Brainz Magazine Exclusive Interview
Dr Zuzana Winter (BScHons), DClinPsych, CPsychol, is a Lead Clinical Psychologist, Psychotherapist, Consultant, Executive Coach, and Founder of Dr Zuzana.
She is currently fulfilling two roles. The first one is in the public sector, running a mental health service in a social care setting. The second role involves running her own consultancy and therapeutic business with a focus around mental health and organisation toxicity which are used as a catalyst for creating lasting change
Further activities include volunteering for a charity - acting as a consultant around MH strategy and safeguards
From Slovakia to London, how did you end up there? Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey up to today?
I was just 20 when I came to the UK in 2000 as a nanny at a time when there was a lot of international buzzes on in London. When I first arrived, in my mind I was coming here for a short break and did not expect that I would make a life here for myself. I spoke English but not very well and I quickly learned that the UK was so different from my country of origin in so many wonderful ways, especially the way people related to one another. That was fascinating to me. I quickly realised that speaking English was not the only important mode of communication and adaptation. Instead, at least for me, it was crucial to observe what was going on around me, to embrace the customs and nuances of this beautiful country and the people in it who came from all around the world.
I learned that when I’m pushed into a new environment, you can either sink or swim and I chose to swim without even knowing how or what the ultimate outcome was going to be. But I had this inner compass that was somehow guiding me and in that sense, it was rather easy. I fell in love with this country and what it had to offer. I felt grateful for the plethora of opportunities, the generosity of others around me, and the learning I was undertaking each and every day. In all honesty, coming to the UK has been the making of me as a grown woman who’s learned to appreciate who she is and what she stands for. Having both the UK and more ‘traditional’ European values installed in me has been so enriching to me and has given me an edge I never thought possible.
How did you end up becoming a clinical psychologist?
The first suggestion for me to become a clinical psychologist came from my friend who said I was a good listener, always made her and others feel heard, seen, and acknowledged, and gave them good advice. My initial reaction was something along the lines of, “No, I’m not doing that! I’m not going to be sitting people down on a coach like Sigmund Freud acting psychoanalysing them from my ivory tower …” But then I reflected on my friend’s suggestion and I thought about my journey thus far and the moments as a child that have always linked my up with psychology .. Like the time when my mum would have had a book lying around the house about emotional intelligence or psychoanalytic stories which always drew my curiosity and as a child I would spend hours reading about the human mind and human experience.
Then I thought about my artistic side and thirst for exploration and interest in others’ real-life stories, and my compassion towards others and passion to make a difference.
So I thought, “Why not …, there must be something in this and the only way to find out is if I follow this path and see what comes out of this”. So there was this sense of taking a risk, whilst being true to myself and embracing the unknown in knowledge and faith that all will be alright.
And boy, what an enriching, energising, and challenging journey this has been so far (and the journey is still ongoing which is so exciting). For me being a clinical psychologist is less about the label itself, although for sure it brings a certain amount of credentials and signals about one’s expertise with it. For me, it’s more about what I bring to the table. I am not here to blindly tell somebody what they need to do. I see myself as a collaborator, an agent of change who makes effort to expose what needs to be spoken about in a compassionate, yet focused, down-to-earth way in order to create a well-deserved change. This is both in terms of my personal evolution as a human being who’s constantly learning, re-evaluating, and progressing. Secondly, this is about me giving back to others and helping others along the way to make a change that is meaningful to them. As a clinical psychologist, I am so privileged as I get to contribute to other people’s lives and be enriched by their experiences on a daily basis. In that way, I am living my dream.
After having seen more than 30,000 cases over the last 15 years, what have you learned about the human being?
In my experience of working with people from all walks of life and different levels of distress and circumstances, I’ve always been struck by one thing. Making a change that is needed is one of the hardest things to do … Our unconscious mind will do whatever it takes to create an environment that is comfortable to us and that spares us as much psychological pain and uncomfortableness as possible, selling us the fantasy of unsafe certainty that in the long run works against us rather than for us, creating barriers between what we deserve and need, ultimately impoverishing our human experience. This is the ‘resistance to change’ as some would call it. This is part of my role that I really enjoy, coming alongside the individual in order for them to face their truths and embrace the process of change for their benefit, not mine, in order to get the most out of their experience. This process unfolds in different contexts from individual therapeutic cases I’ve seen to larger-scale systems, including families and corporate settings.
I have dealt with quite a variety of cases most of which were complex and difficult to handle (e.g. rape, domestic violence, murders, child abuse, personality disorders, psychosis, suicidality, etc). When it comes to human beings, I deal with the full spectrum of narcissism. For some of the cases, the reports I produced were used in the context of legal proceedings or other major decision-making platforms. The stakes have been high in many cases because my assessments, therapeutic interventions, and recommendations would have impacted significantly the life of a patient. Each recommendation must be backed up by a full report I need to produce. This means I have had to produce numerous reports weekly. This is quite an intense job because not only it is demanding, but also somewhat I hold life or destiny in my hands.
While I provide one-to-one therapy to countless numbers of clients, I also oversee 100+ cases across a team of therapists weekly as a lead clinical psychologist. I make judgement calls on what should happen next and consult on how the therapists and other professionals can do their job better.
Overall, what I have learned is that challenges, whether these are personal challenges around mental health or larger scale problems, such as organisational toxicity and conflict are actually extremely important and should be embraced because they offer a glimpse into what could be possible if we were brave enough and committed enough to look in rather than turning away. These trigger points are a catalyst for change. They point directly at those areas that are deserving of our attention in order to make changes in the right direction to create a new, improved reality and state of thriving rather than just existing.
This applies across the spectrum from individual to organisational systems. In terms of large corporations, I have empathy for the complexity of what is at stake here. It can be difficult to have a frank look at what is and what isn’t working well. Particularly, when there are signals of toxicity … Who’d want to put their hand up and say, “Hey, my name is so and so and I’m a CEO of a toxic organisation”. Understandably, we tend to plaster over these cracks with various initiatives from spending time on training and personal development to team away days. But we often miss the inevitable, which is the vital opportunity for understanding these trigger points and their roots in order to allow for a true transformation and evolution which will ultimately deliver benefits for all both in terms of monetary gains and well-being.
Have you seen any new emerging patterns in terms of what employees face in the office, throughout your cases?
Employees are human beings and they are increasingly aware of what kind of environments are right for them. Apart from the ever-increasing focus on employees’ personal well-being, there is also the focus on how they want and deserve to be treated. This is where the spotlight on narcissism and toxic leadership comes into play and many of my clients talk about it quite explicitly. They share with me their first-hand experiences of being on a receiving end of a narcissistic employer or a work colleague, or they talk about a toxic work culture.
Of course, these are not new phenomena. But in the post-pandemic world with the ever-increasing speed of information exchange, learning, competition, and focus on well-being, the quality of leadership has never been more important. Furthermore, many employees are actually millennials and generation Z who are expecting quick results with more focus on living the best life right here, right now rather than being married to a job for life, loyally waiting for things to change in the future.
Narcissism and toxicity in the workplace then become a very risky strategy with hugely devastating effects at all levels. In terms of employees, we are talking about extreme levels of stress, poor physical and mental health, reduced productivity and collaboration, and ultimately large staff attrition rates. From the employer's point of view, we are talking about the loss of professional reputation, innovation, and ultimately loss of earnings at the expense of competitors edging ahead.
To me, being able to appreciate what narcissism brings to a workplace and understanding what talents a person with narcissistic traits brings to a workplace are crucial. This is not to say that narcissism is a welcome state of being. Rather to me, if I look at narcissism as something that has at some point in time been celebrated and has been extremely important to an organisation, I can then collaborate with the decision makers around using these talents differently without excess and spreading of toxicity. In another way, we are not all marathon runners, right? We all come with our own unique set of skills. Trying to make us all marathon runners would be a wasted effort. Instead, it’s about discovering and celebrating what the employee's skill set is at this point in time and combining it with other’s unique contributions to make a thriving workplace.
Through my varied clinical experience with different populations with complex presentations, including personality disorders I have developed an approach to therapy that aims to deliver quick results within months and weeks rather than years. This approach is also highly applicable in the corporate sector.
How did you develop your therapeutic style?
For me, developing my style is a combination of being a scientific practitioner, gaining and rehearsing expert therapeutic skills, evaluating evidence, and applying what I gather in practice whilst also being true to myself as an individual and human being. I spent 1000s of hours in training, personal therapy, supervision, developing specific skills, and then scientifically practicing these with 1000s of clients and also on myself.
I’ve always been very creative with a big imagination and spent my childhood and teenage years practicing fine arts. I love this part of my skillset and personality as it continues to drive my curiosity in my clinical work. It allows me to be flexible, open-minded and see things from many different vantage points. This is a key aspect of my strong problem-solving skills, where I can find shortcuts and creative solutions to very complex problems, oftentimes yielding quick results.
I combine these skills with my personal convictions and common sense approach. I believe in collaboration rather than dictatorship. This means, genuinely seeing the other side of the coin of another individual rather than forcing my own truth and expertise on somebody. Having said that, I am rather plain speaking and active in my approach, saying what needs to be said but with an essential ingredient of compassion, always checking in with myself about my motivation.
As said above, we as human beings are driven to avoid suffering. This includes avoiding taking steps toward our goals even if we know not doing so is a form of self-sabotage. My role in therapy, coaching, and consultancy is to keep us to the task at hand with compassion and clarity of purpose so that it is not me who’s driving the process but rather the client is in a driving seat with me by their side.
A crucial part of my therapeutic offer is the use of all the information at our disposal from body, mind, and intellect. The role of emotions and emotional intelligence is particularly crucial here as it’s an essential part of any executive decision-making, after all, emotions oftentimes kickstart the process that determines our decisions. I oftentimes receive a remark from my clients that they don’t use their emotions; in fact, they see the use of emotions as somehow weak or irrelevant as they use their intellect and pride themselves on being rational. In my clinical, research, and personal experience, the avoidance of emotions is a huge misunderstanding as it robs one of being able to make the most educated decision possible and in that sense, the logic of not using emotions goes against any person who wants to use logic and facts.
Did you feel pulled into the corporate world by your clients and patients?
Absolutely, this is something that has organically become a focus of my work, with me providing more and more collaboration to corporate clients, bringing in my expertise to resolve complex dynamics and problems in organisations in order to turn negatives into positives and help organisations thrive rather than survive. This is a natural calling for me because of the overlap between what individual clients and patients experience and what organisations and those working in the experience. After all, organisations are made up of human beings …
More specifically though, there’s been a paradigm shift both in the experiences of individual clients and the corporate sector as a whole towards well-being and away from dysfunctionality, narcissism, and workplace toxicity. There is growing awareness that companies can achieve much more without sticking with the old-fashioned ways of managing others, including narcissistic leadership styles. Long gone are days with a company’s know-how and its working practices were kept behind closed doors and where arguments such as “this is a cut-through environment and if you don’t like it, find another job” would actually be taken seriously.
These days, there is a lot at stake for large corporations which are barely surviving in an increasingly fast-paced environment where know-how flows so easily and education is at the touch of a button for literally everybody. Moving onto another job or starting your own entrepreneurship is just a click away.
Why is the corporate world a natural fit for you?
Some of it flows from what I’ve already said.
In the post-covid work era, large corporations now need to maximise the well-being of their employees in order to retain them and this means minimising toxicity at work. Well-being starts with the human being which affects the group, which impacts the leader and the corporate culture and foundations, and vice versa. And addressing toxicity is what I’ve been doing on a daily basis with my clients and patients for more than 15 years.
This need to minimise toxicity requires a new type of profile when it comes to change management because if done wrong, things can go terribly wrong, especially where the UK corporate labour world has become more of a litigation minefield. This cannot be left to chance or trial and error. Corporations need proven strategies to minimise toxicity. And this is where my long-standing experience in this field comes in. All the therapeutic strategies I implemented for all these years have already been tested day in and day out. I know what works and what doesn’t for each of my clients. For corporations, this is invaluable because it saves time and importantly it spares the company from making costly errors.
On the other end, I have had increasing referrals from clients looking to help them handle toxicity at work and looking to quit their jobs. I have seen how employees have grown less tolerant of working in a toxic environment and especially working for a narcissistic manager or culture. Overall, I am at the forefront of this labor attrition issue from an employee perspective.
