged with work, so they’re not thinking about leaving the organisation with all that knowledge and skill that they have. And you’ve got people who are turning up and really being present and productive, so at the top of their game. So all of those things can absolutely be supported by working with Klip, enabling people to develop their skills as well.Anne V Muhlethaler:Do you have case studies that you can share if anybody’s interested? Because I find that oftentimes in the conversations I have, even with lovely people that I’m friends with, the bottom line is really what comes up first, right? People really want to make their sales and want to be able to go on to find growth in their business and do not put wellness at the top of the agenda. I hear you, and I believe in what you’re saying 100 percent,But do you have case studies or things that you can share to show the opportunity for further growth?Sridevi Kalidindi:when employers really put wellbeing at the heart of their people strategy? Yes, we do have case studies and there’s so much evidence now, Anne, about this. It’s really irrefutable, the evidence. I think the trick is, and the challenge actually, is understanding about what fits my particular organisation.Sridevi Kalidindi (44:52.374)Because what is wellbeing? What is exactly that is going to have that positive impact and that return on investment in my organisation with my people? And I think that’s probably some of where more of the case studies, more of the evidence base would be helpful. Thanks so much for indulging me. I really believe in what you’re doing. I want to hear more about how we can persuade people to invest in this kind of program.Anne V Muhlethaler:Tell me about your role for NHS England. Sridevi Kalidindi:I work in NHS England as National Clinical Lead for getting it right first time in mental health rehabilitation. So what that means is that for the specialty of mental health rehabilitation, I lead a national program which at its core is a quality improvement program. So we collect the data from all of the different hospitals and community teams around the country for rehab and we then benchmark them. which areas are doing really well, which areas are doing less well. And then what we’ve done over the last couple of years is gone out on what we call deep dives or peer reviews where we sit with the executives of those organizations and the clinicians and the operational staff and where possible carers and patients as well and sometimes commissioners too. And we talk about what their data tells them and how that translates or how that relates to…the evidence base and good practice. And then we work with them to create an action plan to up-level their services and up-level the outcomes for the patients and the organization. And we’ve had some really fantastic results in terms of having fewer people being sent a long way from home for their services, which has all sorts of issues when they’re sent far away from home to inpatient care. We’ve had hospitals or trusts all across the country opening their community rehab teams. And we, for the first time, had investment in this area after decades of no investment at all. So all of these things are really positive. And we’ve also had some national, nice guidance in this space too, with the regulators working with us, with the health education England team working with us, all to really think about the ecosystem of improving.rehab services across the country. That’s fantastic. And I’m so happy for you that you finally had an investment. I’m sure that you and everyone that you work with must be thrilled to be working on this program, which sounds so, so important. Well, I wanted to add for the listeners that in 2017, you, Sri, were awarded the title of Psychiatrist of the Year.by the Royal College of Psychiatrists. And in 2018, you received a CBE from Her late Majesty the Queen. So can you tell me about how these honours felt or feel in the context of the work that you do? Yeah, thank you, Anne. I guess a couple of things. One is that they were totally unexpected. They came sort of from left field. Absolutely wonderful to receive them.You know, massive privilege, obviously. And for me, it was about acknowledging and raising the profile of the people that I work with, both in terms of my patient group and their families and the staff as well. And so for me, that’s why I was so delighted to receive them because it raised the profile of rehab. It’s so important because so much follows when that…attention has been given. So for me, those awards helped do that. The other thing was that the awards for me was an opportunity to share my gratitude with my family, my friends, my colleagues and my patients, but particularly, I guess, my closest family because all that I’ve achieved absolutely has been because I’ve had their support, their love, their unconditional backing of me and belief.And I was really able to share that with them, which was just wonderful and meant so much to me, you know, to be able to acknowledge their support and actually being a big part of the reason why I achieved these awards. That’s lovely to hear. Congratulations. I have to say it’s, it does sound like you really deserve this. And I know that it radiates on all of the teams that support you and the work that you do.Anne V Muhlethaler:Is there anything else you want to share about Klip and how you put it together to anyone out there who is curious and perhaps thinking about exploring this solution or pitching it to their bosses, colleagues or whoever? Sridevi Kalidindi:Yeah, I would say get in touch. We’re on social media and we’re on Klipglobal.com, terms of our website, or hello at Klipglobal.com, an email. We will be really delighted to have a chat with you. The experts that we have, myself included, but other experts like you, Anne, as well. We’re very fortunate to have you as one of our main mindfulness teachers on here. We have experts who really bring the best to your people. I think that’s so important. We only have things on here that we know work the evidence base. It’s very much about being that kind of medically led, clinically led, to make sure if you and your people invest time in using Klip, that you’re going to get the kind of biggest return on investment that’s possible. Time is one of our most valuable assets. And so we really want to make sure if people are investing their time with us, that they are going to get bang for their buck and make that positive difference in their lives and for their organisations. Mm, thank you so much.So…Anne Muhlethaler (46:48.386)This podcast is at the crossroads between business and mindfulness, as you know. And so I like to ask my guests to tell their own stories around meditation in particular, if that’s something that they practise, mindfulness, or anything else that helps ground them, that helps bring them into presence, or perhaps using another word that you used earlier, bringing them to their highest self, whatever that may mean for them. So would you share your story with mindful practices? Sridevi Kalidindi:One thing that I think is really interesting about meditation is that when I started to do it regularly, I really understood that joy, happiness, calm, peace are all internal.They exist within us and meditation allows us a route to experience them. That is such a powerful understanding that knowing that any time I can find that space, close my eyes and spend a bit of time getting back to that place of calm, joy and unshakable confidence knowing that everything will turn out alright in the end.And that is something that people pay huge amounts of money for in all sorts of ways, thinking that those things will get them to that place. But they exist within us. And that’s the really kind of powerful, I guess, epiphany that I would like to share with your audience and hope that they can find their own. Oh, I so wish they do too.Anne V Muhlethaler: So tell me about what kind of meditation you practise.Sridevi Kalidindi:I’ve cobbled together my own meditation and I don’t do the same thing all the time. Meditation I do is about 20 to 30 minutes long when I’m doing it fully. It can be more if I add on the breathing meditation. So I’m doing it really in all its glory, as it were, from start to finish, the full thing. I would start off with sky breathing, so breathing meditation.Sridevi Kalidindi (49:07.262)which is incredibly grounding, relaxing. And then that brings me into my kind of, I guess it’s about eight stage meditation. I go through different aspects that I’ve sort of pulled together from different experts that I’ve followed over the years. And it really works for me. It has gratitude in there, it has loving kindness, it has visualisation, it has a bit of transcendental meditation in there.with some mantras. So it’s really kind of something that I’ve created for myself that I love to do. It’s so noticeable to me when I’m practicing very regularly the positive impact that it has on my life. And it has a positive impact on all the people I interact with as well. Anne V Muhlethaler: That’s wonderful. You know what you’re making me want now? I’d love to ask you if you would record a version of that for the listeners of Out of the Clouds, because that could be really awesome.Sridevi Kalidindi:Yeah, I’ll definitely think about how I can do that. Anne V Muhlethaler: Yeah, and I think that now the Klip members are going to want that too. Yes, I’ll do it. That’s wonderful. Thank you so much for sharing. Is there anything else that you find really helps ground you, stabilise you? For example, I understand the breathwork obviously has a huge impact on our parasympathetic nervous system.Are there physical practices that you add to your day or other things that you like to combine and that bring you into that sort of state of best self? Sridevi Kalidindi:Well, I mean, I think that the whole kind of cold therapy is really interesting, the hot and cold. I will, not every day, I’ll admit, but I will have my kind of initial cold shower before, you know, turning up onto the hot water. And the evidence there seems quite interesting to me and this idea that you can train your body to manage stress better as a result of having that kind of cold shock. So that’s one thing I think that’s fairly simple to implement and instigate. Another one I think is affirmations. So we all have our brain filters that we build up over the years from childhood onwards.Sridevi Kalidindi (51:26.654)Often those filters are not conscious. They’re just the things that we think, the schema that we’ve built up, our operating system as it were, if we were a computer. We don’t know all the workings of it. Affirmations can really help us to, I guess, fix certain bugs or up-level parts of our operating system. Yeah, I think just finding times where we use particular affirmations would change over time depending on what we need to develop in a particular area. We think, fine, that’s all fantastic now. It’s all running well. Okay, what’s the next thing? And then we move our affirmations to look at that particular area. I think that could be something that could be instigated quite easily and has a really positive impact. It changes the way that we look on life. It changes our mindsets and our beliefs about ourselves. Now, I would like to take you to my favorite closing questions, which I know can be very hard, so I apologize in advance for putting you on the spot. But then again, I have to say it is such a thrill and such a pleasure to actually hear from each of my guests. I get the light every time I hear you all answer those questions. The first one is, what is a favorite word and one you could tattoo on yourself? And what I mean by that is…A word that you could live with or live by. Sridevi Kalidindi: Wow. One word. Okay. I know it’s tough.I would say, joy.It’s one of my core values because why are we here? We want to experience joy as people, as human beings, and I think it is our natural right to do so as well. So for me, it would be, I’d happily have joy tattooed somewhere. I don’t really believe in having tattoos personally. But actually, maybe I might have that particular word tattooed on me.Anne V Muhlethaler:What does connection mean to you? Sridevi Kalidindi: Connection is everything. Connection to ourselves and when we lose connection with ourselves, things like depression, anxiety, I think follow, and inability to believe in ourselves, trust ourselves, be our best selves. So that’s connection is core. And connection to others is what we’re here for. We are hardwired for it. It can be in different ways, not everybody connects in the same way but it is crucial to our own wellbeing and to us living from science. Long, healthy, happy lives, connection is key to that.Anne V Muhlethaler:What song best represents you? Sridevi Kalidindi: Wow, I actually don’t think I have a song that best represents me. I tell you a song that I quite enjoyed. I actually searched it out because I was humming it in my head and I wanted to find it. But it’s I Believe in Miracles that I’ve been listening to recently. So I don’t think there’s one song, but that’s the song that I’ve been listening to recently. I’m going to take this as your answer. It sounds pretty fantastic as someone who wants to support people and who built Clip Global.Anne V Muhlethaler:I believe in miracles sounds like you. Sridevi Kalidindi: I’ll take that Anne. Anne V Muhlethaler:Good. What is the sweetest thing that’s ever happened to you? Sridevi Kalidindi: The sweetest thing? I think that will be my son when he was born was very unwell and we didn’t know if he would make it. And the sweetest thing was taking him home from hospital with me. Anne V Muhlethaler: What is a secret superpower that you have? So not one of the powers that you’ve told us about already. Sridevi Kalidindi: I think a superpower is connecting with people and finding that spark where there’s something that we have in common that is really meaningful to both of us. And that, I think for me, is that finding that connection and getting the positive energy and the joy that comes from that connection. Thank you.Anne V Muhlethaler: Imagining that you can step into a future version of yourself, what most important advice do you think that future you could give to present state you?Sridevi Kalidindi: Enjoy the journey. Every minute of it. Anne V Muhlethaler: What is a favorite book that you can share with us? Sridevi Kalidindi: Oh, I have so many. You’re making me choose one. Oh, no, no. It’s just… Okay. If you want to share three, I’ll take three. I love books. Okay, okay. So, I would say our little Gibran’s, The Prophet, is a favorite of mine. And I remember reading various passages from that and that really resonating.Anne V Muhlethaler: And now to my last and favorite question. Sri, what brings you happiness? Sridevi Kalidindi: Lots of things bring me happiness. Well, the main thing that brings me happiness is connecting with other people. My family, of course, but with friends, colleagues, patients, is connection. Anne V Muhlethaler: Thank you so much. We’re a couple of minutes past the hour, and I know you have a hard stop, but I’m so grateful that we had all this time today to explore your story, the work you do, and to tell people about Klip Global. I hope that you’ll get many requests following this podcast going live. If people want to get in touch with you, would you kindly tell me where they can find you? Sridevi Kalidindi: Absolutely. They can email me on hello at Klipglobal.com.And they can also reach out via our website too, which is Klipglobal.com. And I’d be absolutely delighted to speak with them and see how we might be able to support them in their holistic wellbeing and as we call it, to live their genius. Anne V Muhlethaler: Thank you so much, Sri. Have a wonderful rest of the day and I look forward to seeing you very soon. Sridevi Kalidindi: Thank you so much, Amme. It’s been an absolute pleasure. Very interesting. Anne V Muhlethaler: I’m so glad. Take care. Sridevi Kalidindi: All the best now. Bye bye. Bye.Anne V Muhlethaler: So friends and listeners, thanks again for joining me today. If you’d like to hear more, you can subscribe to the show on the platform of your choice. If you’d like to connect, you can get in touch with me at Annvi on Twitter, and Anne V Muhlethaler on LinkedIn, or on Instagram at underscore out of the clouds, where I also share daily musings about mindfulness.You can also find all of the episodes of the podcast and much more on my website annevmuhlethaler.com if you don’t know how to spell it. It’s also going to be in the show notes. If you would like to get regular news directly delivered to your inbox, I invite you to sign up to my monthly newsletter. So that’s it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening to Out of the Clouds. I hope that you will join me again.Next time and until then, be well, be safe and take care.