This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with 55-year-old Ben Tye, the CEO of Gate One, who is based in London. The following has been edited for length and clarity.
My late 30s and early 40s were a difficult time. I had a successful career in management consulting, yet I was struggling with what I now know was depression and anxiety.
When I was 41, I started seeing a psychotherapist who recommended a book called “The Middle Passage” by James Hollis, which is about making the second part of your life, after your 40s, richer and more meaningful.
It really spoke to me and helped me to understand that, for some, midlife is a time of necessary suffering in order to prompt questions like, “who am I really?” and “what does my life want from me?” rather than, “what do I want from life?” It’s really quite profound and far from any “self-help” manual.
Six years later, in 2017, I began studying and training during the evenings and on weekends to qualify as a psychotherapist. It involved a one-year foundation certificate, a four-year post-graduate diploma, and a two-year research component.
All the while, I continued having my own therapy sessions on Tuesday evenings. That was while I was also running my own consultancy business.
The psychotherapy training took six and a half years and over 700 hours of supervised client contact time.
I pitched my four-day week as a way to get a fresh perspective on the business
I joined Gate One in 2018, and in 2021, when I was a partner, I was given permission to work a four-day week and run my own therapy practice on Mondays. We have a very flexible working policy so the negotiation I had with the company owners and other leaders wasn’t difficult.
I pitched that stepping out of the business a day a week would give me a fresh perspective and clearer headspace when I returned to work the next day. I recommend people who work a four-day week to have Mondays off, because it’s easier to start the week doing something else than it is to finish.
I typically see five clients a week out of a room in a beautiful building in central London’s Little Venice, overlooking a canal.
Little Venice is considered upmarket, but it’s a very mixed area socioeconomically, and clients bring a range of issues to sessions related to bereavement, addiction, relationships, work, their sense of self, and body image. I had experienced or known close friends, family, colleagues, and acquaintances who had experienced several of these issues.
My fee is £90 ($118) an hour, but I ask my clients to pay what they can afford. Even if it’s a symbolic amount, it represents an investment in themselves.
Mine and other people’s boundaries are clearer now
It’s been going well at work, as I make sure everyone knows what they should be doing when I’m off. The ability to delegate and trust people to do their work is a key leadership skill.
I received many in-person comments from colleagues, particularly women, who have said that they appreciated seeing a man in a senior role adopt a flexible working style. The policy has been in place for many years, but perhaps people felt it gave them “permission” to take advantage of it.
Balancing a third element of life alongside work and personal commitments brings boundaries more clearly into focus: yours and other people’s. There’s something really positive about having a better awareness of how one is spending one’s time, what one is working on at any given moment, and making sure things aren’t getting dropped or one isn’t taking too much on.
Completely separating myself from my work environment each week puts me in a very different headspace, which has helped me step away from the day-to-day business of being a leader. I’ll check my emails on a Monday evening after I’ve finished with my clients, and return to work on Tuesday with a fresh perspective.
I can’t give advice as a therapist, but I have to be direct as a CEO
But I do have to make sure I’m separating my two roles of psychotherapist and CEO.
Being a psychotherapist certainly makes you a good listener, gives you patience, and the ability to be curious and appreciate where others might be coming from. Work-wise, you also develop an understanding of group dynamics and the unconscious roles that people play.
As a leader, you have to be authoritative and direct, while a therapist shouldn’t tell people what to do or give direct advice. There’s no way I would ever slide into therapist mode with colleagues or professional clients, because that boundary needs to be maintained really carefully.
I hope I can be a therapist for longer than I’m a business consultant
I haven’t considered going full-time as a psychotherapist, as I’m quite senior in my business career and like to think I can add a lot of value.
But I am 55 and heading toward that final furlong of my work life. One of the reasons I became a therapist is to work longer than I might ordinarily be able to do as a business consultant.
Since training as a therapist, I have also done a two-year psychodynamic executive coaching program. That takes the theories and practices of psychoanalytics and psychotherapy and applies them to coaching. That’s the third leg that sits between what I do as a psychotherapist, and what I do as a consultant and a business leader.
After I hand over the baton to Gate One’s next leader, I anticipate I will do a mix of executive coaching, leadership development, and psychotherapy.
Therapy has given me a nice pathway for the last third of my life, allowing me to extend my career and do something really interesting and fulfilling, as I begin to dial down my other commitments in years to come.
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