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  • - Joshua Driver

    And so it's always been confusing to me why startups don't think about their culture from day one. And because we spend so much of our wake time at work, especially on our stage and the positive vibes or feelings you get out of helping others or contributing to the betterment of your community or society or making a difference for somebody else is such an important experience I think everybody should have,

    INTRO

    Why aren’t we focusing on culture from Day 1? Today, we look at building connection in the world of start-ups. My guests are Josh Driver and Zach Rodenbarger from Selfless.ly. They have a lot to say about how to build connection AND their technology platform is also a platform for companies to give back, so this is like a double-impact interview.

    Zach and Josh’s origin story begins just before the pandemic, launching their platform with high hopes and ideals into a pretty brutal business environment.

    They are talking about how they sustained connection, built their company, and expanded the scope of influence in the midst of the dual pressures of start-up life and a bruising global pandemic. As a bit of a teaser, you will hear about the importance of taking a walk, how “hangry” can get in the way of communication, and why Nerf guns could be a good idea for your office culture.

    Zach and Josh are both tech guys who are from the same Indiana town of Valparaiso. The met in 2018, committed to the concept of building a platform where companies and individuals can give not just money but time and effort to support causes that matter. The website describes the platform memorably: “Selfless.ly is a unique company that was designed by selfless people to help the world become a better place.”

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    I'd love to hear from both of you. Why do you think that that is even an important conversation to be having? And how would you define empathy work to me.

    - Zach Rodenbarger

    There's a few tangible examples.

    That is Zach Rodenbarger, the COO of Selfless.ly

    - Zach Rodenbarger

    Sometimes in our interactions, Josh will come in or I'll come in and we'll have something and go back and forth. And then one of us will say, do you need to go for a walk?

    - Zach Rodenbarger

    And I was like.

    - Zach Rodenbarger

    Yes, I need to go for a walk. I need a little fresh air, you. And maybe that's just because we've been at our computers for a couple of hours or longer and need to have take a pause and have a step back. And so we've had that over the year, especially when we're working hard and looking at new timelines and goals and things. And I know I've needed a walk or two here and there.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    We had other good practices. Sometimes it's a walk. I also find that sometimes it's a snack. I have you eaten recent links to a snack?

    - Joshua Driver

    Yes. We've encountered the snack situation as well. Yes. Hunger is a thing so much.

    And this is Josh Driver, fellow-hangry sufferer and the Founder of Selfless.ly

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    That was like one of my biggest learning curves early on in my marriage. I I used to think it was just Luke. It's totally both of us be like, Is this really a thing, or am I just really hungry right now? And you can't know until you're no longer hungry, like, you can't even find out.

    - Zach Rodenbarger

    I think that's a good follow up on empathy. It's probably easier to see in other people. And then when do we take that step back and look at ourselves and actually admit that? And I think that is really helpful to business partnership or even as we continue to onboard new employees, you know, thinking through, how am I coming across to others?

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    But also, do you put yourself in their shoes and how are they feeling and so kind of both well and hearing that it actually takes a foundation of some relationship and trust to be able to take someone suggestion to do something like, go for a walk. I can imagine that a less mature or self aware moments. Somebody being like, maybe even the way it could be delivered. Just go take a walk. Somebody being like, I don't need a walk. You need a walk? No, I'm just making a really good point.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    But to be able to be at a place where I imagine it takes some work get to that point.

    - Zach Rodenbarger

    Absolutely.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    A lot of times I find with guests or people I get to work with those that really, like, are doing the work of promoting more human workplaces and more connection at work. There's an element that comes out of their own personal experience. So I would love to hear from both of you a time where meeting that connection and empathy at work was really important in your own personal story, so that could be giving it to someone or a time where you were like, I'm not. Okay. I need some support right now.

    - Joshua Driver

    Yeah. I think when I left the startup space and went into a corporate job, I came into a workplace environment and culture that might have been a little hostile and toxic. Like, there is a big disconnect between the leadership and the teams and the mentality of you're lucky to have a job versus we're lucky to have you as an employee. I wasn't exactly realized yet. And I had noticed when I join the company in my role that there was a lot of hostile communication. People had segregated themselves on one side or another and coming into that since I had been startups for so long and been on the ground for creating that culture.

    - Joshua Driver

    That was very new to me to be in the middle of this disconnect. And it taught me personally about how I want my next company to run and where I think we needed to head and be ego free and transparent and communicate in more of a we're all on the same level here. Like, don't view me as your boss. We're just jumping in together to fix an issue. And I think as far as feeling left out or where I really could have used some support was when my first full time job was as an EMT here, then wished hospital and going through some of the things for the first time and all the trauma there.

    - Joshua Driver

    There's no debrief or support. I think it's better now than it was, but you kind of had to process and cope individually with some of the things that you would see. And so that was really difficult for me to overcome at times when you have to process seeing the such negative things at times.

    - Joshua Driver

    Quite frankly, like volunteering someplace and getting the I feel like I'm making a positive difference outside of the trauma of emergency medicine was a big driving factor. A lot of my coworkers and stuff would turn to substance abuse and other things sometimes, but I was fortunate enough to have a good support system, whether it was my family or friend group to where if things were really getting rough, that somebody would jump in and say, hey, let's catch up or reconnect. And so I was lucky in that regard.

    - Joshua Driver

    But a lot of first responders, unfortunately, don't have that type of network to help them with that.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Thank you for sharing that. And I imagine even as you talk about the importance of volunteering, that there's a through line to some of what you're currently doing.

    - Joshua Driver

    Yeah.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Zach, how about for you?

    - Zach Rodenbarger

    So for me, with thinking through empathy in my past experiences, we can look to even just in the early days of self asleep and thinking about, hey, we both took this leap to start something new. And then about six months later, COVID hits. And so how do we work through this time where everything just radically changed, where we just launched the company? We launched the company in January and February of 2020. And then a month later, radically different thinking through. How is my co founder feeling right now?

    - Zach Rodenbarger

    How do I stay optimistic and pass that along to him and vice versa? We're both kind of feeling these challenges and seeing this real time, right that we had these ideas and projections and we're going to create group, volunteering outdoors, and we're going to invite people to these events and then that's not going to happen. And so how do we really think through and change that strategy? But also, how did I think through, you know, both of us leaving our corporate jobs to do this. And so losing that security and saying, okay, I understand that this is maybe something he's going through right now and the pressure he's going through.

    - Zach Rodenbarger

    So how do I stay optimistic to then pass that along and vice versa? And that was really helpful during those times?

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Did you ever have days where you were both just like, really down in the dumps? It wasn't like one person could encourage the other. It was just both low, especially early on in that pandemic.

    - Zach Rodenbarger

    For me, I think for the most part, one or the other would see that and feel that and maybe because we're both high empaths. So if Josh was down, I was like, I can't be or vice versa. He may have a different perspective, but I remember thinking that. And so even though it was a really tough day, this is what it's all about. And so I'll stay positive or vice versa. And he would look at me be like, this is when he needs to step up.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Yeah,

    - Joshua Driver

    I can't remember specifically when we had those times. But I remember even if we were going to be talking to a specific person turning in, saying, I don't have an inmate today to have this conversation. Do you mind just taking this on your own and doing that? I remember a few times where we had that discussion where if we're both feeling challenged, which is actual, we there. See, I think there were a few times where we might have just said, let's just call it a day early and go for a walk or go get a slice of pizza or something and and get out of the office for a little bit or go to the Lake each like, I think within reason we would step up on behalf of each other where we needed to.

    - Joshua Driver

    It was just not the perfect day. Just saying, alright, let's take a break in re energize and come back to it tomorrow.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    That can be so good. And it sounds like really, of course, of course, that would be a good thing to do. But it's amazing how hard sometimes it can feel in the moment, especially with the entrepreneurial churn and pressures and one's own expectations. So I acknowledge how important that can be and how like sometimes it can feel harder to do than it seems is a good job cutting.

    - Joshua Driver

    I like to just get burn myself out trying to work on the issue at hand. Zach, does a really good job of cutting me off for like of a meter and saying, this is all the time we have for this. We need to move on. Otherwise, I'll sit down whatever whatever issue is at hand. So he does a good job of saving my own sanity.

    - Zach Rodenbarger

    I definitely like to break tasks up into the smallest parts and pieces and just get something done for that day or something like that. And Josh definitely wants to power through and accomplish it all in one day.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Yeah, I am that trait, Josh. It makes me think there was a there was a friend that I had in College and we used to kind of like joke about his mindset. We would joke that Ben would break his whole day down into micro goals, and it always allowed him to feel good about himself because he would be like, I'm on even the little things. Like, I'm gonna walk through the quad more efficiently than ever before and talk to two people. And I used to think like, what a funny quirk about how Ben's mind works.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    But now I look and I'm like, man, Ben was probably just 15 years ahead of all of us in self awareness of like, oh, that's maybe a key to living like a more bounded and contented existence than the rest of us had a handle on at 22.

    - Joshua Driver

    Yes, Zach is close to that, and I envy that very much because I don't have that level of organization and granularity that see and your friends have.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    Building connection at work is important…and it can be hard to know where to start. What can you do to support the mental health of your people, to care for them and keep them engaged in the midst of all of the pressures and disruption? You don’t have to figure it out on your own; let Handle with Care Consulting help. With keynote options, certificate programs, and coaching sessions available, we have a solution to meet your needs and budget. Sign up for a free consultation at lieselmertes.com. Together, we can put empathy to work.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    I find in building connections with people, there are times where it feels really easy and natural and times where it's a lot more challenging. What are times in either of you or both of you can answer where building connection at work feels really easy for you. And why.

    - Joshua Driver

    Interesting. I would say that I'm

    - Joshua Driver

    I love to people watch, and I'm always interested in everybody's story. How did you get to where you are today? What experiences have you had? And so it's easy for me to get to know people because I'm just naturally just so curious about everyone's story.

    - Zach Rodenbarger

    I find I have to be maybe a little more intentional to provide that space to connect. And maybe that even goes to our overall topic of empathy to take a second and say, okay, if I was coming in on the first day or the second week, how would I want to be treated? Because I think it's easy for me. And as I mentioned earlier, probably Josh, it's easy for us to just kind of put our heads down and work. And so taking that time and being giving that space as well to make the connection, even if it's at lunch time only or something.

    - Zach Rodenbarger

    But at least you're very focused on allowing that space to chat and providing that because I know for me during the workplace, well, we'll chat later or something, but if you don't provide that space, then obviously it's harder to make that connection, especially in the first week, the first six months, and things like that and thinking, when would I want to have someone reach out to me whether they're a colleague, a boss, or even an intern can be anything.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Yeah. That reminds me of even a slide that I was showing yesterday and a talk that I was doing about imagination and empathy. I hear that a little bit of what you're saying, and although that doesn't always get you exactly to the right place, because you can't ever fully know what another person is wanting or experiencing, it oftentimes will move you closer. What would I want on my first day or first week? And then to be able to act out of that can really close what can sometimes seem like a big distance.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    You both kind of offered some things in your answer, but I'll ask it explicitly as well. What are sometimes we're building connection at work feels difficult.

    - Joshua Driver

    I've started to embrace more of when I am feeling extroverted versus introverted and sometimes when I'm hyper focused on something in the distraction of having to communicate or interact can be frustrating because I need the focused time and especially with new employees coming on. You want to be available and transparent and present. And at our stage right now it's really difficult to be present with everything that we need to get done. And so making sure that I'm not coming off as disinterested is something that I always in the back of my mind.

    - Joshua Driver

    I want to make sure that I'm not conveying because it's not true. But there are some times where I just want to get something done and want to be sequestered for a little bit.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Do you have yourself in moments like that, like needing to actively engage in self talk, even about things. So I'll get my hand like I have to think about my body language and moments like that of being like, oh, I need to show attention and care right now. I'm going to do something different. Like do you do mental pivots like that? And what do they look like?

    - Joshua Driver

    Sometimes Zach and I have been together for so long now. I can tell with his expression where I've crossed the line of of being rational more. So there are certain triggers, I think too. And he'll say, yeah, you need to maybe just spend some time by yourself for a minute and go for a lock so I will replay a situation like that in my mind and try to think through. Alright, what did I say? Did I mean to come off this way or if I don't really came off a different way than I meant to trying to understand?

    - Joshua Driver

    Like how did this person infer that this was what I was trying to say. And so that has been helpful to rethink the experience so that I try not to replicate that. Moving forward. I.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    I Imagine there's a line walk between replaying the experience and getting stuck in a never ending loop. How do you thread that needle?

    - Joshua Driver

    Not. Well. I like to solve everything and have closure. So if there's still a difference of opinion, I like to try to really put the pressure on myself to get it resolved. And in some cases I think I don't look at difference of opinion is like who's going to win this fight and get their way? I think it's more from their background and their perspective. Is there some truth to it and allow that was Zach especially? There are some things that he's very passionate about and has a perspective that he really feels strongly.

    - Joshua Driver

    And I'd like to think for the most part if he fully believes in something that I may not be so sure on and wants to go that I just trust him implicitly that it's the right thing and that he's very good at doing his research and looking at different aspects of things.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Well, and out of that foundation of relationship, you know what you can extend to them.

    - Joshua Driver

    Yeah. I think we're a lot of co founders that are state right now. We don't have time to be working on every project together, be on every call together and make decisions together. And so I think if you have a co founder that you don't feel that you feel like you have to micromanage or be a part of every decision, then that's going to be a really difficult culture to scale. It's going to make your company really difficult to grow. And so everybody that we've hired and when Zach joined Selflessly is very clear.

    - Joshua Driver

    I want the empowerment. I want to create the space for them to be empowered to make decisions that are best for a company and feel confident that they are able to execute on whatever task.

    - Zach Rodenbarger

    Is this where I say the complete opposite?

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    This is a safe space.

    - Zach Rodenbarger

    I've been trying to obviously likewise empowering each other. And we did used to be on most of the calls and get to feel how each is thinking. And so it did help in the first month to six months to be on a lot of the calls together or as he mentioned, in the same room even. And so I can overhear his call, whether he wants me to or not and understand kind of what he's thinking, the action maybe he would take or his thinking on that his rationalization, right.

    - Zach Rodenbarger

    What would he be thinking in the same spot and so helpful to be able to, you know, have his perspective in in the back of my mind and probably vice versa from sharing that office for the first twelve months and everything. So that's been really good.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    I hear a lot of respect and self inquiry in what you both have said. And yet I imagine there's still moments where like on an emotional on a practical on an interpersonal level, you guys have missed and or hurt one another in your journey. What has making meaningful repairs looked like.

    - Zach Rodenbarger

    Nerf guns. Yeah. I think for one of my birthday, Josh got a couple of Nerf guns for me, and so if we need, we can shoot each other, but also part of the startup mentality, right? We wanted to bring a little bit of fun into the office, but if you needed, you could shoot someone from across the room. That's been one way.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    At least I'm totally thinking of my two sons right now, and the moment where Magnus turns to Moses, and he's like, okay, you can just hit me five times in the chest. That's fine. Just don't tell mom.

    - Joshua Driver

    The biggest issue with that is that I'm a bad shot, so I'm not even like to get I like you. I can't make my points in the same way he can, because I tend to miss him completely, whereas he's really good at targeting me. So that was, in hindsight, not a great decision for a birthday gift start.

    - Joshua Driver

    She has to make a lot of lessons learned.

    - Joshua Driver

    Yeah, I would recommend that to other companies unless you're really good at aiming

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    either that or you want to devote part of your work day to target practice.

    - Joshua Driver

    Yes.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Well, maybe you guys would like to expand on the I hear like some fun, some levity, like not taking yourself too seriously. Are there other things that you do to make repairs when you guys have gotten a little bit off?

    - Joshua Driver

    I think that we find out if if we're having a conflict, that taking the time, like taking some space and cooling down is helpful, but also eventually, once we've had time to kind of process that situation. General, I think there was a time where I went and got a Blizzard or a box of dilly bars and dropped them off at the house. His house is like a don't let go of me. Ever don't leave me gift. I'm sorry. I was cantankerous and vice versa where I think we have a cool down moment and then we Zoom out and think about it there's.

    - Joshua Driver

    There's always an apology and then some type of affirmation about the other one.

    - Zach Rodenbarger

    I know I take a little more time sometimes to each person has their kind of respective way to do that and to cool down. And some people want to solve it. Same day some people take the night, take the weekend and so, you know, kind of learning the team, learning the other person and thinking through that, you know, how to talk through that and when and maybe even is more important if it's right away or give some space.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Have you guys ever had misses? Because I hear a little bit. You know, Josh, you said I'm gonna solve it now. Person. And Zach, I need a little bit more time. Did you guys have a learning curve initially and full disclosure. I have had to unlearn in my adult relationships that tendency and belief of like, if I can just say it to you four different times in four different ways, we can figure it out right now. Let's keep trying. And sometimes people are like, no, just shut up.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Hard lesson.

    - Joshua Driver

    I have had to learn that in general, my husband is similar. Where his cool down? He needs to think for a little bit and take a break. I think maybe in our early days I went back to like, don't walk away. Let's figure this out so we can move on. But then realizing that he needs a little bit more time and understanding to from his perspective, like, if he doesn't want to talk about it, it's not going to help for me trying to pull it out of them either.

    - Joshua Driver

    So I've learned to kind of let that go that we're not going to necessarily resolve it today. But I do continue to like to think that I prioritize that moving forward so that we can eventually get through whatever that wall is that hurdle.

    - Zach Rodenbarger

    I think my learning is definitely around witnessing people and then witnessing yourself. But it's very rare to convince someone of your perspective in an argument. And if you're both on one side, an argument is not going to convince the other person to jump on your side. And so where is that our email leading or can you take a step back and then provide the reason why you're thinking this way? The reason why that person is thinking that way. It's just interesting to see how arguments heat up and things, and there's no side switching.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    It's so true. Yeah. It makes me think of even a yet unresolved conversations argument that my husband and I are having and to be like, yeah, nobody ever switches sides in the middle like nobody is in the heat of it or very, very, very, very, very like the 1% does it happen and then usually with a fair degree of resentment.

    - Joshua Driver

    So.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Yes, that rings true.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    I'm struck that you are like building culture internally, but it selflessly is also like the product itself is something that is hopefully building culture and connection in the workplace. Tell me a little bit about how selflessly and volunteering and thinking outside of yourself is good for people in for workplaces.

    - Joshua Driver

    But I think as we see culture being a normal discussion and given that we're still in a pandemic and becomes such a volatile polarizing environment in the world everywhere.

    - Joshua Driver

    I always try to find, like silver linings or ways to maybe take take a moment to step away from the reality. And for me, my coping mechanism is to help others. And the reason why I've been able to spend that time to help others is because I've been very privileged and had the ability to do that where I understand that's not everybody's story coming out at our platform in understanding from not every company is a Lily or a Salesforce that has massive teams that work on these big the initiatives and have the resources.

    - Joshua Driver

    There are a lot of companies I mean humans are humans, whether you work at a Fortune 50 company or a small startup.

    - Joshua Driver

    And so it's always been confusing to me why startups don't think about their culture from day one. And because we spend so much of our wake time at work, especially on our stage and the positive vibes or feelings you get out of helping others or contributing to the betterment of your community or society or making a difference for somebody else is such an important experience.

    - Joshua Driver

    I think everybody should have, but unfortunately, we work all the time or we have kids or other responsibilities that limit that time. So we set out to build selflessly so that companies didn't have to try to scrape the bottom the barrel to be able to provide purpose or the positive opportunities or the community engagement. We wanted to be a partner, so every company can experience the positive effects of being a crime brand or socially responsible organization, and that for a long time has only been afforded to gigantic organizations.

    - Joshua Driver

    And so we wanted to be be the platform everyone can use. And so we have to be obviously an innovative with the pandemic and all these things that have changed the logistics on the nonprofit side. And unfortunately, a lot of this responsibility falls on nonprofits who are trying to keep their doors open and working on their mission. And so we took on the responsibility of of taking that work off of nonprofits and working on educating companies on how they can integrate philanthropy into normal business practices like employee engagement or team building or culture or heck, even the competitiveness of the sales Department.

    - Joshua Driver

    How do we leverage a philanthropic component while a bunch of type as I go tell each other or something? And I think if there's always even a component of that philanthropic, if there's just even a small piece that goes back or gives back, I think that that's a really great thing to hard wire into a company's culture.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Zach, anything you want to add?

    - Zach Rodenbarger

    Yeah, I think obviously what Josh said, one of my kind of tag lines, even as we reach out to teams and think about them is kind of selfless. Teams make the best teams. And when you're have employees that are thinking about each other and how to help each other and not always just focused on their task, that's obviously going to make a better team and environment and better teamwork. And so by thinking through, how do we make selfless employees that's really part of selflessly is to help those employees encourage those employees, not Joe's employees to find a volunteer opportunity or find a way to give back to support a cause they care about to have those matching donations from the company and actually use those.

    - Zach Rodenbarger

    And so all of these nudges that we want to help create selfless employees that are thinking about others and not just themselves. And so when you think about others that leads to that teamwork, really, everyone creating a better environment. And so putting all that together with what Josh said is exciting, that this is something we get to work on each day.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Yeah. Well, my brain can't help but go to some sociological context. You know, I think in generations before, what you are tapping into is this, like human desire to be a part of something bigger, to be giving back, and that there was a while in the US where that was filled by a Church that was asking for a time, and hopefully they were giving towards meaningful things in that way. But that has become less and less central in American communities. There's still this impulse, but not quite the same.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    You know, there were good and bad things about that prior model, but there's not that same sort of, like regular outlet. And we're also more connected in theory, to the needs of the world. But through the lens of social media, which doesn't often lead to direct action. So, like emotional sensing, selves are out there like feeling all these things. But there's not this bridging, it towards action that feels like it builds up like a physical, real community that we're regularly a part of. And that selflessly kind of helps to bridge some of those, like sociological shifts with a meaningful offering.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Yeah.

    - Joshua Driver

    I think without sounding like a sound bite, I feel philanthropy in the connection between a donor and a nonprofit or a company in its community or wherever this for profit and nonprofit connection is. For decades, we've given money to our Church, to the United Way, these intermediaries to trust that that's been utilized in the best way or is going towards the mission. And I think with technology improving and transparency, we've seen over time organizations that may not have made the best choices with the money that have come in and the the biggest concern is that this person had maybe a bad experience with this organization.

    - Joshua Driver

    Are they going to find another one to support, or are they just going to stop supporting? And that's a big concern. And so now there's this big push for having more control over where people can donate and not necessarily have to be relegated to the confines of somebody's of an organization, agencies or whatever. But what that means is more transparency needs to be done on the nonprofit side. And the nonprofits don't have the resources necessarily to be able to give up regular updates about a campaign or whatever.

    - Joshua Driver

    And so we've set up nonprofits to kind of fail from that regard. And then Conversely, I think we nonprofits. They're always fundraising. I've started my own nonprofit. We're always trying to raise more money so we can continue with our mission. And that leaves people out that may not have the liquidity or the resources to be able to participate financially, and we have to jump in. Or at least we take on some of the responsibility of how do we jump in and equate somebody skills and volunteer time to be worth just as much, if not more than them writing a check.

    - Joshua Driver

    And so I think it's a generational shift about what philanthropy is starting to look like when we launch selflessly as we continue to grow selflessly. There's always people from the charitable sector that have their own perspective. You need to trust. This organization has been around for a century that they're just going to be doing the right thing. But we tend to grow because people want to break out of what the mold of philanthropy has been and want to have more control and be able to make more direct impact by us connecting those two sides and really always innovating on how to keep those two sides connected.

    - Joshua Driver

    That means more resources go to the charitable sector. It just looks a little different. It's not an entry on a bank account. It might look like a donated product or a brainstorming session or some skilled services, but it can be helpful to breaking up some of the foundational infrastructure is a good thing, and I think we're along over you to really start shaking the tree and and changing what is no longer working. And that's a hard thing for people that have been in this space for a long time to necessarily want to accept.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Yeah, something that I heard both of you say as a mark of differentiation that you have cultivated and enjoy is a sense of whimsy, and maybe not taking ourselves too seriously. Tell me how that shows up in selflessly.

    - Joshua Driver

    Well, my office looks like a kid play room. I just have random stuff all over the place, and then we have a Bulldog in the office. But I think the way that we talk to people, the way that we put ourselves out there, we didn't win the virtual background thing when you made those for your background as your company logo and all the strategic stuff. We didn't do that. I put on a background of me standing at the podium on Jeopardy or just keeping it. I'm sure people for first impression at times like, who the hell is this guy?

    - Joshua Driver

    But I think that if we were always trying to display, everything is running great. We don't have any problems. We're constantly growing and just a few months away from being the Jeff Bezos to this is really nobody believes that. First of all, instead of constantly say everything is working. There isn't one company that everything's running smoothly, but I think we personality, my personality. We would probably suppress a lot of who we are individually if we always had to worry about being a highlight reel and being being always on and calculated and putting on this this front.

    - Joshua Driver

    And I think having more real conversations, joking around, making mistakes, owning them and moving on or being open about what we've messed up for, mistakes we've made, I think, is so much more valuable in creating a deeper connection with our staff, which our network, our investors and being open and also accepting of the feedback too.

    Joshua Driver

    We don't want to be a vendor or a tech provider. We want to be a partner. And I think that us being vulnerable and embracing that were not perfect, I think, is important to set that expectation for whom we're interacting with.

    - Zach Rodenbarger

    Absolutely. You want to be able to have fun with your team. You want your team to be able to have fun with customers and on those conversations. And you want people to look forward to having time together, whether it's on a Zoom call or in person, especially for your internal team. But then that customers start to feel that as well and enjoy the conversations with you. And maybe in the software, you start to see certain aspects and certain animations come across the screen or something like that.

    - Zach Rodenbarger

    You're starting to see a little bit of other software as well, but we want to be have that enjoyment, especially if we're looking at company culture and encouraging people to get out and have some enjoyment and purpose and things like that. We want to come through in our mission and our software and allow really customers internal external everyone to start to see that, feel that and really enjoy the software and enjoy working with selflessly and working for selflessly.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    If listeners are intrigued about the platform, the mission, you guys in your story, where can they go to find out more about selflessly and how it can be used to build and increase the sense of connection at work?

    - Joshua Driver

    Yeah.

    - Joshua Driver

    Our website is Selflessly. I and our social media Tags or give selflessly on the Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and our email address the general email for Zach, it is Hello at Selflessly IO.

    - Joshua Driver

    And.

    - Joshua Driver

    We get all kinds of requests companies that want to become B Corps or our favorite messages or hey, I want to. We're a small company and we don't think that we can really make an impact. Can you show us how to do it like those are the things we really enjoy spending time with. Also, I think hearing from people that may want to start their own company or want to brainstorm. Sometimes we make time to have a coffee with a potential entrepreneur or give some feedback, help others where we can.

    - Joshua Driver

    We'd love to hear from anybody who wants to reach out.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    Here are three key takeaways to build connection and care in the workplace…

    Fun matters.From Nerf guns to dilly bar deliveries, introducing a little bit of levity, especially in tense and freighted situations, can be a game changer. Where can you build some fun and some laughter into your office life? There is power in taking a break and thinking the best of the other person.You heard these two threads throughout the interview: in offering a break or a walk to the other person, hoping and trusting that their moment of overwhelm is not their truest or best self. This attention to the emotional temperature of a given situation is so important. And I use it often in both my personal and professional interactions. One way that people can move through their own disruption and overwhelm is by giving back to others.The act of moving beyond the constraints of your own situation, doing something positive for someone else, has all sorts of positive effects on the health of individuals and organizations. If what you have heard today piques your interest, I encourage you to look up the good work that is going on at Sefless.ly. More information about Zach, Josh, and the company can be found in the show notes.

    OUTRO

    To find out more about the work of Selfless.ly, visit https://selflessly.io

  • – Adam Weber


    One of the I think keys to genuine empathy is through consistent one on one and how you display empathy, like, structurally inside of an organization. So, for example, a one on one is that place where as a manager, you can create safety with your team and with your direct reports and create a vulnerable relationship where you really do know what's going on inside of their world in their life

    INTRO

    Sometimes, when you hear from leaders, you are inundated with their success stories: their key tips to making your life or company just as successful as theirs has been. And the whole thing can kind of seem a little unattainable and aspirational.

    Which is one of the things that I love about today’s interview with Adam Weber, the Senior Vice President for 15Five. Adam is one of those highfliers whose work is marked by successes, whether that is leading HR professionals in HR Superstars or successfully growing and then selling Emplify as a co-founder.

    But my conversation with Adam isn’t just a series of success stories. He is going to tell you about moments where he was NOT his best self, where as a young founder under tons of stress, he created distance instead of connection…and what he learned from it. Along with a lot of other great content.

    Adam is a structure guy, so be ready for some really actionable suggestions. Adam is also the author of “Lead Like a Human”. Great title! He has a wife, two sons, and a dog named Poppy and he loves spending time in nature, camping, and bird-watching. I hope you enjoy today’s conversation as much as I did.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Adam, I'm so glad to have you as a guest today. Welcome.

    - Adam Weber

    It's good to be here. Liesel. Thank you so much.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Yes. So a question that I oftentimes get in my work is defining what empathy looks like in the workplace. And I know that you're someone who has worked a lot professionally and written and thought about connection in the workplace. How would you define empathy at work? What does it look like?

    - Adam Weber

    I think it work. Empathy at work, I think, is seeing your employees as whole people as their whole sales and just in recognizing that they have things that are moving in their life that are outside of work, they have aspects of things that work that are impacting them that maybe you're unaware of. And so just taking that holistic perspective of each person and the unique experience that they're having and translating that and how you relate to them.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Thank you for that. I have found as I work with different companies as I meet with individuals that oftentimes when people like get it, when they feel really resonant with the importance of empathy and connection in the workplace, it comes out of a place of personal experience. They've had some touch points with either needing empathy and care or being in the position of giving it in a way that was really impactful. I'd love for you to share a story of when you've either really needed care in the workplace or when it's been really important for you to give it.

    - Adam Weber

    Yeah. I think I have two stories that come to mind. The first is maybe how early in my career I was able to practice empathy in a way that helped me see the value in it. I started in my career when I was 22 to 25. I was the pastor of a Church, and it's a story for a different day, but basically became the head pastor when I was 25, never given a sermon in my life. Wow. And was trying to support and was really the only staff person for two to 300 people and was trying to support them when in reality, like, I was just still really young myself.

    - Adam Weber

    And I think through that experience, a lot of people opened up to me about their lives. And you got to be a part of some of those high moments, like weddings, but also you're very much in the midst of really, really difficult situations. And so during that season, I think I learned a lot about just the value of sitting with people through hard things. It was during that time that one of my very best friends had ALS and he passed away and over an 18 month period.

    - Adam Weber

    But, you know, every Tuesday and Thursday, we sat together that entire time and have lunch together. And I think just being with him and watching him go through that experience was something that really built empathy with me. So that's may be on just like, the personal side of, like, really early. I got a little bit thrown into the fire of empathy and being just being with others.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Yeah. And I know that you have a second story, but I love it. Could I just interrupt you for a second? Because I'm struck with the dynamics of that story, something that I find myself facilitating a lot around is compassion, fatigue and talking. Or even Adam Grant use the term languishing recently. That sense of like, I don't know if I can give to anybody else because I feel so drained myself. You're young. You are responsible for the sole care of all of these people. I'm sure you have things going on in your own life.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    You have this personal friend, so you're watching an emotional journey of watching him die. How were you finding equilibrium and places to be filled up for yourself so you could keep giving to others in a way that mattered?

    - Adam Weber

    That is a great question. I think what's interesting about being 25 is at that time. I don't think I did it with a lot of intention. I think when I reflect back on that time, there was a lot of kind of giving on empty without making sure that I was in a place of health myself. And one of the things maybe later in my career, I have realized the value for myself is making sure that I'm giving. One of the things I've noticed for me is that I need solitude.

    - Adam Weber

    I'm a person who naturally is drawn to other people and wants to be a part of their lives. And if I don't give myself space to restore and space to make sure I'm my whole complete self, I end up kind of crossing, twisting the wires of giving in a way that is healthy for myself. I wonder sometimes when I look back on that season, there's a natural part to that where I was just kind of being myself an inflow and giving in a way that's comfortable.

    - Adam Weber

    And I think there's probably another part of it that was just a little needy that really was really empty and didn't have great pathways to and to kind of restore myself, too. Which is probably why at the end of that year transitioned away from it. You know, I don't think I was acting in a way the problem is sustainable in my own life. Actually.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Thank you for that vulnerability. And even as I look back in to what my body and my person seemingly had the capacity to just absorb and keep churning. In my twenties, I'm like, oh, my gosh, that was a lot that probably wasn't healthy, but there's a certain hubris to that stage of life where you think I can just keep going.

    - Adam Weber

    Yeah, there's an infinite amount of energy and there's an altruism that's really beautiful, I think with, like, a willingness to, like, I can change the world, you know? And there is some truth to that. I think there's also some wisdom that maybe came a little later for me, too.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    I interrupted your flow, though. You were telling the first personal story. I'd love to hear that second story that you had in your back pocket as well.

    - Adam Weber

    Well, the second one, really, like, set in motion. I had a windy career for the first ten years, kind of going from pastor to academic advisor, entry level job, entry level job, entry level sales job. And then I kind of stumbled into doing a start up about a decade ago and starting it with my business partner, Santiago, who was a week out of College at the time. So I'm ten years into my career. I've got two kids and we start this start up. I have no experience at all.

    - Adam Weber

    And immediately just the company just started to grow. And I went from kind of being a one person employee to having a team. And in the very beginning of that process, I felt so overwhelmed and I felt so stressed that I started to follow some of the negative patterns that I saw and managers that led me prior. And remember, there's a couple of specific moments, but where I just was not being myself and I was creating barriers between my employees, the people I was interviewing, I just wasn't leading in a way that was sustainable for me.

    - Adam Weber

    I was trying to act in a way that I thought managers and leaders were supposed to act. And I think during that time, I just hit a bit of a breaking point, like, because of how hard startups are in general, I was like, I'm not going to be able to sustain this if I try to do it. Like, I think everybody else is supposed to lead.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    And what was that looking like? I just love for you to flesh that out a little bit more. You were like, this is the way it should be done.

    - Adam Weber

    And it looks like what I think it looked a little bit like the authoritarian, the kind of Industrial Revolution leader. The leading is a disconnected self where, like, I was one way at home. But then I'd show up to work. And just like, I wasn't that there would be, like, curtains or anger or there would be kind of, like, spouting off orders as opposed to, like, truly listening and collaborating like things like that. Or it would just be like, when you're interviewing someone instead of, like, coming up with your own way that you interview people that I was following, a guide, that when I would do it.

    - Adam Weber

    I was like, this just doesn't feel like me.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Yeah. You're moving into uncharted territories. And I find that in my life and in those I work with, it's easy to work off of a template instead of doing some of the work that it sounds like you are beginning to engage in. Like, is this representative of me and my best energy?

    - Adam Weber

    That's exactly right. I think the template phrase is a good summary of what that season felt like for me.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    So what was the inflection point for you? I imagine you are not still operating out of that place of discontent.

    - Adam Weber

    You know, the inflection point. I was actually in the middle of an interview with someone who I still work with to this day. She's someone who I feel like I've had a really great relationship with and invested a lot into her life. But in the middle of her interview process, I was following a template, and I looked at her resume, and she took a gap year, which is super cool, by the way. Took a year to Europe right after College, and I followed this guide where you're supposed to do high pressure interviews and super awkward pause about her gap interview.

    - Adam Weber

    And it was really uncomfortable in the moment. I was like, Gosh, I just was like, I can't do this for this is not me. But then simultaneously, I actually damaged our relationship, even though we had never met at the time. And it took us a year, truly a year to get to the spot where she really trusted me and where she felt like she actually knew who I was because this initial impression was not actually the person that I was. And so I think that interview was really that moment was really a turning point for me.

    - Adam Weber

    That kind of set my entire trajectory and career around focusing on leaders, focusing on what good leadership looks like that I really think that moment and, you know, just full to take that story full circle. By the way, when we sold our business in April and she sent me a text, the same person sent me a text and said, There is not a person other than my mother who's impacted my life more than you and which I saved. And that was a hall of Fame. Probably one of the most powerful messages I've ever received, especially in the workplace.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Yeah.

    - Adam Weber

    I think the reason it was so meaningful to is because of how much that moment was transformative in my leadership.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Right. Well, and I'm struck there's a certain level of intuition and engagement that is necessary to know that there has been damage done to a relationship, to be able to look back and be like, it took us a year. How are you seeing that disconnect expressed? And I'd love to delve into it specifically, because especially as leaders, there are, we don't know, necessarily when the impactful moment will be, which is really like an encouragement to be showing up as our healthiest best cells less. We do damage.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    But over the course of that year, were you realizing in real time, like, oh, there's kind of something in between us.

    - Adam Weber

    Yeah. I think it's one thing. It's something sometimes you can sense, but you don't know because we don't really know each other. And this was one facet of who she was attaching a lot of significance to a situation that was not my best version of myself either.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Right.

    - Adam Weber

    I think it was, you know, throughout the year as I started to really improve, like, one of the I think keys to genuine empathy is through consistent one on one and how you display empathy, like, structurally inside of an organization. So, for example, a one on one is that place where as a manager, you can create safety with your team and with your direct reports and create a vulnerable relationship where you really do know what's going on inside of their world in their life, like how they're doing.

    - Adam Weber

    And just in those moments, I think that it was kind of in those one on one. As I started to improve how I built relationships with people in the workplace and how I uncovered how they were doing and how I could help that just could sense kind of consistent, like, just like walls, walls. I think that were put up that we had to work through. And then I think also that her experience was different as other people started to come there like, that doesn't feel like a person doesn't feel like Adam.

    - Adam Weber

    That's not the Adam I know. And so I just think with time now, I mean, what's so cool about that is now we've worked together for eight and a half years. Right. So we're in a really different spot. But obviously we were then, which is really cool and pretty rare, by the way, to hire someone when they're right out of College. I got to work with them for that long. I think that's a pretty neat thing

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    To get to be able to see their growth trajectory. Well, I like something that you alluded to, which is the things that we can do structurally to build connection. And I know that that has actually been, like a big part of just the product and your professional movement in the world. So I'd love for you to tell me more about some of the best practices that you've seen. And you work with Amplify. And now with 15 five in what companies can be doing to think structurally about.

    - Adam Weber

    There's a handful of things that come to mind because I also think sometimes topics like this can feel overwhelming, but if you get really practical, you can start to see where these different containers are inside your organization to create trusted, empathetic relationships at the manager level, I think is really like where this is the most powerful because that's where the relationships are the most personal. And so if I think about a new manager, maybe think about my own story. Often times they were a top performing individual contributor.

    - Adam Weber

    They got promoted, they never got any training. They have super high goals. They're feeling overstressed. And then what they do innately is they start to carry and transition that stress over to their team. And they create kind of environments of chaos and confusion as opposed to clarity and team alignment. So one example of that was good.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    I just want to recognize that's so accurate to the pain points that I observe again and again. Please continue. But what was well stated.

    - Adam Weber

    This is my world, though. These observations are pretty much what I spent all my time observing and helping companies with. And so I think for that manager, like, there's two really key containers for them. I think where they can show empathy. The first is what typically happens is on that manager is just kind of follow that path I just shared as they show up on Monday. They bring all the stress that is above them straight into that meeting on Monday morning. And it's like you can feel it in the atmosphere.

    - Adam Weber

    They bring in the stress, they bring in their own issues. They bring in whatever those things. And it really changes how it feels inside of just at that team level. And that type of environment really, like put walls up for people being like themselves. And so just a small switch, which is at the start of every week before we get to the stressors and the goals. And that all of those things before we do those things. What we first do is we just hear about what happened over the weekend just to create the rhythm and the habit to understand the phrase I use is there's always a story behind everyone's story.

    - Adam Weber

    And it's like, how do we make sure that we are just keeping those dialogues open to hear what's going on inside of your world, inside of your life, inside of what's happening outside of work. So that's one and that's in a group setting, and then the way you transition that forward, then it's end of that one on one setting as well. I mean, just a really small change to a one on one for a manager of just never starting the one on one, really checking your own energy and checking your own priorities at the door and showing up and being willing to listen first, be curious first and invest in their lives first.

    - Adam Weber

    And then it just unlocks so much as far as being able to understand their world, being able to support them and actually helping you achieve your own goals for your team, that sort of thing. So those are two at the manager level.

    - Adam Weber

    I think at the company level, how you can display empathy. One that I'm passionate about is we measure amplify measure engagement for companies. And while that is a neat thing, what's powerful about measuring is when the CEO says the thing out loud, that's hard about the company that everyone else knows. They just don't know that the leadership knows when a CEO says, you know what? Everyone thank you so much for your candid feedback. It is clear that our goals are currently not attainable, and it's really impacting how you're feeling and showing up at work today or how you're showing up at work in this season.

    - Adam Weber

    There is power in that at the company level, when you can show empathy at the macro scale, to the experience of the company.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    The acknowledgement of the pain point. I'm thinking, like burr under the saddle, sort of a reality.

    - Adam Weber

    Yeah, because it just it diffuses the tension. It's not even that we have it solved. It's just that we all understand that this is real, that we're all working through now. We're not a perfect organization. We're making progress. But I am aware of the same thing that you are aware of. And I think that that built a lot of trust and empathy as well. And then there's policies from an HR perspective, there's small things. One of the things I thought was so profound that 15 five are really it's huge for people going through it.

    - Adam Weber

    It's small in the realm of the impact to the benefits, bottom line or something. But our 15 five has a child bereavement policy like something that small. That when you come into the organization and it's it just shows a level of care and compassion for the whole person, for their world and for their experience or during COVID. We had family members who passed away. And so how as a company, not just as the manager, but how as a company, do we sit with and support people who are going through really, really challenging times?

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Yeah. I have found in the conversations that I'm having policies never seem top of mind until they're suddenly top of mind. I'm like, oh, that's our policy. And whether that's our berievement leave policy says you have to have proof of death or it's only for immediate family members. We give people three days, and that doesn't take into account COVID related travel or all the sorts of things. And to pay attention to those things, it does feel impacted because especially as people are having so many more moments to touch on that.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    I was just seeing someone's LinkedIn post about needing to bring, like, a bulletin from extended family members funeral to prove that they weren't just lying for time off and just how cheap that made it feel. But it was the policy, and nobody looked at the policy for a decade.

    - Adam Weber

    Yeah. And there's I don't even know what to say about.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Yeah, so sad about it.

    - Adam Weber

    I'm picturing that's just the Seinfield episode. I know George Castanza's trying to get his flight covered in your right. This is how it's supposed to be.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Well, you just think policy, the eternalist. Like how like your fourth grade teacher being like, did you really go to use the bathroom with your hall pass or you just cutting class? Yeah.

    - Adam Weber

    There is just I think underneath that there is such a lack of trust, right? There is like, we don't trust you, even with really hard aspects of your life like you're not trusted, I think, is at least the underlying message that an employee would receive through.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Well, like a meta level. If you're conveying yourself as a leadership team and a company that can't exercise trust, there's probably some trickle down questions that need to come up. What does that say about how we hire people? Or what does that say about how we manage people in an ongoing basis that we continue to have the perception of people that we can't trust? There's probably questions about other areas of your people operations if that really feels true or change your possible.

    - Adam Weber

    And I also think every employee asks themselves, Is this company worth my best?

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Yeah.

    - Adam Weber

    They have a level they're willing to give. And I think a small things like having to get a funeral bulletin. I think our create marks for people to go. This isn't worth my best. I might give time, but it's not going to be my best, right. And I'm not sure that I blame them. I don't I I'm not sure I wouldn't do the same.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    Are you giving your people what they need to stay engaged in the midst of all of the disruptive life events that are coming at them? I deeply resonated with how Adam described the managerial journey: the stress that comes from suddenly having to manage and inspire and care for people. It is just hard, especially right now. And I hear, again and again from companies, that they want to be able to support the mental wellness of their people but they just don’t know how. Handle with Care Consulting can help. Empathy is a skill that can be learned and we can train you. We have targeted keyontes, tailored to your pain points and industry, Empathy at Work Certificate programs, and coaching options. Empathy doesn’t have to be difficult, reach out for a free consultation.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    What is a time or a contributing factor that really it felt difficult to build connection with a given person or a team in your working career.

    - Adam Weber

    I think for me just myself, I think where I run into issues is when I get overstressed in general. And then I think I start to project at times on to other people, or I try to take that stress that I'm feeling and I push it to others, which is not a very empathetic posture. And so I think that has always been the thing I've had to be mindful of it. And startups, you really do have to be a venture backed funded startups are not for the faint of heart.

    - Adam Weber

    They are very stressful environments where you're growing quickly. So the business is changing every twelve to 16 weeks. It's like a whole different place, and there's a lot of pressure. And so I think finding balance in the midst of pressure in the midst of feeling overstressed. Like, I think those are the times for me, as opposed to like an individual, like one individual or things like that. It's when I get a little bit too inward focused to be thoughtful of other people.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Yeah, for some reason, what connects is even on a personal level. As a parent, I know when I am feeling like meta stress, whether that's work related or going back and forth with the roofing guys who are doing the hail damage and those sorts of things really can pull from my ability to be present, fostering joy, contributing to a shared sense of a espirit de corps with my children that feels very resonant on a personal level, as you were talking about that, especially in a startup culture. What did that look like for you?

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    And maybe there's like a day or a season that comes to mind, but whether it's coming out of a tough meeting about metrics or thinking about the steps towards Series A, what would that look like with your team when you were feeling preoccupied like that, how would you begin to interact with them?

    - Adam Weber

    Yeah, these aren't like my finest moments, but I think there were some memories or some thoughts I have that I go back to early where we're trying to take a thing that's nothing and turn it into something. And I was working as hard as I possibly could and overworking. I think during that season and sometimes during like, end of week metrics or views, it would be painful for me just to hear other people's metrics and feel like maybe they weren't working as hard as I was now with some perspective.

    - Adam Weber

    I'm like they also weren't owners in the business. I think I got to understand now, but at the time that was really painful for me and I had a really hard time just sitting and understanding. And I think when you lead with frustration, it makes it really challenging to understand what their actual blockers are. Then you're not really collaborating with them on the solution. You've just decided that you're frustrated at that in the interview story. Actually, those two scenarios were pretty much the foundation of what caused that kind of leadership change in my own life.

    - Adam Weber

    In that first year of the startup, there was a moment where I like walking out where people are sharing metrics, and I just left the meeting and I think that was another one where with some time I was like, alright, I need to really think about what it means to be a leader and how I sit with people and invest in people and even the other side of that. How do I set clear expectations or agreements where we're both mutually aligned? So I'm not just disappointed, but we have a shared clarity on what we're working towards.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Right in just my last interview was with Max Yoder and he was talking about expectations versus agreements. And I thought, oh, yeah. That's so true. If it's just my expectation, then I either need to be able to release it because I didn't make it known to you, or we need to transition to an agreement where we're both on the same page. And I thought that that repeats itself in personal lives and work live hear that?

    - Adam Weber

    Yes. Exactly. Sounds like he nailed it, by the way. So I will just to build on that concept. This is why I think things like role clarity, things like clearly define goals, what those really give to our genuine agreements, not just expectations between employees and managers. And I actually think as tactical as those sound, that those create more empathetic workforces because it creates clarity inside the organization. It creates clarity of what is expected of me. So that's one part of what it does. So then we're all now collaborating on the same things instead of just like a manager who is constantly disappointed, constantly frustrated, who then puts up walls and isn't willing to collaborate, sit with the person, help them grow.

    - Adam Weber

    And the other thing it does is that when something challenging happens in that person's life, if there's role clarity and there's clear goals, there's ways for people to know how to step up.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    So you are in a high pressure environment in startup culture where I imagine that I don't know, maybe even more regularly than quarterly. You were having to pivot and move, and maybe like, finesse where we're going and what we're doing.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    How did you find that you were able to maintain that sense of clarity in the midst of an ecosystem that was kind of changing around you pretty rapidly? Or maybe I'm not describing that ecosystem correctly.

    - Adam Weber

    I think you're describing it correctly. I think it depends on what season of the journey. So in the beginning, I think I did a relatively poor job of that. I think first time entrepreneurs, it's like the new idea always feels like the most important idea. And with time. And so there was rapid pivoting. But I'm not sure that it was always wise. And then with time, I think what we did was we really, really buttoned up, how we align as a company, on what's the most important thing and then but then also understand that things change and adjust and have good ways to what we call it triage, triage adjustments and pivot, as opposed to doing them kind of like the day, radically or inconsistently.

    - Adam Weber

    And I think that creates stability for the employees, too. When you kind of peel back the curtain on here's how we build strategy here's how we pivot strategy, so that for them, it doesn't just feel like constant whiplash within that triage.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    You describe so many points of learning in your journey as a leader. A couple of years ago, you took the time to put this all down in book form and lead like a Human, which is a book that I have and have really enjoyed as a tool of insight and a reference point even in the work that I do, I'm wondering. It's it's your own, like baby bringing forth into the world now that it's had a couple of years to toddle around out there, what is the impact that you've seen?

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    And is there any part of the book that you just feel like is especially important right now?

    - Adam Weber

    Yeah. I think one of the things that I really appreciated about writing the book, obviously, I shared a lot about my early part of management, but I think once I turn the corner and really gave the time to figure out, like, it's hard work, I think to figure out how to become a leader that other people want to work for. It unlocked my own life. It unlocked the performance of my team. It unlocked a lot of their personal lives. And so it's a journey that's been really meaningful to me.

    - Adam Weber

    But I will say, when you do start ups, there's an interesting part of it, but the whole time, it feels really temporary. You kind of know it's going to end. And so I think one of the things with the book that I'm really thankful for is that it's a little bit more permanent. It was spot on time when I wrote it, but it lasts. And so it's a nice juxtaposition, I think with a start up and similar to I was a songwriter early kind of when I was right out of College and a lot of the songs I wrote I find really challenging today.

    - Adam Weber

    Like, I think about some of the things I was writing about.

    - Adam Weber

    I go, wow, it's interesting, like a spot in time, but it's got this permanence to it, and the book is like that I think for me and that there are aspects of it. I write. I go, wow, this is really challenging for me like that to actually live some of this stuff out myself, too, in a new season. The one the one that I think is the chapter that's been the most valuable for me is called centeredness.

    - Adam Weber

    And the reason why it actually goes all the way back to the very beginning of our conversation today is that I didn't have the tools early in my career to find my own grounding and to find my own wholeness and recognize that when I am in that place, then I can put all these other practices in place that allow me to lead in a more human way. And so it's without being too prescriptive because I really didn't want it to feel prescriptive. I want it to be each person's individual journey, but I do think there's an aspect of it that is just have I thoughtfully looked at my own life and what things are working in my life and what things are restorative to me and allow me to connect to, like my whole connect itself so that I can show up in a steady, consistent way in the workplace.

    - Adam Weber

    That's probably the one over time. I think that I think the most I reflect back on the most.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Yeah. And what guidance would you offer? Reflection is definitely the first step, but for individuals who are starting to take account and go, oh, that's not congruent or Gee, that's really crappy and painful. That's got to be different for me to be able to stay in this for the long term.

    - Adam Weber

    Yeah. I think there's some version for everyone of self reflection, like how do I take the time to analyze or think about how I'm showing up in the world and with my team? And I think that is both done. Personally, I do this myself. One of the things I do is I just actually Journal and cursive, and I just write what the feeling people still use cursive.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    The elementary school teachers would be so proud.

    - Adam Weber

    I might be the last one, but it's not active for me, I think, because it forces me to go slow. That's what I like about it, which is probably why it doesn't exist anymore, but really just try to write my emotions, right what I'm feeling and how I'm showing up. So one is like doing the self reflection yourself the other, especially if you're a leader, is just like to make sure you have someone outside of your scenario, but who knows you well enough? Who can tell you the truth of how you're showing up?

    - Adam Weber

    I think that part is really important because most leaders just get lied to constantly and they don't know it because of role power. And it's really important to have people that you trust, who will tell you the truth about who you are and how you're showing up so that you can make progress and work on it. And then I think for me, the gratitude practices that have worked for me in my life like I do these gratitude walks. It's because I have a busy mind, and when I walk, it's just a little easier to stay focused and things like that.

    - Adam Weber

    But I don't want to prescribe the actual activity. I think it's for you. What are those activities? What are the things? Is that exercise? Is that hiking? Is it once a week or once a month, you block out a day where you don't work, but you just take time to do something restorative for you.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    That's good. I especially like the part about leaders being lied to and not knowing it. I think that is that's descriptively true for so many people.

    - Adam Weber

    I also think that's why I have a lot of empathy for CEOs and why I just have a heart for the CEO experience in the journey because I think it's really lonely for a CEO because I think one most of the time, everything you say people respond as if it's awesome and people are lying to you a lot, and they're not being because you hold their job in their hands and their family, security and all of these things. And if you show up every single day without having these, like, I think I have empathy for how lonely and isolating that feels for people.

    - Adam Weber

    And a lot of times they're unaware that that's happening to them, right?

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Building empathy and connection always has its challenges. There's this added layer right now of the particular challenges of the pandemic of social issues that feel really divisive of a continued uncertainty about how we're structuring workplace policies, not knowing what's going to happen with our kids in schooling and all of these challenges. What have you found really is helpful in continuing to move the needle on connection and care in the workplace, specifically within COVID-19.

    - Adam Weber

    I think one aspect is that just to take a little the pressure off yourself of trying to solve it. This is a big thing that's happening in the world, and it's happening to all of us. And so there's no perfect answer. There's no perfect policy, there's nothing perfect. You can say there's no burnout vacation thing that's going to immediately make things better. So maybe just like, releasing yourself with the pressure that this is, like, yours to fix in isolation. But the most impactful thing I think leaders can do right now is just have conversations and just be in on the conversations.

    - Adam Weber

    Burnout is a really good example, because it is like we're on, like, Wave five of burnout. I didn't even know what level of burnout it is, and it's impacting all of us in ways that we don't even know how to articulate ourselves to. There's this part of me, like, even with the Great Resignation to, like, not take it so personally to allow people just to be where they are. And some people now, there's a part right before the acquisition where some of our very first employees left, people are very, very close to.

    - Adam Weber

    And there's a part of that where you just have to recognize that, like, when you go through something that's significant in the world, sometimes you just need change. You just need change. It's not personal. It's not about the leader. It's not about the business. It's like, hey, there's a lot going on, and I just need something different.

    - Adam Weber

    I wish I could give you a perfect answer. I just think this is such a hard. I think it's such a hard topic because I just don't think any of us are immune to this. And I just think it's like, when you're in the middle of a story, you don't really know the answer to it. You just need to just kind of be in it and acknowledge that you're in it and maybe give space for your employees to also be like, it's okay that they're in it too.

    - Adam Weber

    I think I feel like the thing that isn't going to work, like, even with the great resignation, for example, is I think if you can be charitable with people as their departing, I just hate to feel really at the whole tenor around people leaving is so negative, and I find it exhausting. I don't understand why someone can't show up to a company, give their best hit a place where they go. My time here is like I'm ready to grow somewhere else and be celebrated. And it just to be like we honor that season for what it was and the impact it had on the business.

    - Adam Weber

    The business is about the business and the purpose of that business, not the individual who is running the business. So I celebrate that impact. And then and I think that that is a healthier way to process this, as opposed to making it taboo or sweeping it under the rug or acting like no one's leaving. People are leaving. People are leaving every company. You're not the only company where people are leaving. It's happening everywhere because people are looking for change. But if we normalize it and we celebrate people, it just feels like that is just like, a more appropriate way to handle honoring the time people gave instead of making every time someone leaves, it feel like a failure.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    I like that. I think that's a good word. Adam, are there any other questions that you wish I would have asked you or insights that you have to offer?

    - Adam Weber

    I just I was like looking at my notes that I had earlier, and one of the most powerful things I feel like I did as a leader was when I knew that we had, like, a deep issue of conflict. I guess one of the things with empathy to me is that this component that happens inside of organizations, which is this conflict, and it's a natural thing that comes up when people are working hard towards a goal and maybe don't proactively solve an issue. But at some point, like conflict manifests itself.

    - Adam Weber

    And to me, one of the roles of someone who's, like an empathetic leader, is sitting in the midst of that conflict and being willing to truly listen and making sure that in that listening, that people feel heard and some of the most some of the work I looked back on over the last ten years of running a business I'm the most proud of was were the hardest conflicts where there were teams that were highly disengaged, and I Dove into the middle of it, and I sat with a full team and I said, what is going on?

    - Adam Weber

    Let's just talk. This is a safe space and just listened 90 minutes, just sat there and listened and wrote it all down and then summarized it and share it back with them. And I was just like before anything else happens first, like, do you feel hurt? Do you feel like this is what is happening for your experience?

    And then once they're heard one that diffuses things, but then to then to go back and try to bring healing and restoration in those relationships and put the things on the table that have been living in quiet, in festering.

    - Adam Weber

    And there is to me that's a really practical thing. But to me, that is there's empathy in that because when conflict festers, it really at work. When conflict festers at work, it really impacts all aspects of a human being's life. And so to dive into that and to help create resolution in those situations, I think can really unlock workplaces. But it also creates better lives for all the parties that are involved in those scenarios.

    – Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Yeah, I agree to be able to wait into those deep waters and help diffuse it by radical attention. And just really hearing people is huge. Anything else? From your notes?

    – Adam Weber

    I think we did it. I feel pretty good.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    If you are interested in reading Adam’s book, Lead Like a Human, to get more great content, it is linked in the show notes.

    Here are three key takeaways from my conversation with Adam…

    Leaders, are you aware of and coping with your stress in a healthy way? Adam talked about how some of his early missteps happened when he was under tremendous stress that he then pushed out onto his people. Is this happening to you? Maybe that is through a gratitude walk or writing your feelings down in cursive or taking some purposeful grounding time. Empathy is especially important in times of conflict…which is where it is most likely to go out the window!Adam found that just giving people the time to talk and express their feelings was really powerful, it made them feel heard and moved the conversation much closer to its eventual resolution So many employees get promoted to management positions without being trained or prepared for what it means to manage and care for people.They are internalizing stress from above and from their own expectations and that often derails their leadership efforts. How are your training your managers? Are you giving them the skills they need to really connect on a human level with the people they are leading: with their hopes, apprehensions, and challenges?

    OUTRO

    You can find out more about “Lead Like a Human” here: https://www.amazon.com/Lead-Like-Human-Practical-Building-ebook/dp/B08DG14GG6

    You can find out more about HR Superstars here: www.Community.15five.com

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  • - Max Yoder

    That divine middle is emotional liberation, where I can be compassionate and show compassion to an individual. But I do not need to carry whatever it is that they are feeling, right, not my responsibility to. And the thing about the thing that I think this is so important for me in my life is I think this was my biggest blocker, my biggest blocker to grow like something that I may have gone through my whole life and never addressed if it were not for something like Lessonly.

    INTRO

    When companies and individuals think about skilling-up in empathy and compassion, there are common questions that arise. How can I take on the feelings of others without being crushed by them? What do good boundaries look like? How am I ever going to keep my people accountable to their actual work if I start being all touchy-feely with the. My guest today touches on all of these questions and more. There are many reasons why you should take the time to listen to Max Yoder: he is erudite, well-read (see all of the books and authors he noted in the show notes), and he really cares about people. He is also the co-founder of the continually growing learning platform, Lessonly. Just last week, Lessonly made headlines in the tech world when they were acquired by Seismic. And the last few years has been a series of success stories for the company. Max is much more than an executive and a thinker, he is also a crafter of Lego art. - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Is there anything that you found yourself giving time to in the pandemic, whether that's like a new pursuit or a hobby that you have particularly enjoyed?

    - Max Yoder

    Yeah. I've given myself a lot more time to make art, and I tend to make art with Legos. I really appreciate this man named Joseph Albers, who was a teacher at Black Mountain College, right. During World War two, post World War II. And he created this series of things called Homage to a Square. And he really like color theory. So he would put basically squares inside one another. And he did about two0 of these over a series of 20 years, I think from his 60s to his 80s, if I recall correctly, so hugely inspired by somebody doing 2001 thing from their 60 to their 80s.

    - Max Yoder

    And these squares, like I said, they're color theory. So he was trying different colors, and he said when I put a blue in the middle and I surround it with a red, that blue takes on a different cue, then it visually looks different than if I surround it with a lighter blue. Like what we put around to color changes the way we perceived that color.

    - Max Yoder

    So during COVID, I started doing all of these squares, and they were these really great free flow activity where I could get a 16 by 16 Lego square.

    - Max Yoder

    And I would create my own version of Joseph Albers Homage to a Square, all these different colors, and I have them all around my attic now. And it was just one of those things that I could do without thinking I sift through the Legos, I'd find the right color. I'd build these squares. It was not taxing, but it was rewarding.

    - Max Yoder

    And so I think in general, what I learned to do during COVID was play and not have a goal. And in one way of doing that with art and just really, truly understand what playing is, because I think I spent a lot of my adult life and I think a lot of my adolescent life achieving instead of playing, and I think you can do both at the same time.

    - Max Yoder

    But I don't think I was doing both. I think mostly achieving I love that.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Well, especially with the relentless pace of work in general, but especially accelerated as a result of the pandemic to actually have spaces of purposeful rest, whether that's like actual physical rest of sleeping or encompassing it with the mental release of play is something that I hear again and again as I work with different individuals, even as being really life giving. Yeah. I love that

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    You also have welcomed, I think, a new little person into your home in the midst of the pandemic you find that that has having a child in the home has unleashed some different capacities in you as well?

    - Max Yoder

    Oh, yeah. So my daughter Marnie, she's eleven months old yesterday and eleven months.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Happy eleven months, Marnie.

    - Max Yoder

    Yeah, pretty special. Full name is Marina. When she was born, we didn't know she was gonna be a boy or a girl. She came out of my wife, and we had three names for girls, picked out three names for boys. Marina was the one that was clearly the winner. And then basically, as soon after that, we just started calling her money. So she came home and just changed our lives there's. Covid before Marnie and this COVID after Marnie and COVID after Marnie is excellent. You know, I think COVID before Marnie was really tough for a whole host of reasons, but when Marnie came, she brought this new life to our house, like literal new life.

    - Max Yoder

    Right. And then just this vitality to just and I of seeing the world differently and being a dad and watching my wife be a mom. And now being a husband to a mother, like all these things are life changing. And I'm 33 years old this year, and I just sent myself shifting from this achievement mentality to more kind of focusing on now, what do I care about? Why do I care about it? And am I doing the things that I care about? And my family is something that I care about?

    - Max Yoder

    Music is something that I care about reading or things that I care about. And the difference between that and achievement and Carl, you the psychiatrist, help me figure this all out is I'm not doing them to impress anybody or to get anybody's. Applause I'm doing them because I care about them. And if somebody doesn't care about them, that's okay by me. And somebody does care about them. That's okay by me. But I'm not doing it for anybody else. Right?

    - Max Yoder

    And being with my daughter is just something that is really important to me because she just wants me to be there with her.

    - Max Yoder

    She doesn't even need me to do anything. She just needs me to be watching her spending time with her. And it's just been really cool to over eleven months. Jess, who's a very calm woman, nurture Marni and love on Many. I think I call myself in a big way in front of Many. Many got her grandpa and her grandma, and then we have a woman named Gabs, who is a friend of ours and the caretaker of Mary three days a week. And all these people just are very calm personalities.

    - Max Yoder

    And Marni has just been wrapped around with so much love and kind of calmness. And what I imagine is going to come from that is what has come from that, which she's very adventurous, like, she's not scared. She's vibrant, and I just feel really lucky because it's not that parents don't want to give that to their kids, right? I think it's just sometimes we just don't have the resources, don't have the time, we're overstressed, and we're in a fortunate position where that's not the case. And it is highly rewarding to see my daughter be that's exploring, creative, laughing kid.

    - Max Yoder

    And I want that for everybody because it's a real gift. I.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Love that enjoyment of just her presence and watching her flourishing.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    And something that you said kind of, like, particularly caught my attention, that I'm not thinking primarily of what I'm doing for her. I'm just being with her. I'm paying attention and the power of presence, which is its own segue into some of what we want to talk about today, which is empathy and connection in the workplace, because although it's not like a paternal relationship with those that you work with, I think there's this deeply human need to be seen and acknowledge, and I'd like to kick it off.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    I know you're a leader that values cultivating this in your workplace. What is a personal story for you about why empathy and human connection really matter specifically in the workplace?

    - Max Yoder

    Yeah. I think empathy allows me to feel as somebody, so it allows me to kind of sit in their shoes and do my best approximation of what's stressing them or what's bringing them joy, like, empathizing with their situation. And I think that's incredibly important to a certain degree. I think the place where I get the most juice is being compassionate. And I think I've learned to recognize feeling sympathy for somebody, understanding that they are going through pain, but not carrying that pain as my owner running those same circuits myself.

    - Max Yoder

    This is something that Robert Sapolsky to a gentleman from Stanford has helped me understand. If I sit there and run the circuits all day long that somebody else is running and I get stressed with them, I wear myself out, but I can be compassionate and sympathetic to an individual. Like, if they're hurting, I can acknowledge that they're hurting, but I don't need to run the same circuits.

    - Max Yoder

    So I think it's really important to be empathetic because it gives me a chance to kind of sit in something and understand. Oh, yeah, that does not feel good. But I can't run that circuit too much because I'll wear myself out. But I can run the compassion circuit a lot longer where I can see if somebody's in pain, even if they're yelling at me or they're frustrated with something that, you know, life is tough there in a difficult situation that you might describe as suffering. I might describe a suffering.

    - Max Yoder

    And to be a calm presence in the face of that is a gift in and of itself. I might not have to do anything more than that. Then just be calm in front of them, not diminish or dilute. What they're saying also enhance what they're saying. Just be there as a calm presence that listen. And who does that take me? Has that taken me a long time to learn?

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Can you give me an example? What has that looked like for you and your leadership over the last year and a half?

    - Max Yoder

    Yeah. I think we can. I go back longer than that because I think the Lessonly journey is nine years long to date, July 12 today. And I noticed that as we hired more and more people, we hit 17 people, and then we hit 25 people and then hit 50 people, that there was always more feelings coming into the business. Right. A woman named Jill Bolte Taylor, a friend and somebody who I love says we are feeling creatures who think, not thinking, creatures who feel feeling, creatures who think.

    - Max Yoder

    So we are a lot of feelings, right. We are very emotional. And for most of my life, I believe that was responsible for people's feelings. And I believed that I was responsible also for their judgments, which kind of two sides of the same coin. I just feeling responsible for two things that are not my responsibility. Right. Feelings and judgments of other folks. So I would try to carry those feelings as my own, and I would kind of assume those judgments as fact and they crushed me.

    - Max Yoder

    So I'm going to focus on the feelings part today, as opposed to the judgments or for this moment, on the feelings part.

    - Max Yoder

    There was a lot of feelings in the business, and every time we hired a new person, just more and more feelings, and we got to 50 people, and I couldn't take it anymore. I was probably a long pass being able to take it anymore. I was stressed, self medicating, trying to keep up with all the feelings. And it wasn't working because the frantic folks around me, if they were feeling frantic, I was becoming frantic myself, and that's just not what people need.

    - Max Yoder

    So I was fortunate enough. One of my teammates, who her name was Casey Combo. At the time, she's since married, she gave me a book called Non Violent Communication, not because she knew I was struggling with this, but because she knew I was looking for different methods for clear communication that was not aggressive, that was not argumentative, but was clear and compassionate. And in this book, Marshall Rosenberg writes about emotional slavery, which was exactly what I was. I was an emotional slave. I believe other people's feelings my responsibility.

    - Max Yoder

    And then he writes about emotional liberation. And he talks about these stages, the first stage, being emotional slavery of I assume your feelings as my own and my responsibility, and I carry them, and I get tired and you get tired. He says that a lot of times when people do that for so long, they might move into the next stage, which is basically disavowing other people's feelings. And right, about 50 people. That's really the only thing I knew how to do at that point. I was like, I can't carry all these feelings, so I'm just going to say no to all of them.

    - Max Yoder

    We hired Megan Jarvis at that point or head of the yeah, wonderful. Right. And I was like, hey, Megan, I'm so glad you're here. I need you to take the ceilings, like, I just need to go high. But, like, that was so not fun for me, because being with people is why I like my job, you know? So hiding from the feelings, man, I wasn't going to like my job, so it was just not going to work. So depending on my energy levels, I'd either carry people's feelings or I would hide.

    - Max Yoder

    And Marshall Rosenberg showed me that there's a third way. So those are two extremes right side of turning feelings all the way down to I don't care at all. So turning it down to 0% or turning it all the way up to a 100% care about everybody's feelings. And he makes it clear that there's this divine middle and that divine middle is emotional liberation, where I can be compassionate and show compassion to an individual. But I do not need to carry whatever it is that they are feeling, right, not my responsibility to.

    - Max Yoder

    And the thing about the thing that I think this is so important for me in my life is I think this was my biggest blocker, my biggest blocker to grow like something that I may have gone through my whole life and never addressed if it were not for something like Lessonly. Lessonly is this thing that's bigger than me, and it needed me. It was either going to crush me if I didn't figure this out, or I need to figure this out to keep my job. I wasn't going to be able to do my job if I didn't figure this out.

    - Max Yoder

    And so this bigger thing than me forced me to figure this out. And Marshall Rosenberg game is a blueprint of emotional liberation, and that's what I began to practice. And I don't know if I'm never going to be the same because of that.

    - Max Yoder

    In a really, really healthy way. I don't feel responsible for other people's feelings anymore. I feel responsible for my feelings and kind of making sure that I take care of myself. I are responsible for my intent behind my behavior. I'm responsible for my behavior.

    - Max Yoder

    I consider myself responsible for those things. Doesn't mean I consider you responsible for yours. I just telling you, I consider my response for those things. And so that's what I focus on.

    - Max Yoder

    And the reason I bring that up is in the journey of lesson. Like, there's been nothing more important to me than this.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    I'm struck in finding that third way that you needed to develop a skill set of perhaps encountering the emotion. And I don't know if discharging is the right word, but even, like, energetically being able to release your feelings of responsibility, what what did that look like?

    - Max Yoder

    Thanks for asking that. I mean, very clumsy at first. Right. Like, understanding something intellectually does not mean that I can do it. Well, I have to practice it again and again and again, which is a whole other topic we should discuss of. Just like, intellectual understanding is not knowing. Knowing is doing. You cannot know something without having done it is otherwise it's intellectual understanding. So I had to practice a heck of a lot and remind myself that when somebody came to me and brought something, it was always coming through the lens of their own experiences.

    - Max Yoder

    And it was never simply about the thing that had happened. They were also bringing to me whatever else was going on in our life, because we can't separate that. We can't separate, like if we're having an emotionally charged home life and something happens at work, and it is like the straw that breaks the camel's back. What I hear from that person is just the work thing, right? What I don't see is all the stuff underneath the water that is happening. That is not my business, but it's always there, right?

    - Max Yoder

    And when I would make a decision network Edwin Friedman, who wrote this book called The Failure of Nerve, he really helped me with this. He helped me understand that I'm always in a relational triangle with each person. And this was a big breakthrough for me. This is like something that intellectually, really helped me break through in terms of my practice, which was when somebody comes to me, there's always a third thing in the room, and that is a prior issue that they might be bringing, or I might be bringing or another person that they might be bringing to the conversation where I might be bringing.

    - Max Yoder

    So to make it clear, like, Liesel, you and I are engaging right now, and we need shortcuts to kind of understand how to behave with one another. So we might filter through other people that we know that remind us of one another. And so when I meet people like Liesel, which this is just a brain by a shortcut, these things you'll come to mind. And in your case, I get a lot of warmth from you. But let's say I reminded you of somebody who really rub you the wrong way in the past.

    - Max Yoder

    You might engage with me through the lens of that person. It's not just about me and you directly. It's a third thing that everything goes through and that's happening all the time everywhere. We're not directly relating to one another, relating through our past experiences and the people that we've known in the past. That helped me a lot, because when somebody would come to me and be really fired up about something that I thought was disproportionate to what it just happened, it helped me understand why that might be.

    - Max Yoder

    There might have been a past issue, that this was emotional wound that was being poked at. It was not my responsibility, right? But I can sit there and be attached into the person. And maybe they don't understand that here, bringing that to the table. But I can have a sense like, this is not just about me and this person and this thing that's happening, they're filtering through their life. Right? And so when I realized that through Edwin Freeman, I realized it almost gave me permission to not carry things, because people are always bringing more to me than was between me and them.

    - Max Yoder

    And I'm always bringing more to people that is between me and them. So I don't want them to carry my stuff. And I don't want to carry theirs. Does that help, or does that make sense?

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Yeah. That understanding. Did you find yourself needing? Some people engage in breathing exercises or they find themselves even to physically move as you are growing in this practice, there were things that you were like reading that were helping contextualize it. Were there other things that you like, embodied practices that were really helping.

    - Max Yoder

    Oh, yeah. Getting sleep sober, sleep hugely helpful. Like, I can show up and be calm in a conversation in a much richer way if I do not drink booze before bed. And I don't mean, like, I mean any amount of booze. And this is a rule that I break a lot for myself, which is like even a glass of wine at 05:00 p.m. Or 06:00 p.m.. It affects my sleep. So if I really want to be the best version of me, I say no, and I sleep better.

    - Max Yoder

    And it's just a fact of the matter. I am much less agitated. I am much calmer. So doing my pre work of getting exercise, eating well, sleeping well. And all those things are intertwined, what I eat and how I exercise to fix my sleep. So that matters to me a lot of just kind of taking care of myself and controlling the variables I can control. And then in that moment, if somebody's losing, they're cool in front of me or I'm losing my cool in front of them.

    - Max Yoder

    And my therapist, Terry Daniel, says it can help basically coach me. It can help to put your hand on your stomach, like, on your skin. And it can be a safer thing to do when we're not physically in the room together. Like, let's say I'm having a different conversation over the phone, like, happening a lot over COVID. And just that skin to skin connection with myself can be very helpful. Breathing. Breathing deeply when I'm with somebody can be very helpful. Breathing and showing them slow my breath down can even be coming to them.

    - Max Yoder

    So, yeah, there's physical things that I can do in that moment. And I hope it's very clear that I'm not suggesting that I nail this every time. Right. These are just tools that I have to do this a little bit better every day.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Yeah. I think that's helpful. As you were beginning, you talked about this inflection point at 50 employees where you started giving more attention to the particular presence that you were bringing. What did you start to notice? Did you notice the difference in people's receptivity to you and the sorts of things they were saying back to you as you grew in this practice?

    - Max Yoder

    Yeah. Here's one thing that comes to mind that I noticed is I noticed I didn't have to solve anybody's problems for them. And I used to think I had to, like, I used to think I had to come up with solutions. And more than anything, now, I can be with somebody ask them questions and ask them questions and do active listening. So, like, one of the things I learned through motivational interviewing is if somebody's telling me something instead of asking a question, saying something like, so maybe somebody comes to me and says they haven't responded to me three times.

    - Max Yoder

    You're frustrated might be the way I summarize where I think that person is at based on what they just told me. And then they had to go, Well, not really frustrated, just a little bit irritated. Or they go, yeah, I'm totally frustrated, and they keep talking. And when I'm getting them to do with this verbally process, and I'm only doing that because when they verbally process this stuff, they come up with answers a lot better. Right. But if I'm talking the whole time, it's tough for them to find answers.

    - Max Yoder

    So when I reflect what I'm hearing with a statement, it gives them a chance to keep talking so that they can kind of maybe all I have to do is just get it out. Right. Not keep it in, just say it to somebody. Some days that's all that happened, and two or three days go by and they call me and they say, I think I figured out what to do. Thanks for listening the other day, it just is it. And I'm somebody who wants to solve a problem.

    - Max Yoder

    Right. But in fact, sometimes I'm doing somebody a major disservice by even if I got the answer right on the off chance I get the answer right. With the limited information I have sometimes saying, hey, maybe here's what you should do is a complete disservice to that individual, because me giving it to them might make them more likely to actually not pick it up and do it. But if I were to just a little calmer and let them give you that conclusion themselves, it's so much more powerful if they thought of it.

    - Max Yoder

    Right. Like, you don't want to be told to do things. So sometimes even if it's the right call, we might do the opposite of what I've just been told because we got told to do it. But if somebody can figure it out themselves, that's the most powerful.

    - Max Yoder

    That's the most powerful recipe, even if it's exactly the same thing I would have said. Right. And most of the time, of course, I don't have the answer. But I guess my point is sometimes even giving somebody the answer unless they're asking me for it.

    - Max Yoder

    Right. Unless they're saying Max, I really want your feedback here, which is a whole different prompt. Right. But if they're not asking for it and give it a I can do a major disservice in that process.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Yeah. I think that's such a good word, because I think especially as people get, we oftentimes promote people on their capacity to solve problems. It's a really valuable skill set to organizational growth and leadership. In my work, I call it the predisposition to be in a Fix-It, Frank.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    And what I heard and what you said is also a comfortability with a slightly extended time horizon. I think as I verbally process something that I see in the leaders that I work with, is there this imperative of like, well, we need to get it figured out now. We need to get it figured out in the moment. And I've got insights and I've got a history, and so I'll give it to you, and then you'll be happy. And how that short circuiting of the process, it can be a move of not believing that there's enough time to let somebody come to their own conclusion or not believing that they have the capacity of do so.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    So I've just got to give it to you in this moment.

    - Max Yoder

    Right.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    And the cost that can be associated with doing that, I think he spoke really eloquently to.

    - Max Yoder

    Well, thank you for hearing me out, because I think that's taking me a long time. Like, what I saw is the people who I would go to therapy with were very reluctant to give answers. So they were modeling for me, and I'd ask them why, and they teach me. And I don't consider myself a therapist. Right. But these people I do consider they are therapists. They're professinally, trained and in some cases, done it for 40 years. That's a long time. And there's a lot of mistakes being made in that process to their admittance, seeing them and seeing how helpful it was for me, but also knowing that there were times when I would go to that person to say I'd really like some advice.

    - Max Yoder

    And I've opened the door at that point to hear them. And many times the advice they give me, I don't take it up with open arms. It's when that advice feels pushed, then that's when it doesn't work, right. When it feels pushed or forced. But when it's invited, that's a whole different motion.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Right. So the acknowledgment of seeing a therapist of some of the things that they have helped you with. You recently did something for your company where you interviewed your therapist to talk about boundaries. I'd like to hear about why that felt important for you to do. And what were some of the key learnings that you felt like were really important for your people,

    - Max Yoder

    Yeah. So while I was important and what do people take away from it? I can only tell you what to away from because they haven't seen the interview yet. At the time of this conversation, we have not shown it to them yet. But I'll tell you what I hope to take away from it. But I'll start with, hey, here's why this is important. Many of my teammates asked me about boundaries just completely unprompted. They would come to me and say, hey, I'm going on a vacation. I know that you encourage us to turn all of our stuff off, to delete our email and our delete our slack from our phones, so we're not going to compulsively check them.

    - Max Yoder

    But I don't know if I'm comfortable doing that. And for whatever reason, they were not willing to accept themselves doing that they were concerned. And that's a boundaries challenge for me. I speak openly about having engaged with people that I love who have substance use challenges. And I speak openly about having to learn about boundaries in that process where I begin and they end in where they end, and I begin. It's a very important part of understanding how to be healthy in the midst of something that is really, really challenging, which is substance use disorder, which you might co alcoholism or any number of things.

    - Max Yoder

    Right. So I speak openly about these things. People come to me, and it's clear to me that this is not something that we get a lot of attention. And I would generally share. See, if somebody wanted something from me, I would generally share a talk by Gabor Monte called "When the body says no" was good.

    - Max Yoder

    He's a master, and he speaks about boundaries. Basically, caregivers tend to struggle taking care of themselves, and they'll just give care and give care and give care, and they will not care for themselves. They'll be asymmetrical in the way they give care. The way that they care for somebody else is one way. And the way that her from themselves is completely opposite. Basically, like, they don't deserve any care, but everybody else deserves all the care. And he basically talks about how this just Withers people away. So all of these things combined, I know boundaries are important in my life, and my teammates come to me and say they matter.

    - Max Yoder

    Gabor Mate gives this talk. And when I share with people, they tell me like, oh, my gosh, my brain just blew open in such an interesting way because he's so profound. So I'm thinking, hey, this is a chance for me, too. And so I asked my therapist about how does he view boundaries? And he gave this just excellent off the cuff answer. And I was like, Can I just interview you sometime about this? And so we can share this with my teammates, because exactly what you just said.

    - Max Yoder

    So he comes in and we talk about boundaries. And I thought it was important because I just it's just not talked about in our world. Right? We think Kind is doing things for other people, kind of at any expense to ourselves. Right. Like, well, they asked for it. So I got to give it because I don't want to be a jerk.

    - Max Yoder

    It's like that. It's not. We have to counterbalance kindness with boundaries, with assertiveness. And I just see people who do not have those tools to be assertive, and it's very stressful for them, and I ultimately think it's slowly killing them. So I think this is important. So here's what I hope people take from it. When they hear a assertiveness, I think they maybe hear aggressiveness. And Terry is very clear that you can be assertive without infringing on anybody else's energy or anybody else's motion. Like, it's not about aggression, right?

    - Max Yoder

    Those are two different things. Assertiveness is the ability to say yes or no based on you wanting to or not wanting to. And he says it ultimately comes from a place of self acceptance. If I enter a space and I accept myself, then I can assert my needs. And asserting my needs does not mean dominating your needs, right? It just means if I'm tired, somebody comes to me and says, hey, can we do this thing today? I might say if I'd like to do it tomorrow, I just don't have the energy today.

    - Max Yoder

    I like to do it tomorrow. And if that person is not willing to accept it, I say I understand, but I still have the energy. Can we do it tomorrow? And he's like, if you don't accept yourself, you won't even ask. You may not even ask the question of can we do it tomorrow? Because you may be coming from a place to say, I'm not good enough in order to feel good enough, I need to answer this request. But he's, like an accepting person, believes they're good enough.

    - Max Yoder

    They don't believe that they're going to be good enough by doing the request on the demanded time. Right. They're just good enough. And so he really clarified in a big way how self acceptance is key here. And what keeps us from exerting boundaries is a fear. And each person's fear might be different. But understanding what that fear is, it might be that you feel like you're not good enough for X, Y, or Z reason might be something different, but getting down to that fear and understanding it and and working through that is the way that we get to a place where we're comfortable enough to say no, thank you and stand by it and not be worried that that person, we're going to lose that person by doing so.

    - Max Yoder

    So there.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Well, and as I think of some of the responses and groups and surveys and the work that I do, I think there's an underlying fear for many people that if I assert this boundary, people aren't going to like me as much. They're going to think I'm lazy. And while you, as a leader, cannot, in a top down way, control people's responses to things like establishing boundaries or expressing vulnerability, that there is an element of culture creation that goes into this. How do we, as a group, you know, not always perfectly respond, but have more of a context where we, like, make the space for that.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    We make the space for it's okay to say no. We make the space for vulnerability. What are some of the ways that you have co created with some of the other leaders at Lessonly, a culture that says it's okay to do that? What are things that you have done that have moved the needle?

    - Max Yoder

    Yeah. So if the executive team at Lessonly is unable to assert ourselves, like, if we are not assertive in a situation, if we say yes to every new thing that comes our way, we are not modeling what we need the rest of our teammates to do. So it's incredibly important that a certain boundaries in my life that the executive team set boundaries and their lives, that when it's too much, we say it's too much. That is the fundamentally most important thing we can do to make it okay for anybody else to do it.

    - Max Yoder

    The opposite approach that does not work is the same as your boss saying, hey, I don't expect you to work on the weekends, but I'm gonna because, you know, I got a lot to do, but I don't expect you to, and that just doesn't work. You know what? People here, I better be working on the weekends, right? If your behavior is not aligned to your words, people are going to look at your behavior, right? Not your words. They're going to trust your behavior, not your words.

    - Max Yoder

    So what I want to do is align my words to my behavior, which is to say weekends are sacred, just like winter is the season that allows for spring. And winter is a season where it looks like there's not a lot happening, but there is a lot happening. Sleep at a time when it look like there's not a lot happening, but there is a lot happening. We need weekends or it looks like there's not a lot happening, but there is a lot happening, right? This resting and recharging is incredibly important.

    - Max Yoder

    And if I don't treat my weekends like I want to people to treat them. And then why would I believe they're going to do that? Right. I can't do anything more than that is just make the space to say like, I mean it when I say this, and I mean it because this is my behavior, and I need my executive teammates to mean it, too. And I need the managers to also mean it, too. And in some ways, that goes well in other ways. It doesn't.

    - Max Yoder

    Right. But it's ultimately out of my hands to some degree. Right. If people are going to pick that up, if we have a chronically, chronic challenge of the teammate, it's my responsibility to have a difficult conversation with them and let them know how important their modeling is, no doubt. But ultimately they're going to make the call if they want to change their behavior or not. And it's out of my hands if I'm doing it myself.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    I'm struck right now that it's a tight labor market for many people. Lessonly is growing. You're wanting to bring more people on. Do you feel like you have seen a through line towards creating this kind of culture where rests and seasons and vulnerability is upheld and valued and the way you're able to attract and retain talent?

    - Max Yoder

    I think we understand part of the recipe, but we exist in a system, though, that is chronically overworked and systems win. Like individuals, we've created a system a lesson that I'm really proud of. But we're also in this broader work environment, in this cultural environment of overwork. And unfortunately, those systems, if we don't kind of remove ourselves from them and do a lot of extra work, they win. The bigger system wins. The culture wins. If they didn't win, we wouldn't probably have 25% to 50% of the population reporting depressive States.

    - Max Yoder

    Right.

    - Max Yoder

    The culture is winning. We've optimized for economic growth, we've optimized for consumerism, we've optimized for commercialism. We haven't optimized for well being. And look what we're getting, right. We're not getting a lot of well being because the system is not in support of of that. So it's discouraging. It just is. And so we can only do so much less only to turn the tide. But it's our job to at least try. And one of the things that I find complete myself to be completely powerless to change is that there is no winter in software.

    - Max Yoder

    There's no winter in the business world. There is no period of three months like there is for a pro athlete or for a farmer, where we work really hard and we plant and then we harvest. I'm not a farmer, so I'm not going to use all the right words, but we create a crop or mini crops. And then we have this period with winter where we take our time to rebuild. And pro athletes have their own seasoned in their off seasons. And this is wise. This is wise.

    - Max Yoder

    I have not figured out how to recreate that in the business world. And I don't know if I ever will. It just is the system at work, right? Our customers, even if we take that time off, if we were to say less, only going to B nine months out of twelve, we're going to lose deals because there's a lot of deals because people need us for those three months, they were going to be off, right? Because they're going to be on. So, you know, it's not an excuse.

    - Max Yoder

    It's just me saying, like, I don't know how to do it, right.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    The pressures of the prevailing system of capitalism that prioritizes growth and efficiency above all else.

    - Max Yoder

    You said it well.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    We’ll return in just a moment for the final portion of my engaging interview with Max. But I want to take a moment to thank our sponsor, Handle with Care Consulting. In the midst of the unrelenting stressors the last year and a half, are you giving your people what they need to stay engaged? Empathy is key to building the sort of culture of connection that Max is talking about at Lessonly. And the good news is, it is a skill that can be learned! If you want help in skill-ing your people up in empathy and creating a place where people want to come to work, Handle with Care Consulting can help. With interactive keynotes, empathy at work certificate programs, and coaching options, we can help you show care when it matters most.

    MUSICAL TRANSITON

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    I would love to hear about times when building connection at your workplace have felt easy for you and why you think they felt easy. And then I'm going to have to underside. What are times when building connections felt really hard for you and why you think to start with when it felt easy?

    - Max Yoder

    Yeah. When it's all easy to build connections, when I am accepting on myself to go back to Terry Daniels lesson. I mean, it has everything to do with my my internal system being an equilibrium, you know, which is a delicate thing, right? One night of sleep and throw it off. But when I am in this place of peace with myself, I'm able to bring peace to my connections and not view myself as needing to be anything other than what I am. But when I'm not at peace with myself, I can go to a state of judgment and criticism.

    - Max Yoder

    And if I drop a ball or miss a mark and these are judgments that I would make of myself, you mess that up, you drop this ball, you miss that Mark. Those are all judgments in their evaluator language. It can be very harsh with myself and showing up to a situation. Putting intense pressure myself does not increase my connection to the person in front of me or the room in front of me. But when I show up and just say, like, you know, I accept myself, and acceptance does not equal agreement.

    - Max Yoder

    Like, acceptance does not mean I've got it all figured out. Therefore, I'm good. Acceptance just means I'm willing to look at my own behavior and accept it. Whether it's behavior that I can objectively say is life giving or soul sucking, I have to be able to look at it to accept myself. And once I can look at it, I might be able to make changes. But if I can't look at something, it's tough to change it. Right. So acceptance is not about saying I like everything that's going on in my life, just about saying I'm willing to look at everthing that going in my life with in an even handed way.

    - Max Yoder

    And when I accept myself, I can show up to a room with my new teammates or my old teammates or a mixture of the two and be peaceful in front of them and talk about mistakes without feeling ashamed and talk about things that I'm proud of without feeling ashamed and and share my humanity. And if I can do that, it maybe gives another person's permission to do the same. So I think it has everything to do with my personal system, being in a good spot here and then acknowledging that my personal system is often not in a good spot to folks so that they understand, like, hey, they're not dealing with somebody who's got this figured out, right?

    - Max Yoder

    Like day in and day out. I might have a different equilibrium, or I might have a different disequilibrium, right? It's not about coming at this from a place like I've got this oneness every day. I certainly do not do. Not at all. Right. But when I'm at peace, I can connect better. And I find that to be a really fun time in that journey towards self acceptance.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Something consistent theme that I hear from leaders is just the particular burden of other people's expectations about what it looks like to lead or manage change in a given season; as you are seeking that equilibrium and self acceptance, what about when you smack up against somebody else's? Like, judgment? I needed you to be different. I wanted you. You're not doing it the way that I would like for you to. How do you encounter those voices, real or perceived and still work to maintain well in the balance?

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Because sometimes we do need to change. Sometimes it's like, oh, that was a blind spot. I need to change. And sometimes we need to be able to have the discernment to say, like, hey, that's your stuff, not mine. How do you navigate that process?

    - Max Yoder

    You nailed it, right? How much does this person love me? Is my first question. How well does this person know me? If it's my wife, I know she deeply loves me. And when she brings me something where she says, hey, what I got and what I needed were far apart, I'm listening. I'm not sitting there saying, hey, your expectations of me don't matter, right? I'm listening. It might not be that I agree with everything she says, right? But I'm definitely not shutting it all out either, right?

    - Max Yoder

    She is just like me going to come at this from an emotional triangle of past wounds, but doesn't mean that there's not real meat on the boat when she's frustrated. Right now, if somebody needs something from me and I don't know them very well, and I'm skeptical that they love me or know me really at all, it's not that challenging anymore for me to just kind of let that. There's a moment at first that I go back to my old self of getting defensive or being hurt.

    - Max Yoder

    And it's more than a moment sometimes, right? It could be an hour. It could be 2 hours. It could be 3 hours. It could be a good night sleep that needs me through it. But then I'm like, yeah, that's okay. Life is too short. So it depends on my relationship to this individual. And Brene Brown has the idea of the Square Squad, where, you know, the coal world can't be my critic, and I can't have nobody has my critic either, right? I need the people who love me, care about me.

    - Max Yoder

    And if the Square Squad is the one inch by one inch piece of paper where I can put the names of the people who I know love me, who will tell me the truth as they see the truth, right? They're version of the truth, and I know that they're not going to willingly hurt me for fun. And those are the folks who feedback. I am a lot more. I'm a lot more discerning with. Right? But if somebody's coming out with this condemnation or an unspoken expectation and they say you didn't meet my unspoken expectation, like, that is not my problem because it's an unbroken expectation.

    - Max Yoder

    There was no agreement there. I've got a chapter and Do Better Work, which is a book I got to write a couple of years ago that uses Steve Chandler wisdom of expectations versus agreement. Like, if we did not agree to that thing, then we have to get that agreement now and then begin to hold another accountable going forward. But if we didn't have an agreement and you're mad about not spoken expectation, like, I need you to look in the mirror and say, like, hey, we get an agreement because I don't remember the agreement now, and I can't read your mind, and we don't need to go back and litigate the path that you're frustrated about when we didn't have this agreement.

    - Max Yoder

    Just an unspoken expectation. But we can make an agreement now. And an agreement is not you dictating at me or me dictating you. It's us going back and forth and negotiating a course of action that we say, okay, this feels good collectively. You know, that is a relationship. When we do that, the other thing is just, you know, I can't live in a world where I just have to respond to everybody's unspoken expectations.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Something that I like and have appreciated. I think I've been getting your emails for, like, the last two years just because I enjoy reading them.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    But you compiled them into a book that you just referenced. Do Better Work. You have a new book coming out. Tell us about that.

    - Max Yoder

    Yeah. So I took those notes and compiled it. So the first book do better work. I'd been writing notes, took some of those, turn them into chapters. This one is called To See It, be It. And I'll say that a little slower to see it. Be it. The idea is, if you want to see it, be it. And that's the best you can do. Right. I want to see more patience in this moment. Bring patience. If you want to see more creativity in the world, bring creativity.

    - Max Yoder

    And then let go of all the other stuff of what you want other people to be doing, because I think it's just very, very common and very easy to get wrapped around the axle of what other people are not doing. And I honestly think some people will die spending most of their time complaining about what somebody else is or is not doing instead of going, do I do what I value? Right? Do I live by what I value? And, of course, the answer is going to be no, because nobody does that perfectly.

    - Max Yoder

    And then the next question, if the answer is no, what it always is, how can I begin to spend more time doing what I value? And let go of worrying about what anybody else is doing? And, of course, there's a relationships with husbands and wives and kids were that's incredibly difficult, right. And there might have to be boundary set where I feel like I'm living my values over here and there's somebody else in my space consistently that I just don't feel like I can do my best self around.

    - Max Yoder

    That might require boundaries of separation. I just don't be together anymore. But what I'm getting at is, I think one of the greatest things we can do for ourselves to say what I want to see in the world, and how do I, at the time align to what I want to see in the world? And I think what happens when we do that is we either find that the things we want to see in the world has validity to them. We start to live them, and we start to see that they're very life giving.

    - Max Yoder

    Like, let's just use an example of getting good sleep. I want to see people well rested in the world. Well, I can't control how you sleep. I can control how I sleep. So if I take care of my rest, I want to see it, and I'm being it, right. And I can let go of all the other things. But at least I'm doing the thing that I want to see more people doing, and I'm letting go of whether they're doing it or.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Yeah, not.

    - Max Yoder

    And as I do that, I might say, hey, this feels pretty good. Like I had a hunch that sleep taking care of sleep was going to be helpful. And look how beautiful life is now that I've been able to take care of my sleep, which I understand is not an option for everybody. But I'm saying it's an option for me. So sometimes living my values strengthens those values. Other times, living things that I believe I value, like I intellectually value it, and then I start trying to live it.

    - Max Yoder

    I found out, oh, I don't really value that as much as I thought I would putting into practice. I see that there is that there are problems and there are always problems with any value is taken to an extreme. Like loyalty. I value loyalty. Taken to the extreme, it becomes blind loyalty. If I turn it all the way up to 100% loyalty, I become blindly loyal. If I turn all the way down to 0% loyalty, I don't have any loyalty at all. Right. I need to have that loyalty dialed into something somewhere in the middle counterbalanced with once again assertiveness and boundaries.

    - Max Yoder

    I'm loyal to somebody, but not at the expense of my own mental health and well being. It those two things counterbalance one another. So only by living that value do I learn those hard lessons, in my opinion. Right. I can't learn them intellectually. I have to live them and say, oh, wow, I do value this, but I value a different permutation of it than I thought. That makes sense.

    - Max Yoder

    So that's what the book that's the first chapter of the book is, or the first note in the book. And then there's 24 notes after that of other things that I just think are important, and I share them because they help me and they help somebody else. Great. I just know for a fact that all 25 of them help me. And my hope is that maybe one day somebody picks them up and they want to read the book. Right. They're choosing to read the book. And one of the notes, as as it helps me in the past, helps them in a similar way or a different way altogether.

    - Max Yoder

    That is healing as the whole point of the book.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Right. Well, and your writing is accessible. It's oftentimes encompassing story. It's nice digestible bits of wisdom that you could blaze through all at once, so you could flip through and take a little at a time. So I'm excited about this new offering.

    - Max Yoder

    Thank you for being open to it. It's a great joy for me to write. I got to dedicate it to my daughter, and I dedicated to her because I just want I could get hit by a bus one day. Liesel. My dad owns a funeral home, and my dad's dad started a funeral home. My dad and his brother ran the funeral home for last 30 years, 20, 30 years. And people just get they just leave, right? They don't choose to go a lot of the time. It's not old age that takes us all.

    - Max Yoder

    So I'm very highly aware that, like, is not my choice when I get to go and so writing for me is a chance to capture a bit of my spirit. And if I have to go for whatever reason, my daughter can pick up this book and do better work and and catch a little bit of her dad and deeply special to me to be able to capture a little bit of my spirit. And it really forced the genuineness out of it.

    - Max Yoder

    Right. Because I don't want it.

    - Max Yoder

    I don't want my I got to be genuine under that premise. Right. Like, I got to say what I believe, what I mean and what I stand by, because I don't want my daughter reading about somebody who didn't exist.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Right. Or reflecting in an individual that is not integrated with their best thoughts. Like, we're always seeking that integration, but you don't want a glaring gap between what you say and how you live, right.

    - Max Yoder

    And I want her to see that I hurt. I make mistakes. Right. She's not going to get a picture of a perfect human being because I've never been one of those and they don't exist. She's going to get a picture of somebody who struggled, and that's what I want her to have, because that's the model I want to be. Hey, life is a lot of struggle, and there's a lot of beauty in that, you know, a lot of beauty in that. I've been very fortunate in that struggle, right.

    - Max Yoder

    I always had a roof over my head. I always had food to eat. I don't pretend my struggles like anybody elses, but I can tell you struggle nonetheless. And I don't want her to think that life should just fall into place and be peachy. And that's what life is.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    So as we draw near the end of our time for listeners who say I want to build more connection in my workplace, I want to be part of that change.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    I know it's a broad question, but what words of insight would you offer to them as they think about how to go about doing that?

    - Max Yoder

    So I want people to ask themselves, what do I value? And how do I, 1% of the time seek to live that value and become symmetrical and congruent with what I value in my behavior? And then how do I learn in that process? Because that's the best I can do. And if I'm in a system like, let's say I'm in a work system where it does not align to my values, I have to ask myself, Am I willing to change into those systems value because the work system will change every person in it if they stay long enough, right?

    - Max Yoder

    It could even change them quickly. But if I'm in a system that is not congruent with my values, I'm going to be nervous because it's possible that that system actually has values that are very life giving. It stay long enough, I'll find out. But if I find out they're not life giving, I stick around. There is a casualty there. There is a loss there. So my ask to people is if you want to see it, be it and then pay attention to what the system cares about.

    - Max Yoder

    And if the system is so disproportionately, caring about things that are not what you care about is very important. If possible, you get out.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    That's a good word, Max. Are there any questions that you wish I would have asked you that I didn't ask you?

    - Max Yoder

    Let's see. I mean, I've talked about values a lot, so real quickly, I think something that I love talking about is this idea of reciprocity. Liesel, yeah.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Tell me more.

    - Max Yoder

    Yeah. So reciprocity is idea of I give what I get. And so let's say I get kindness from somebody, so I give it back. But a lot of times reciprocity comes through in a relationship where people are not communicating very clearly, when maybe somebody is struggling and they take their aggression out at somebody else, reciprocity is oftentimes somebody yelled at me. So I yell at them. Somebody didn't respond to my message, so I don't respond to their message. So it becomes I give what I get. And reciprocal cultures, if we're having behaviors that are life giving really beautiful, right?

    - Max Yoder

    Because somebody gives me patience. Ideally, I respond to them with patience, right? Somebody gives me support. Ideally, I respond to them with support. Reciprocity is not necessarily something that is good or bad. It just is. And it resides about giving what we get. So what's the alternative to that? Well, it's living by values, which is, I think, supremely important to understand. If somebody comes to me, maybe somebody doesn't respond to my message that I sent them. And then later, they need something for me. So now they're asking me for my time.

    - Max Yoder

    If I'm reciprocal, I say, Well, they didn't respond to me when I needed them, so I'm not going to respond to them. But if I value driven, I say I value communication, right? I value support, and I would have value that person responding to me when I needed their help. So regardless of the fact that I didn't get it from them, I'm going to give it to them, not out of fight, not to show them the way. Right. Because I value it. It's really important that we get those two things.

    - Max Yoder

    It's not out of fight, right? It's not to prove anything to this person. It's because I value it. So if you're not having difficult conversations with me, it's not an excuse for me because I'm not living in reciprocal life. I believe in difficult conversations. I believe in having them. I'm going to have them with you. And that's the best I can do. You may not respond in the way that I hope that's out of my hands, right. I just value difficult conversations. I value patients. I value forgiveness whether I get them or not.

    - Max Yoder

    So I think reciprocating can be a race to the bottom. It can be this kind of slippery slope of just degrading cultures, degrading relationships, and values based living. If I do it because I value it, not because I get it in return is the answer, in my opinion.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    I love it. I agree.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    Here are three key takeaways from my conversation with Max and I have to confess, there were definitely more than three valuable takeaways, but I have narrowed it down to these three…

    Where are you in the spectrum of people pleasing? Max talked about emotional slavery (feeling responsible for the emotions of others), and emotional disavowal (rejecting the emotions of others), and the third path of emotional liberation: being able to adknowledge the meotions of others without being ruled by them. Where are you find yourself most often ending up? Remember, there is always a third person or situation in each interaction:a relational triangle. People bring their previous experiences, their wounding, their successes, and their home life to a given situation. It is important to acknowledge this reality because it helps us to contextualize situations. Max encouraged listeners to ask the question, “What are my values?” and then to take a good look at the organization that they are a part of.If you organization is acting, consistently, against your values, there is a cost. And maybe it is time to leave.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    OUTRO

    Max Yoder: Do Better Work

    Robert Sapolsky: Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

    Robert Zapolsky: Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers

    Gabor Mate: When the Body Says No

    Marshall Rosenberg: Non-Violent Communication

  • - Joe Staples

    For anybody listening, you can learn empathy. It's not something that somebody should go. You know, I'm not an empathetic. So I'm just going to stay the way I am.

    INTRO

    Human skills ARE business skills. You cannot create lasting, high-performing teams without paying attention to and caring for the actual humans on your team.

    This is something that my guest, Joe Staples, has seen again and again in his years of work. We are going to talk about tips and tactics to build connection (hint: nothing brings people together like food), how walking a mile, literally, in someone else’s role can build empathy, and why a group softball game was one of Joe’s biggest misses in team building. You will hear stories of high school bullies and reflections on the changing expectations of generations in the workplace. All in all, it is just one fine episode full of wisdom.

    Let me begin with a little bit more about my guest, Joe Staples. Joe is a senior B2B marketing executive who advises companies around go-to-market strategy and activities. He has spent decades in the business and developed expertise in building a powerful, differentiated brand and generating demand.

    Joe is also the author or coauthor of numerous articles on leadership, customer experience, marketing, branding, employee engagement and work management. His work has been featured in all sorts of publications from Ad Age to Digital Marketing Magazine.

    Joe lives out in Salt Lake City, where he gets to spend time not just working but enjoying the great outdoors.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    What are some of your favorite things that you get to do out in Salt Lake City?

    - Joe Staples

    You know, we have we have a large family and so we're constantly going to parks going up in the mountains. We have we have a cabin that's kind of our getaway place. And, you know, we just we like the outdoors. The interesting one of the most interesting things about Utah is you can you can golf in the in the morning and ski in the afternoon if you hit the time of year just right. And we're 20 minutes from the closest ski resort.

    - Joe Staples

    So a lot to do.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    You can you can just have a whole day of recreation at your fingertips.

    - Joe Staples

    Right. And when you when you think of small grandchildren, it doesn't take much to entertain them, give you like some rocks and potato bugs. And there's that

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    That's that is true. I feel like in my own family, I have four. I was going to say young children, but the eldest is now 13, so they're getting less young with each passing year. But we know 13 down to seven. And as you mentioned, the cabin, we did well.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    We still do a fair amount of camping. And it's amazing when you strip away some of the electronics and iPads and all the interactive toys that are so dazzling. How really entertaining a good puzzle, a little bit of mud and a pile of sticks can really be.

    - Joe Staples

    That's exactly right. I agree completely. You know, the other thing for me, so getting to our cabin, you go through what's called the Heber Valley, which is this little old farming community, and then you go up into the mountains. And as I come down into that valley, I could physically feel the stress just kind of fall off of my shoulders. And I forget about everything that's good.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    There's a there's a particular power about familiar land, just that you revisit again and again. And I can think even this weekend we're going down to Bloomington, which was a meaningful place for me. I did graduate work down there. I gave birth to a young daughter who died shortly afterwards. But there was a lot of emotion that's tied up in that time. And there's a particular trail that I I ran and walked a lot during those years. And then I always make a point to come back to.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    And there's something too I like I can feel it in my spirit, in my body of the familiar trees and bend in the path and the invitation that ushers me into to be tied to a story that's bigger than me to think like some of these trees, you know, they they came before me. They will outlast me. They're being sustained in much the same way that I am. And I I can hear that a little bit in your statement, like the the familiar land that evokes something in you as you're able to go to it.

    - Joe Staples

    Yeah. Those things I think they build us. They they. They. Help us become who we are.

    - Joe Staples

    We have pictures of my wife standing on the spot with nothing but trees and then a hole in the ground and then framing and then being all done. So, yeah, it's been it's been great. And then the other we do a family reunion there every year with all of our kids and grandkids. So those kind of memories just are important, as beautiful.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    I would love for you to tell me a little bit about what your current role is in the work that you do.

    - Joe Staples

    Yeah. So it's changed pretty dramatically in the last year. So I was a CMO, a chief marketing officer for the last 20 plus years. My career was all in the tech sector and now I spend all of my time advising other companies on their go to market strategy. And those companies range from little startups that are trying to figure out how to get to market and what their product should look like and how to message and position it to companies that have multibillion dollar valuations that are trying to better understand their brand and what they do.

    - Joe Staples

    The thing that I like so much about it is that the work is super diverse. You know, I go from company to company and engage in these projects and to meet new people and see the struggles that they're going through and try and take the experiences that I've had and help them navigate where they're going well.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    And what a two decade span to be in tech. There have been so many reinventions innovations and disruptive technologies within that space over the years that you've been working there. I'm sure that that has contributed to a really diverse toolkit of experiences at which to draw.

    - Joe Staples

    Yeah, technology has changed dramatically, as you mentioned, but marketing has changed dramatically over that time. The way you approach and engage with customers or prospects is just night and day. Different than what it was twenty or twenty five years ago, and so the need to adapt to those things is is critical but also fun because there's there's always new things to learn.

    One thing I really like to ask guests is when we talk about empathy and connection at work, what is a personal story for you that emphasizes the importance of empathy and connection specifically in the workplace?

    - Joe Staples

    So I think, Liesel, I think as you think about all of this, it's important to recognize that the workplace isn't separate from our personal life, that those two are just intertwined and inseparable. And so, as I think about empathy, I think I learned that from my son, from one of our kids. We lived in Seattle for a number of years. And this particular son, I think, got picked on every single day that he went to junior high school.

    - Joe Staples

    And, you know, it was not super evident as he went through it. But I think it was it certainly was impactful. And then we moved to Utah and he flourished here, you know, just found the right friends and and all of those kinds of things. But while he was he was probably a senior in high school. My wife and I met a woman who her grandson went to the same school as our son and. The things she told us is she said that her grandson told her that she could go, that he could go three weeks at school without a single person ever saying hello to him, engaging with them, talking to him.

    - Joe Staples

    And she said, but the grandson told her that the one person that he always knew, if he passed in the hall or saw in a class that would say hello to him was our son. And, you know, I I thought about that and I thought, you know, what would our son have to have developed that that trait or understood that need if he wouldn't have gone through the challenges that he did earlier in junior high and and high school.

    - Joe Staples

    But I also thought, you know, I'd take that over him being the star of the basketball team any day if he would develop that kind of character. So it was a really important lesson for me of the need to kind of look out for the the team member or the person that that may be struggling. But then obviously empathy expands well beyond someone who's struggling and really is just do you take an interest in other people to make connections with other people or are you just looking out for yourself and what will benefit you?

    - Joe Staples

    And I think those distinctions are really, really important.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    I love that story. Thank you for sharing that. If I could, I could feel a little bit of a catch in my throat, even as you said, because I one of my children, I have a son who is just on the precipice of middle school and has had a hard year with those dynamics of old school is rough. It is rough.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    I feel when you said, like it's important to note that our work selves and our personal selves are there, not divisible. What I have observed is that that awareness signals a change in the workplace from when my parents probably were working or definitely my grandparents, where there is a sense of, you know, this is your home life, this is your work life, you really need to shut off that part of yourself in order to show up and get the job done.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Does that resonate with you? Do you feel like you have seen some of that movement in your lifetime of work in what is expected in a given office as to what you're allowed to bring to work?

    - Joe Staples

    Yeah, really good point. I think you're right on. I think that today's workplace, it it's you're able to talk about those things in in a much more profound way or more ready way than you were you rewind a couple of decades ago where it really was a bit more separate and distinct. But I also think a lot of it has to do with the individual. You know, my my dad worked in in the corporate world his whole life and based on his personality, he was just very engaging.

    - Joe Staples

    He still has those friendships that he had from, you know, 50 years ago that he developed at work. And I think a lot of that is how you approach your work. Do you see it as a task? You see it as a goal that needs to be accomplished, or do you see it as a collection of people who are engaged and connected together trying to accomplish something? And if you if you look at it through that people lens, I think I think everything changes.

    - Joe Staples

    All of a sudden you're just naturally interested in the life of that other person and what they're going through and both positive and negative.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    I think that's a great point of. The individual and what they bring to the table into a given work environment, I mean, even as some of the cultural expectations around the accessibility of these conversations have changed, I still find in the consulting work I do in the coaching that the companies that are most able to successfully implement a strategy for cultivating empathy. What that stems from is usually the executive team or champions within the organization who really like this is in line with their heartbeat.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    And they say this is the kind of person I am. This is the kind of company culture I want to cultivate.

    - Joe Staples

    Yeah, I think you're right. You know, the the culture needs to permeate throughout the company, but the tone gets set by that leadership team. They care about the people inside the business. Are they doing things to understand what those needs of those individuals are and then and then making changes to to help meet those needs? I'm reminded of a place that that one of our sons worked at a short time ago, and they had terrible health care benefits for for people who didn't live in the headquarters city.

    - Joe Staples

    And even though it was brought up a number of times, the company just didn't didn't recognize it or or didn't care. So if if the message gets sent that what you care about isn't what I care about, then, you know, that's a that's a culture that will quickly understand that and good people will move on.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Right. The lack of receptivity and feeling hurt. Well, and I mean, especially with what we're recording July 2021, the current labor market dynamics really. I mean, there's always a cost to people leaving in recruitment, rehiring, reputational loss, but especially as people are clawing back to full staffing and being able to keep and retain people, it takes on an extra measure of urgency, like, are you keeping your people because they have choices and they can leave if the culture is not life giving.

    - Joe Staples

    Agree? Yep, definitely agree. You know, just one other point on on empathy. I think sometimes it can be misunderstood. You know, our goal isn't to avoid disagreement in the workplace. The goal is we're going to disagree. How are we are we in a place? Do we have the kind of culture and connections and trust and empathy that allow us to go through those disagreements in good, healthy ways versus the counterproductive and toxic ways? And so I think that's where this culture of of empathy comes into play and really shows its worth

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Right. I, I, I talk with companies. They say you already have a de facto way of dealing with disruptive life events, of dealing with disagreements and in many places because because we don't actually train for this in our management programs, it's not a core of how we promote or analyze managers that, you know, people just have their bad habits or their personality, like default positions and ways of dealing with things that you know, that the way they work themselves out in practice as it becomes kind of.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Your your operating principles, do we shut down any disagreement? Do I shame someone for having a problem? You know, it's just getting in the way of productivity. And I found that a big, you know, part of getting to growth is being aware of those habits.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    What is a time for you when building connection has felt really easy.

    - Joe Staples

    You know, I I think it's I think, you know, it probably goes to. And this I hope this doesn't sound wrong, but kind of when you're when you're in the battle together, it's when the connections have happened. You know, a lot of companies today promote cooperation with with other companies. I'm a competitive person. So I I never had a problem picking a competitor and saying we're going to go take market share from from that company. We're going to build marketing plans and branding plans.

    - Joe Staples

    And they're the they're the company that we think we can go succeed against and we can win against. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that kind of a competitive spirit. And so I've I've used that to our advantage. But I think that when your team then feels that, then all of a sudden they're not looking internally and saying, hey, that you're the enemy. They're looking externally and saying, we've got this other company that we're competing with and we're going to we're going to win against them.

    - Joe Staples

    Sometimes I think businesses can confuse some of these softer skills with being overall soft, and I think they can coexist. I think that you can use trust and empathy and connection internally, but externally use competitive juices to your advantage.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Yeah, I read a turn of phrase that rang true recently. It was saying instead of calling them soft skills, we should call them human skills because that's much more representative of what they are and how they serve us in the very, very good.

    - Joe Staples

    You know, one other thing that that's interesting to me is how much time people invest in their their trade skills. So I'm a marketer and, you know, I'm just surrounded by marketing people who are trying to learn account based marketing and new digital marketing skills and search engine optimization skills. And then you look at how much time are you investing in? Let's call them human skills, leadership skills. And they look at you like. None, right? And those two don't they just don't match up because as I look at my own career and I think really the career of most executives, it's it's much more based on leadership skills than it is on how good of a marketer I am.

    - Joe Staples

    There's lots of people that are way better marketers than I am that I didn't didn't ever get to a C level position. So how they think they would get there without investing time into those skills doesn't make any sense.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    I was just interviewing a CEO of a growing tech company and he was talking about his how his education framed him for some of what he's doing. And he studied both psychology and finance as an undergrad. And he said, you know, people people are always thinking that I lean into my finance skills a lot in the role that I have. And he said psychology always wins. You know, it's it's the people skills. It's knowing how to get the most out of a team and knowing who to promote and when.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    It's knowing who needs a break and who needs like a rousing, encouraging speech at that moment. And I like that just turn of phrase. Psychology always wins.

    - Joe Staples

    Yeah, and I, I don't think it gets taught certainly doesn't get taught at a university. And even when people start into their positions, nobody's really you know, the CMO isn't taking the junior marketer and saying, you know, let's let's talk about your leadership skills and in your human skills. Instead, they're taking them and saying, OK, you know, do you understand how to do this part of of your job? And it's much more of those technical skills.

    - Joe Staples

    Right. And that's I think that's one of the problems that people have when they continue to try and have their career progress. They hit a ceiling. And it really is not because they're not good marketers or finance people or salespeople. It's because they haven't developed the leadership skills. And that's that's the value that they're going to bring.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    So it it doesn't happen in a formal way the way it could or should this equipping and human skills. How did you find throughout the course of your career that you continued to skill up in these important capacities?

    - Joe Staples

    Yeah, for me, it was because I was so interested in it. You know, if I if I had if I had the choice to read a book on the latest marketing skill or read a book on the leadership perspectives, I would always pick the latter. So it just came really natural for me just because of interest. So I in January of this year, I went back to school. I'm going to get a graduate degree in organizational leadership from Arizona State University.

    Joe Staples

    Most people look at me and go, no, what not? How come you're doing this? Because it's a commitment and takes time and costs money and all those kinds of things. But it is fascinating to me. And, you know, so I look at it and and say the the more I can understand leadership and and how to motivate people and how to engage with people, the the better I'm going to be at mentoring others and teaching those skills.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Absolutely. Well, in that posture of lifelong learning, it serves us in our homes and our relationships as we are members of a community and as we're members of a workplace.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    We will return to the interview with Joe in just a moment, but I want to take a second to thank our sponsor, Handle with Care Consulting. As we said at the top of the episode, human skills are essential to business. Especially during the tumult and labor shortage of 2021, building connections of care is a competitive advantage. If you want to skill-up in empathy, Handle with Care Consulting has an offering to fit your needs. From keynote sessions to certificate programs to executive coaching, let us help you engage you people and show care when it matters most.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    What are some times for you we're building connection has felt really hard. And then as a follow up, how you still pressed into the messiness and importance of building connection anyway.

    - Joe Staples

    Yeah, I, I think when it's hard is when it's forced, when it feels forced and. You know a lot, just about every company that that I engage with, they do some form of. Team building, and I'm not a big fan of it, I you know, I and I think the the reality of this set in for me, what would it be? Probably 15 years ago, I decided that this will be great. We will have for my team.

    - Joe Staples

    We're going to do a pretty large team. We'll do a team softball game, and then we'll have a barbecue after. And again, I love softball. So error number one was I took what I wanted to do and now projected that on 30 other people and said, here's here's what we're going to do. And we played this game and it was evident that there were some people there that had never. Played softball in their life, but with the three week notice that I gave them, my guess is they actually practiced to try and not look terrible, terrible, terrible, but they would rather have gone to the dentist and play this softball game.

    - Joe Staples

    I mean, it was just painful to them. And I can remember being at this game and looking and thinking, what have I done? Look what I just put these people through in an attempt to build team dynamics and help them feel more a part of the team. I have just done the exact opposite of that. And so from from that point on, I've really tried to shy away from from these team building activities where it's a force fit and you got to come.

    - Joe Staples

    The one team building event that I still love and that I still think works is so simple and it is eating together. Everybody has to eat and you go to any restaurant and you can find something that you love. And what it does is now all of a sudden you're actually getting to know each other. A softball game analogy. You know, the person on third base doesn't get to talk to the person in right field. You're not developing any connection that way.

    - Joe Staples

    But sit next to somebody at a dinner that you didn't know or a lunch that you didn't know before. And all of a sudden you found out that you went to the same school as you did, or he has the same number of kids that you do that are the same ages. And or even better, he's going he or she is going through some of the same problems you're going through now. You can create some connections.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Yeah, well, the again, the shared experience of eating and providing the space for conversation that isn't just about tasks to be accomplished. I like that. How what what are like some micro practices that you either formally instituted for yourself or just started doing regularly within the office as a leader to make sure that you stayed connected to your team and especially team members, that maybe you naturally didn't have as many affinity points with.

    - Joe Staples

    Yeah, so the team members that work directly for me, I always found that was quite a bit easier. The the challenge was, you know, if I had an organization of one hundred people and I was trying to to lead this entire organization, there may be three or four levels between me and that other person. How do I develop some of some of those connections? So I again, going back to my meal, they didn't think that I, I eat a lot.

    - Joe Staples

    That's not the point. Right. I would set up monthly lunches with newer team members. So it may be your. First day or it may be your third week, but you're you're a newer team member and we usually have eight or nine people in in the lunch and it accomplished two things. One is I got to know them, but they got to know each other because, you know, they may be working on on different teams. And so I always I always felt that that was useful when the other one that we did, I worked for a company called Novell in kind of the heyday of of the tech scene for them anyway.

    - Joe Staples

    And we did something that was where we took executives and had them work on Frontalot in front line jobs, customer service jobs for a day. Yeah, it wasn't really long, but I, I still have a picture of of the the general counsel for for the company, very senior leader on the phone, taken from our service complaint calls. And you think about empathy, they came away from that, recognizing that this these jobs aren't that easy. Right.

    - Joe Staples

    And number two, I certainly couldn't couldn't do it. And now all of a sudden, they thought about what those jobs were a bit differently.

    - Joe Staples

    One of the other practices that I did for a number of years is once a year I would go work a really small trade show where we had a little bitty booth by 10 booth, because for the event staff, that was the worst. An event that you go to where you have a big, you know, 30 by 30 booth and you have speaking engagements.

    - Joe Staples

    That's fun and exciting in the back corner of the of the trade show floor in this little booth. And you're trying to get people to talk to you. So once a year, I would sign up and I would go work those booths just to remind myself what the people on that event staff did and how hard it was. It was it kept me kept me aware

    – Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    If you had like a magic wand that you could wave to give them an awareness about empathy or a new sort of perspective, what what capacity would you give them or what words of wisdom would you want to impart for them to take away?

    - Joe Staples

    My experience is people love to be challenged. They may not say that. They may think, no, I'd rather just kind of sit here and do my job and go home every day and and do the other things that I love to do. But people love to have somebody show confidence enough in them to come to them and say, hey, we have this brand new project. Even if you say, I don't I don't think you even know much about it, but I want you to learn and I want you to lead it.

    - Joe Staples

    And I think that just causes people to rise to the occasion,

    – Joe Staples

    I think it works when you have a star performer and when you have a a poor performer, because I think even with a poor performer, you can come to them and say, you know what, I can see that you're struggling in this area. I believe you can do this. So let's talk about what that means. And, you know, why are you struggling and what can I do to help you?

    - Joe Staples

    Those are the kinds of connections that cause people to go, wow, like you really you really do care about me and want me to succeed. And then together, you figure that out if if the person because most of the time the employee knows they're struggling. You're not telling them anything they don't know. But if they feel that you want to help them not struggle, that's so different. Then I'm struggling and you don't really care. The only thing you care is that the work isn't getting done or our results are not where they should be.

    - Joe Staples

    You only care about the results. You don't care about me. You just sent a very different message. Wouldn't you sit down with that person and say, look, let's talk about why you're having a tough time with this, because I really think you can do this. This is right. This is you're capable of this.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Yeah. Simon Sinek talks about, you know, he had like a little micro training video module, but he talked about the importance of both empathy and curiosity of a manager at that moment. And it's a different way of phrasing some of what you said to to sit down. And it's you know, it is in one part about the numbers or the metrics or the performance, but it's also that measure of curiosity, of saying there's probably more of a story that's going on right now.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    And, you know, can we can we engage at that level that can really signal something powerful.

    - Joe Staples

    Right. And if you don't have that conversation, you may never know that. Yeah, I'm just distracted because, you know, two months ago, my dad was diagnosed with with cancer, just struggling to keep my. Wits about me, right? You never know that if you don't engage and have those conversations.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Yeah, it can make you draw all of those sideways conclusions. Is this person just lazy or unmotivated or are they looking at job somewhere else and function off of those unvalidated assumptions? They can really lead us away when it could be exactly what you said. You know, I'm I'm really distracted because my dad's been in the hospital for the last three months, and that's hard.

    - Joe Staples

    Yeah. You know, the other thing I'd love to hear your perspective. The the connection between empathy and trust, I think is is pretty fascinating.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Yeah, I it's interesting because as I as I train companies, as I coach different teams, there's some people that they they love this movement towards empathy and connection in the workplace. And, you know, it's it's close to their heart beat. They want more of it. And then, you know, I definitely interact with people that it feels like just one more demand, like somebody need me to be their counselor. And do you know all of these, like, large assumptions about what it's going to take from them to have to get into more of the human side of interacting with their people?

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    And one thing that I talk about is, you know, those those moments where you're getting more of the story, where someone is sharing both, you know, a really good thing that's happened, you know, a new baby, those a new marriage, the celebrations and also some of the hard stuff, you know, my my child is really sick and we don't know what the test results are going to be, that those moments, even moments a little bit like what you said, moments of that can feel like confrontation.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    “You know, you're you're not cultivating a place where it is safe for me to express who I am as a Black woman.” You know, those those moments that can feel hard. They're actually depending on how you navigate them. They are invitations to much deeper connection, you know, that like vulnerability as we can move into those places with better habits, better ways of connecting. It's a tremendous moment for trust. And trust is the foundation. Google did this widespread study of what is the defining characteristic of high performing teams and what they came away.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    You know, they're they're finding was the number one characteristic was psychological safety people where they felt like they could bring their humanness there. And whether you term it psychological safety or trust, you know, that's the place where you can have true like creativity and innovation and people who say, you know what, through the ups and downs, I want to stay with this company because they see me. And so that connection between empathy and trust and what can flourish out of that, I really encourage people to see see these moments as opportunities to really cultivate some beautiful things within your organization.

    - Joe Staples

    Wow. Whoa. Really well said. I think you make a number of great points there. And, you know, the the more sincere somebody can be in that caring and concern and understanding, the better it is. Absolutely. The employees definitely recognize when it's when it's forced. You know, when I come and I say, how are you? I know you and you tell me you're terrible. And I go, Yeah, that's too bad. You know, that goes OK.

    - Joe Staples

    So results of the and you kind of jump over there they go. You don't really care about me, right?

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    I am. I view people as on a continuum of this skill set because it is a skill set and everybody can get better. There's some people who are naturally much better at it. But occasionally I use the illustration of bowling like I in my training. I'm going to give you a tip like you don't want to end up in the gutter. And there are some things that we instinctually do. Well, just it's it's always darkest before the you know, these tired cliches are just telling people to buck up and that are really going to be off-putting.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    So let's make sure you don't do those things. And then, you know, even even if it feels like a little bit of going through the motions at first, you know, hopefully as you as you build and you see that connection and you get better and you get more comfortable within the skill set, just like anything, you know, whether it's training in a new capacity with technological platform or training for a new skill in our bodies. You know, when I start shooting layups, I'm not super good at it when I start learning.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    But the more I do it, the better I can get. And empathy is like that. What we're moving towards is like sincere, wholehearted engagement. But even if we just start with you not saying the same stupid stuff that you used to say and asking how they're doing and then pausing because, you know, you're supposed to pause and nodding because, you know, you're supposed to not like that.

    - Joe Staples

    Still not having softball team building activity.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Yeah. You know, we're all learning along the way

    - Joe Staples

    But but the summary point to what you're saying here is for anybody listening, you can learn empathy. It's not something that somebody should go. You know, I'm not an empathetic. So I'm just going to stay the way I am.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    That's not true. You can learn the skill of being empathetic.

    - Joe Staples

    These are skills worth working on. These are things that every middle manager, executive and team member should invest in. Is these human skills, these leadership skills. Yes. You've got trade skills that you need to keep current with.

    - Joe Staples

    But to to have a fulfilling career, to have a career that you enjoy is really about can you have an impact on other people? I mean, this isn't about us as much. It is as it is about. Can I be the person that, you know, 15 years from now, somebody looks back and says, and I hope I loved it at that company because I worked with so-and-so or because I was managed by so-and-so. And I those people interactions are they're just so important.

    - Joe Staples

    And if they're that important, we should invest in learning how to be the best that we can at them.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Couldn't agree more. Thank you, Joe.

    - Joe Staples

    Thank you, this was a lot of fun.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    Here are three key takeaways from my conversation with Joe…

    Be purposeful and inclusive with the sort of team-building activities that you choose.Softball lets people feeling “out” while eating together truly brought people together. Joe made a point to create connection over a shared meal, both with his teammates and also with new hires through monthly lunches. How can food or a similarly inclusive activity bring your people together? What are you doing to “skill-up” your human skills?Does this desire show up in what you are reading or thinking about in the course of a given month? Joe is a lifelong learner, when he had a chance to read or engage in personal development, he was consistently choosing books and degree programs that emphasized understanding the person, because he found that this was the capacity that differentiated true leaders within the workplace. What is your long-term goal at work?Are your metrics of success comprised mostly of financial goals or power designations? Joe talked about his father, who cared deeply about connection and had business friendships that stretched over 50 years. This has shaped his own trajectory and goal. So here is his question, as a closing thought, will you be the person that,15 years from now, somebody looks back and says, and “I loved it at that company because I worked with her or because she managed me?”

    OUTRO

  • - Tegan Trovato

    There's an awakening happening in corporations and people are now choosing their jobs based on values. And that will force organizations who aren't already inclined to that thinking to really start rethinking their approach to caring for their people and the beautiful thing.

    NEW INTRO

    Today, we talk about the awakening that is happening in the workforce as a result of COVID, change, and choice. How workers are choosing jobs based on values and what top leaders are doing to welcome and nurture the whole person at work.

    And I am excited to have both a colleague and a friend on the show as a guest: Tegan Trovato is the Founder of Bright Arrow, a premiere Executive and Team Coaching firm supporting clients nationally.

    Tegan is an HR industry veteran specializing in Talent Acquisition, Talent Development, and Organizational Learning. She has served as an executive or leadership team member for companies like Levi Strauss, Zynga, Xerox and Cielo.

    At Bright Arrow, she and her team offer executive coaching, leadership team coaching, and group workshops. All of Bright Arrow’s coaches value authenticity, confidence, courage, growth, and leadership and make these values a priority in every interaction.

    Tegan is also the is wife to Brian (a fellow entrepreneur), mommy to Athena (who is really, really bute), and mom to her two fur babies - senior kitties Pascal and Dedier (pronounced D.D.A).

    She loves nature and we began our conversation hearing about her recent break from work here in the Indiana summer.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    I would love to hear some of your favorite things that you've gotten a chance to do on your staycation so far.

    - Tegan Trovato

    Oh, you know, just being outside and my husband and Athena and I all being together as a family is everything, because with the pandemic, we still don't have child care yet. We do have someone starting soon. But we've just been like ships passing in the night, just handing Athena off for for one of us, one entrepreneur to have a meeting and the other one goes and takes care of her and then we switch off again throughout the day.

    - Tegan Trovato

    So just being together has been and I don't even know what the word is, heart filling.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Have you have you gotten a chance to eat some good food? Are you finding your being outside a lot? It's been raining and muggy that you know,

    - Tegan Trovato

    That doesn't stop us. I'm from the South, from the real South where it is always rainy and muggy and we just go do your thing anyway. So, no, that hasn't stopped us. And there's been enough breaks in the rain and we've spent a ton of time. Yeah. Walking on the trail and jogging and setting up the little kiddie pool outside for her.

    - Tegan Trovato

    So, yeah, that's been that's part of what nourishes me is being outside and and yes. Eating healthy food. So we always eat relatively healthy, but we've been doing a little more of the salads because we've had time and all that good stuff so.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Well, and who wants to be slaving over their oven or stovetop too much in the high heat of summer? The salad is a great option.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    One of the things I would love to talk with you about is how you've seen the need for empathy grow and change specifically over the last year and a half within your coaching practice. Give us a little bit of a 10000 foot view of what your typical client looks like.

    - Tegan Trovato

    Hmm. Thank you for asking that. It does help set the stage a little bit for who is seeing what inside of the businesses and from where they're seeing this all unfold. Right. So the clients that we typically work with at Right Arrow are executives. So VPs and above inside the organization, they tend to be very driven, pretty holistic leaders, meaning they do want for their employees to feel good and be healthy and often at their own peril. Right.

    - Tegan Trovato

    So they're not often not taking care of themselves and trying to pour out for others. The organizations they work for tend to be in either hypergrowth or undergoing major change.

    - Tegan Trovato

    And that's often why we're brought in is to act as a support mechanism. And sometimes when it's a hypergrowth situation to help the leaders stay on track with the organization's growth so that as the leaders that got the company to where it is, they may also be the leaders that get them to the next growth level.

    - Tegan Trovato

    Right. Everyone has to grow in tandem with the organization itself. So so we tend to be working with leaders that have been working really hard already. And now with the pandemic, it just folded in multiple other layers.

    - Tegan Trovato

    On top of that,

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    What is the biggest change that you experienced in in the presenting needs of your average client as a result of COVID? And granted, like every one story is not every story, but is there a common thread that runs through?

    - Tegan Trovato

    There is a common thread. There's a few common threads that run through. And I have a lot of thoughts on this. So don't make me wonder too, too far afield. But there's a few things that come to mind when you ask that question. I think, one, the first thing we're seeing is that everything that existed before the pandemic was magnified. Right. So anything that was already a little out of balance was certainly out of balance during the pandemic.

    - Tegan Trovato

    And so that's a major change we saw in some of those things are not having great boundaries when working at home. You know, we worked with a lot of leadership teams that were already distributed across the U.S. and working from home.

    - Tegan Trovato

    So that became magnified, not having great access or balance when it comes to time with family because they're feeling overstretched at work. That became magnified.

    - Tegan Trovato

    What is newer is the need for attentiveness to the humanness of the employee population, so great leaders already had some sense of wanting to care for their people.

    - Tegan Trovato

    And I would say that characterizes the leaders we work with. What changed, though, is that we we entered into this collective suffering together during the pandemic.

    - Tegan Trovato

    So we went from as leaders needing to care for people in pockets of intensity, right, so an employee's parent may pass away or their child, you know, an employee's child might be struggling with something at home and a leader could offer up a little extra care in those times. What changed during the pandemic is that the leaders themselves were suffering in tandem with their employee population and suffering, meaning we're not sure how to balance everything.

    - Tegan Trovato

    We're not sure if it's safe to go out in public, to go to work, to vaccinate our children, to not vaccinate don't vaccinate ourselves, to not vaccinate ourselves. Right. I mean, you name it, that list is so extensive.

    - Tegan Trovato

    And in the meantime, also trying to a lot of employees and leaders trying to manage their children's schooling while also working and selling and managing new product launches. I mean, it was just exponentially difficult. And so that led to suffering.

    - Tegan Trovato

    It's leading to exhaustion. And so I think that it's while it's tough that everyone was sort of suffering together, it has also created this really amazing opportunity to feel more connected than ever before because we share that suffering.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    I appreciate the emphasis on the opportunity for connection that is possible, because I think sometimes when we talk about providing support for the humanness of the workplace for a certain type of leader or manager, that feels like one more ask. Like, I can't believe that you're asking me to have to do that to, you know, to be somebody is like there's all sorts of ways that derisive sentiment can be expressed, like to be somebody's counselor or their nursemaid or their mom.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    It can be couched very much in the negative. What is this going to take from me or for me, instead of seeing it as really such a deep potential for connection and trust and the, you know, trust, vulnerability, connection, that's the foundation for creativity, for innovation, for thriving cultures that people don't want to leave.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    And if we're only experiencing that moment as a pain point, it's going to cause us to want to, like, hold back, you know, not fully engage instead of be like, no, this is these are the deep waters that lead to all that good stuff that we want to write about in our Harvard business reviews.

    - Tegan Trovato

    That's right. Well, you know, a colleague of mine, Sarah Martin of Welcoa, that's their organization, helps to create workplace wellness. So they work with companies of all sizes to create wellness programming, essentially, and whole employees. She and I were talking the other day and she said, you know, what is about to happen? And most of their clients know this. What's about to happen is that the future workforce over the next year plus is going to ask during their interview process, what did you do during the pandemic to take care of your employees?

    - Tegan Trovato

    Mm hmm. It's now going to be a screening question, right. For, you know, do I even want to work here?

    - Tegan Trovato

    So to your point, there used to be an option. I think it used to feel much more optional for leaders to say, OK, that's too far. I don't want to have to do that much caring or that being that concerned with someone's personal well-being. I think that it became less of an option through the pandemic.

    - Tegan Trovato

    And now the question is how optional do we want to make it again when we go back to sort of business as usual air quotes. Right, right. So we're in a really interesting time when it comes to that and. You know, and I do want to say I think only other leaders will ever understand how hard it is to lead. And to lead well, and I get why a lot of not a lot, but a good percentage of leaders will say, no, that's not my job, making sure someone feels good at work.

    - Tegan Trovato

    It's not my job that's up to them. And some of that is totally true. It really is up to us also as employees to want to feel good and to experience the goodness around us. It's a mindset thing, right? But that's only a part of it. So I get why leaders feel taxed in that, but it's really no longer optional. So I think the future leader profile looks very different going forward than we're used to.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    I would love to hear some of the things that you found when you are confronted in your coaching practice with some of that that resistance is is this my job? Is this what I need to do? What have you found has been most effective in guiding those conversations and those people to their own journey of meaningful growth in these leadership capacities?

    - Tegan Trovato

    What a great question. It's a resistance was a key word in your question. And, you know, I always like to say and it's a common, common knowledge, maybe more for coaches than in the rest of the world. But impatient resistance, rather, is either fear, impatience or ego.

    - Tegan Trovato

    Those are the three causes of resistance. So when I feel someone resisting the call of their employee population for support, whatever that may look like is a big bucket right now.

    - Tegan Trovato

    We'll explore which one of those things it might be. And most often it is a little bit of impatience. I can't do it that fast or that much. It's very seldom ego right now, it's truly very seldom ego. It is most often fear based. When we really get down to the core of it, executives, leaders really of every level are afraid they're not going to get it right.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Hmm.

    - Tegan Trovato

    And if we really peel this all the way back, Liesel, most of us could say we aren't perfect at this at home. I would say that I am you know, I'm still always growing and how I emotionally show up in my household. And so if we don't feel like we've nailed it at home and most of us wouldn't dare say that, right. I'm 100 percent awesome at my emotional management and and taking emotional cues and tending to the people around me.

    - Tegan Trovato

    I'm awesome. So we can't say that at home then. We certainly wouldn't probably venture to say we're nailing that at work and leaders strive to be great. It's part of why they're in their seat. They want to be good at what they do. And so I think when it comes down to empathy at work, tending to that human factor at work, it's a big, messy piece of work. And leaders, most of us kind of are humble in that we know we're not maybe one hundred percent at that yet and we'll never be you.

    - Tegan Trovato

    And I know that right will never be 100 percent. But I think it's fear that keeps writers from feeling super inclined to saying, yes, yes, yes, on the front of just taking care of the human needs of employees.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Right. Well, and I hear within that also the dimensions of, you know, when we talk about our home lives or just our personal spheres of how we support people or receive support so many times, that's so informed by our own personally contextualized experience. You know, what were the expectations of my household of origin and how, you know, emotion was expressed or not was I told all the time that big boys don't cry or to stop whining or the context that sometimes I hear within the coaching I do of, you know, people who were vulnerable when they were 19 years old and their first relationship.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    And they felt so burned and exposed and they made this this agreement like, I'm never going to go there again.

    - Tegan Trovato

    Yes.

    - Tegan Trovato

    And I love that you brought up this personalization of that employee experience as a leader. That's so important. And we talk about this now when we are, you know, kind of behind the scenes discussing diversity, equity, inclusion, like my coaches and I just had a whole, like, focus session on this to try to think about what tools we need, what education materials, what we just want to be ready to provide clients who are venturing into that, you know, trying to be more inclusive leaders.

    - Tegan Trovato

    And one of the things we kept landing on was for a leader to be ready to fully show up for their employee population. They had to they have to have personalized the experiences their employees are having. And what I mean by that is, you know, you and I may not be able to identify with the exact same stories, but if we can identify with the human feeling we may be having at work and personalize that, somehow we feel much more inclined to support.

    - Tegan Trovato

    So, for example, just to characterize this, there was a study done that demonstrated that CEOs who have diversity, equity, inclusion on their agenda as executives, a high percentage of them have daughters. Hmm. So they they're able to personalize the need for inclusive at work because they can imagine their own daughter at work, not not getting equal pay, not getting the promotion, not being heard in a meeting, you name it. And that is true across all of our initiatives at work when it comes to this human engagement.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    I resonate with that deeply. I would love to hear what is it time that you have found yourself needing to engage with that sort of capacity for imagination and personalization in an encounter where you're like, I, I need to extend myself to to connect here?

    - Tegan Trovato

    Mm hmm. I'll give you a really current one. You know, I will say we have several coaches that are in community right now. And what I mean by that is, you know, we have. You know, about a dozen or so coaches who will work with our clients, at Bright Arrow, and I've been really deliberate about making sure that our coach population is very diverse and that our clients then get to meet with a diverse slate of coaches, which will bring different perspectives from their own.

    - Tegan Trovato

    I mean, there's just a ton of rich reasons why this is important, and I just scratch the surface of those tons of reasons. But in a meeting we had my coaches and I get together once a month for some community and continuing education. One of our coaches was talking about an inclusive party training that he had created, and he is a Black coach who felt very impassioned by this. And he built this gorgeous program and then has not launched it.

    - Tegan Trovato

    And when I sit in my chair, I'm going, I build a program, you sure as hell believe I'm going to launch it, right? I put all that time into it, all that hard, all the intellectual energy, and it's going to launch. But where his path was different is that he's also dealing with all the traumas he's experienced as a Black leader in corporate America. He's inspired by having to carry extra weight. That's not his as a black man in a white world.

    - Tegan Trovato

    So when it came time for him to launch this program, he had already wrung out his soul and had to relive all of his own personal in preparation to then facilitate rooms full of white people and help them understand their role in creating inclusive leadership. And I don't even as I'm telling the story, I recognize I don't even have all the right language to intimate what this man is feeling. And so it was my it has been and continues to be my job to be aware of that lack of full understanding, but try really hard to understand even better and to do what I can to support him as he launches that.

    - Tegan Trovato

    Now, all of the coaches are already decided we are all coming together. We're going to help him get what he needs in terms of support so we can lift this program because it's gorgeous. It's an amazing program. But I think that's a very recent example for me of. Really having to stretch my own understanding, right?

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Well, and if you had not engaged in that process, if you had only been looking through, you know, wow, what would keep me from launching a program? You know, I I'm not lazy. I would launch this program, you know, did he just run out of there all kinds of ways that you could backfill the answer with assumptions about him or reasons why that wouldn't be true and that would really like distract you. And so that important pause to not and, you know, we're so often making those like intuitive leaps to backfill and how empathy ask for a little bit more of a pause and some humility of saying, oh, yeah, my my life experience is different.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    My answer might not be congruent with what's really going on here.

    - Tegan Trovato

    Yes. And a key to that. And you just prompted this. Ah, thank you. I didn't assume any of that back story I had. I asked. Right. So he shared that it was reliving trauma. He shared the exhaustion he was feeling. Wow. The assumptions I could have made and filled story in. They're right because and this is exemplified by well, if I built a program, I would just launch the thing. Right. That would be such an asinine place from which to fill in the details for this man.

    - Tegan Trovato

    So the key was we were in community. We were curious. We had zero judgment. We worked hard to take his perspective and understand his lived experience. And with that comes a whole lot of needing to be humble. Right, and not making those assumptions. So thanks for prompting that very important detail about how we arrived at his story together.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Yeah, I would love to hear I'm struck that in your role as a coach. It's it's different than being a manager. It's both like coming alongside sometimes, you know, leading a little ahead. But what have been some of the most important skills of connection and empathy that you have felt you needed to grow in in the last year and a half for myself?

    - Tegan Trovato

    Yes. Mm hmm. Actually, you know, empathy was one of them. And I took your training because of that,

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Which you were such a pleasant participant. Why, thank you. Thank you for trying to do my part. Yes.

    - Tegan Trovato

    But, you know, it's funny because I would say as a coach, if we're worth our weight in salt, we probably have rather advanced empathy skills from the from the average person. Right. Because we have to be in our empathy with clients and compassion in order to make the space they need to figure out their story.

    - Tegan Trovato

    Right. So we have to take their perspective, practice, non-judgment, recognize when they're experiencing emotion

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    And a judgy coach is a jerk.

    - Tegan Trovato

    Oh, you should fire them ASAP, but also not just recognizing their own emotion, but helping them learn to communicate it if they need that help and vice versa, communicating what comes up for us as we experience their story.

    - Tegan Trovato

    However, what I knew was going into this pandemic, what we were in the middle of it, I think when I took your training, I was curious if my concerns myself concept of empathy was really right or not right. So I had never taken a class on empathy.

    - Tegan Trovato

    I've read about the core emotion of it. So I think that that was a place I went. I think empathy and compassion were to places where I went deeper. So empathy is that recognizing emotion and trying to take other's perspective. This is for listeners. I know you know this, but compassion.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    No, I like it. Keep going.

    - Tegan Trovato

    Compassion is also empathy sort of can be a foundation of that. Compassion is then taking action to try to alleviate the suffering of others. And I think that my my practice over this past year and ongoing is recognizing when to exercise one over the other and how to do it. Well.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    And tell me more.

    - Tegan Trovato

    I think what I learned, I'll just share a little about what I learned in your course, which I thought was really helpful, is first just being very careful with the empathy space not to bring our own story in when someone's suffering, which is a really tempting right. For instance. I lost both of my parents have passed, and I'm pretty young for that to have happened. And both of them died rather tragically. And when I experienced someone else going through that, do you know how tempting it is?

    - Tegan Trovato

    I know what you're going through. I lost my parents, too. And and then once you start down that path, details want to start spilling out. Right. That is not helpful when someone really needs empathy. And I think that that is certainly not something I would ever do in my coaching practice, but in my personal life, that could easily I could easily say that would be a tendency I would have had. And so going deeper on that level of practicing empathy and really making it a hundred percent about the other person.

    - Tegan Trovato

    Was a tune up for me, like that was a level up the compassion piece, the reason there's growth there for me and maybe for others is that we can feel compassion and wish for their suffering to end.

    - Tegan Trovato

    But it cannot be our responsibility that we're always taking action for everyone. Right. That leads to compassion fatigue and the beauty of me being on that journey, as I can then see that going on for the leaders I'm in community with or coaching, because that that was very much what was happening through the pandemic as executives and leaders were just they were just running around with buckets of water, trying to put out all the fires.

    - Tegan Trovato

    And meanwhile, they had their own stuff they needed to attend to as humans through this rather traumatic time everyone's in. And so there it was easier for me because I'm in the middle of that work to have conversations with them about, like, OK. Which pieces can you have compassion for and wish for the ending of suffering, but know that it may not be your job to take action, right?

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Yeah. I appreciate you sharing in that journey of discovery. And, you know, it's ongoing and the very real pressures of compassion, fatigue of where do I need to take action? Where do I need to actually claim my rest in this space? Because there's a little bit of a lie that gets perpetuated in in leadership, in dimensions of capitalism, the sense of like we have to be always active and always producing and always caring.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    And, and another phrase that I've I've been using lately that has found traction is change fatigue, especially as we are, you know, stop start, two steps forward, one step back out of the pandemic is there's a lot of organizational change that's going on that people are suddenly having to absorb, pivot within, decide if they're going with it or making a stand against it.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    And that's that's its own additional layer on top of what can make it difficult to show up in ways that really manifest our values.

    - Tegan Trovato

    Absolutely. And that's a good example of something that's been happening in organizations before the pandemic that's been magnified. Right, right.

    - Tegan Trovato

    Change fatigue is very much I mean, it could just be the tagline for corporate America. We're always the only thing that's the same as everything changes. I mean, there's all kinds of one liners about this. And yes, it is on steroids right now. It absolutely is.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Sometimes I get a question that I'd love to have your thoughts on, because I imagine that you're equipping your clients with guidance in this, which is OK. I am not the top leader at my organization, but I really do want to see more empathy, more of a culture of care. How do I move that conversation along? How do I, within the constraints of my position, like become an advocate for the change I want to see?

    - Tegan Trovato

    Oh, I love this question so much. What immediately came up for me is the first opportunity for leaders at any level is to embody empathy within your own leadership station first. So work hard to sort of become the poster child of an empathetic leader and and through that, it's not from a place of ego, it's from a place of practice, because empathy is a practice. It's an emotion, but it's also a practice. And so I think when leaders can just kind of get their own backyard straightened out first, it creates the credibility that's helpful to lead that further, that language or that narrative further in the organization.

    - Tegan Trovato

    Now, you don't like let's not wait for perfect because perfect doesn't exist. Right. So be measured in what you think you need to do before you have that conversation. But I think that's the first piece.

    - Tegan Trovato

    I think the second piece that's important is there is a lot of research out there now which if you follow Liesel, you will see a lot of this in her work that demonstrates the business impact of empathy at work. And, and it is, as leaders, always important that we can say, look, this will save us time or money or help us work better or produce faster, that's the truth.

    - Tegan Trovato

    We need some of that included in our narrative that doesn't need to be the predominant part of our narrative, but it doesn't hurt if we want to grease the wheels to get our get the attention that that initiative would need to be able to also tie it to business outcomes.

    - Tegan Trovato

    But also, I think the third thought that comes up for me here is that this is a great time to bring that up.

    - Tegan Trovato

    We are on the heels of having lived something that proved the need for empathy and care at work. And employees are going to be asking in that interview question in the future, OK, what did your company do? Why should I work here? You take care of me if something happens in the world again, can I trust you?

    - Tegan Trovato

    So I think even bringing up that question and helping your organization focus on what's coming, that also would help grease the wheels a little bit, right?

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Yeah, I love the beginning point of embodying the change you want to see.

    - Tegan Trovato

    I feel for the leaders who are trying to figure this out, because it is it can feel like a really big lift, but I am humbled, as I'm sure many of these leaders are, by the fact that we are in the midst of something really wonderful happening, I think. I really do.

    - Tegan Trovato

    There's an awakening happening in corporations and people are now choosing their jobs based on values. And that will force organizations who aren't already inclined to that thinking to really start rethinking their approach to caring for their people and the beautiful thing.

    - Tegan Trovato

    So that's part of why I say it's time. Now is a great time for you to get brave and and just start asking, you know, the questions that are empowering to your organization. Like, what can it look like if we did better at X or Y, we could do better at X? Or could I take the lead on putting putting together a focus group on the topic of caring for employees with H.R. right now is a great time to to put your hand up for that stuff.

    - Tegan Trovato

    So.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Right. Well, and again, I love coming back to the focus on the the positive accrual that can come out of this.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Do you have a story or two that you can share in some of the clients you've worked with who have been on their own growth journey where they've come back and been like, wow, you know, this is this is how my team has changed. This is how I've grown that I feel like success and progress stories as a result of growing in these capacities?

    - Tegan Trovato

    This awesome leader who is he's a super people developer. I've been working with him for years and just kind of watched him rise through the ranks of his executive space. And he, like many people, transitioned out of his individual contributor role where he was a rock star at his job.

    - Tegan Trovato

    And then all of a sudden, like most of us, got dropped into a leadership role with 20 people. All of a sudden he was managing and no education in between. This is most leaders story, right? You're great at your job. And then you're going to manage a bunch of people, you know, good luck. Yeah. So his struggle was, why don't people just see what I see? Like, why won't they just do what I say?

    - Tegan Trovato

    And there was this new learning.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Sounds like the parental struggle as well. Why would I stay the course?

    - Tegan Trovato

    And it is actually very much a parallel. But there is this level of again, it's trust building. It's just giving people the tools they need to do their best work. And when he was able to pivot from telling to asking. The right questions, everything started to flow for him, and that's part of the human element, too, right, of just caring about the fact that people are getting stuck because, again, they're either afraid or there's not enough trust.

    - Tegan Trovato

    And that comes back to relationship. And just OK, intellectually, if you believe in your team and they're not moving, there's something underneath that and that's usually relationship oriented.

    - Tegan Trovato

    And there were definitely times earlier in that work where I was not at all thinking about relationship because for me the work was rewarding. So of course, everyone else would just be rewarded by getting in there, doing the work right. No, that's not how it works. These are where humans, right, and so I, of course, wasn't tending to my own human needs in that process and by proxy wasn't tending to the needs of others.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    I want to take a moment to thank our sponsor, my company, Handle with Care Consulting. Cultivating care, building empathy, valuing the whole person at work is essential work that has never been more important. Let Handle with Care Consulting help you skill up in empathy. With keynotes, empathy in leadership certificate programs, and coaching options, we have what it takes for you to grow in care. Come and journey with us to building up empathy at work.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    If you could wave a magic wand and for all the leaders you work with, get them to like and at a deep, like, bone, soulish level, understand or like have an understanding or change behavior, whatever connects.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    What would you say is just essential across the board. Hmm.

    - Tegan Trovato

    I'll lead with the headline and then I'll unpack it a little bit, what came to mind for me was if we could just start caring for each other at work the way we care for family. We would be on a completely different track really fast. And. The reason I think that's becoming possible and necessary is we spent, I don't know, the last 15 years talking about work life balance and then it became work life integration and then it became, I don't want to talk about it.

    - Tegan Trovato

    Right. People, people, people's reactions to that idea are so triggering because it is so hard to tell where the boundaries and lines are now. Work has just permeated our personal lives and vice versa. We're having to fit our personal lives in around work, doctors appointments, soccer games, weekend stuff. I mean, you name it. I think the truth is that there is very little separation now, but intellectually, we're still trying to tell ourselves that it must be separate.

    - Tegan Trovato

    So I think that we're still working on getting clear on the fact that this is what it is now like work and life out of fabric, they're so interwoven and so behaving with our co-workers, like their health, well-being, emotional existence isn't part of our job is amiss. Right?

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Well, or like its just an inconvenience that gets in the way of work.

    - Tegan Trovato

    Yeah. Or just thinking we still have an excuse to be like, no, it's work. Well, yeah, no, that's outmoded. That's actually not true anymore. Yeah.

    - Tegan Trovato

    So I think that there is a really beautiful opportunity right now for us to just, you know, stop being so worried about overstepping and in learning to offer care and making it an option for people to take advantage. I wouldn't want to force ourselves on people, for goodness sakes.

    - Tegan Trovato

    But, you know, when someone's struggling or you or you can tell they're having an emotional reaction, developing the skills we need to be a container is it's very much what's on the horizon.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Yeah, I love that. Is there any question that you wish I would have asked you that I didn't ask you?

    - Tegan Trovato

    You know, I think there's a question around my personal experience with empathy and why. Why, what I've experienced that makes it matter to me yet, because let me let me ask you, I know that this as a personal connection for you and empathy and why it matters.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Tell me a little bit more.

    - Tegan Trovato

    Years ago, before I started my practice, I went through my own personal trauma is the word I would use to describe it. So sparing all the details, I will say that I went from having a super career high moving across the country to accept this really exciting job, getting married. And the week of my marriage, my mother died tragically and unexpectedly and I had to go back to work within a couple of weeks, like all good corporate citizens have to do.

    - Tegan Trovato

    And I was a mess. Well, you know, I thought I had it together and I was pouring myself into work as a coping mechanism, which was a habit of mine. But I wasn't doing OK, you know, and I was new in my job. I had just moved to another state halfway across the country. I didn't know anyone. So I had almost I have really had no support systems other than my poor husband, new husband, new marriage.

    - Tegan Trovato

    So I think my experience of that was I found work to be such a cold place through that experience. And, you know, I was because of that, able to look back and question my own leadership over the years of how kind of leader was I before I struggled myself, when it came to caring for others who were going through really tough personal life circumstances. So. I you know, it's easy for me to look back and criticize the people I was working with and for and, you know, that lack of care, but really I found more empathy for them as I reflect.

    - Tegan Trovato

    But that's because I've had to do my own thinking around. OK, what does it look like for leaders to do a better job then? And what do I need to develop in myself so that I'm living and demonstrating, embodying that for the clients I work with, for the people I lead, so that I'm modeling that. But it started from a place of not having it myself, you know. So I think the workplace is really naturally the way it's built is devoid of empathy and humanness, it is our job as the humans who comprise the company to bring that into the culture.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    I love that. Thank you for sharing that a hard season that really, you know, allows you to identify with the clients that you help and be a part of creating something that is more human and more life affirming. And that's not to put like some easy, pretty bow over a hard experience. But if there is a way to use something which is just crappy and how hard in your first week of marriage and a brand new job, but to be able to use that to be of service to others is a beautiful thing.

    - Tegan Trovato

    There is purpose in everything. Sometimes it just takes a little while for us to get clear on what that purpose is right after a hard time. So I totally agree sometimes.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Sometimes it takes some dark night of the soul before we can come to that moment.

    - Tegan Trovato

    Look, it gives us grit as leaders. It really does. And credibility and connection to others when we get to those things.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    So if if the last year and a half has been anything, it is a great leveler of some common experience.

    - Tegan Trovato

    Indeed. Indeed.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Well, thank you, my friend. Anything else you'd like to add before I stop?

    - Tegan Trovato

    No, I mean, this has just been a real pleasure and I'm just excited to hear what listeners might take away from this. And I just am really proud and humbled to work with leaders who are keen to do more of this and to create a more human workplace. And I would say there a majority. Yeah, people I've come into contact with. So I'm excited about what's what's ahead for all of us.

    - Liesel Mindrebo Mertes

    Well, and if some of those leaders are listening and they think, wow, Bright Arrow sounds awesome, I'd like to find out more what is the best way for them to do that?

    - Tegan Trovato

    Check out our website. And there's a contact form there, which is www.brightarrowcoaching.com and it's really easy to find me on LinkedIn as well.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    Here are three key takeaways from my conversation with Tegan…

    I love the positive vision that Tegan cast for what this time can be.Yes, it has been a rough go and a time of tremendous, shared suffering. And yet, this time can, conversely, provide an opportunity for connection, trust, and vulnerability like never before. Are you viewing the call to connection primarily as a burden or as an opportunity? As leaders and team members, it is important to tap into our own personalization of empathy.When is a time that you have needed extra support? That you have felt weak or in need of care? Considering these experiences can allow you more space to imagine what it could be like for another person. And while we will never, 100% “get” what it is like for someone else, this consideration can move us forward in empathy How you care for people now will mark your organization moving forwards.I think it is such an insightful, true point. Prospective employees, in years to come, will ask what you did and how you cared for your people during a year and a half of tremendous disruption. As you think about your current practices and procedures, would you be happy and proud to talk about them in coming years?

    OUTRO

    Learn more about Tegan Trovato and her coaching work here: https://www.brightarrowcoaching.com/

  • Nick Smarrelli

    But at the end of it, you know, you can't be listening to the reality. It can't be you can't be talking about how fantastic things are when things don't feel fantastic because then you lose all credibility and that's what people want. I think in leadership these days.

    I can get really snarky when technology is not working well for me…just ask my family. Chromecast under functioning, the link refusing to load. All of it can seem like a lot. But the biggest frustrations come when the technology that I need for work isn’t WORKING. So, when I call the support desk, I am bringing a lot to that interaction.

    My guest today is Nick Smarelli, he is the CEO of GadellNet Consulting and a big part of what his team does is troubleshoot those complex, frustrating tech calls. Nick is talking today about how he keeps his staff engaged, supporting their well-being in the midst of a pandemic, giving them what they need so they can give the customers what they need.

    Nick is open, insightful, and has great tips for anyone who is leading through a time of crisis and I anticipate that you will get as much out of the interaction as I did!

    First, a little bit more about Nick. Nick joined GadellNet in 2010 after working with Ingersoll Rand. He studied psychology and finance as an undergrad and, I love this line from his bio, “Nick views all business decisions from the lens of blending both humanity and fiscal responsibility to achieve incredible outcomes.” And I think you will hear that impulse in his interview.

    GadellNet grew over his 10 tenure, from 4 employees to 150 across three states. GadellNet has also earned honors as an Inc. “Best Places to Work”.

    Nick is an ultramarathon runner, a father of three, a spouse of over 12 years, and an avid supporter of the community. Nick has a podcast, “Zero Excuses”, where I had the pleasure of being a recent guest, where he speaks to guests on the power of the human potential – and how to live a self-accountable life. He is currently pursuing his Masters Degree in Industrial Organizational Psychology from Harvard University.

    We began our conversation talking about early morning workouts. Nick is often up in the wee hours of the morning to exercise or to get work done, which feel slike a necessity at this stage of life as he is also a parent and a husband.

    Liesel Mertes

    I was I was a rower in college. I was on the crew team. So I'm no stranger to like the four. Forty five am waiting approval.

    - Nick Smarrelli

    I'm getting up in the morning.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah. Were you always a morning person or did you come to that with your like athletic pursuits.

    - Nick Smarrelli

    I would say I am never been a morning person. I, I don't know if I am right now. Frankly it is not, it is not my default by any stretch. But I think by virtue of athletic pursuits, work commitments, usually speaking, there's just a lot of work to process and I find mornings to be really solid for that. It's again, after having kids, that is my lone moments of reasonably energized solitude. You know, certainly the kids go to bed, but by the time bedtime happens, I'm spent.

    - Nick Smarrelli

    I'm not enjoying that moment. So carving out that morning space has given me a little bit of of time to have and be, I would say, selfish. That's my selfish time. That's my how. Take care of my body. Take care of my mind. Take care of a little bit of work so that when the kids wake up and my wife wakes up, I'm in a place and they're going to get the best of forty five minutes of me before the cycle starts again with, with kind of a normal workday.

    - Nick Smarrelli

    So that's, that's really where I use that selfish time because I feel like the rest of the day is kind of committed to your pursuits outside of just myself.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Totally. Well and I like that turn of phrase and the differentiation between energized versus depleted solitude, because I deeply resonate with that as a parent at this stage of life. Like by the time I'm finally alone and everybody is mostly in bed, although they're never completely in bed, there's always like that bouncy nap. Right. You know, they've had an epiphany or, you know, they want me to look at some bumpe. It's it's not the same as a morning solitude.

    - Liesel Mertes

    I am. I saw something on your website that I would like to ask about, and it specifically leads into. Caring for people at work, creating culture of care.

    - Liesel Mertes

    All right, that's helpful for me. I didn't want to do with it on my first attempt at.

    - Liesel Mertes

    I saw on the GadellNet Consulting website, you talk about your 98 percent happiness score with clients, tell me a little bit more about that and then I want to dig deeper into that number.

    - Nick Smarrelli

    Yes, well, I yeah, certainly, let's talk about that and a big part of our culture, at GadellNet, that is a lot of, I would say, bilateral feedback. So it's we we adore seeking and identifying feedback. So we always I always feel like every time we bring on a new employee, they're overwhelmed by the number of channels by which we get feedback from our clients, from our teams, from our from our leaders. You know, we love feedback.

    - Nick Smarrelli

    I think it gives and informs us quite a bit in terms of our strategic decision making. But one of the big things that we implemented was just kind of a casual survey at the end of every single engagement that we have with a client of ours. So we are a 50 percent of the business is a 24/7 help desk. So at the end of the day, what we are supporting is somebody who walks in the door, expects things to work.

    - Nick Smarrelli

    Things are not working that day. Oftentimes they are, let's say, a controller. They've got a big meeting with the CFO excels networking. So now you've got a lot of emotion that comes into it and they're calling in and they're seeking our help. So we talk all the time, endlessly, frankly, that our jobs are kind of half therapists have IT professionals. So we really kind of try to frame out this idea of kind of client satisfaction, client happiness, because we we really try to kind of throw an emotion at it, because at the end of the day, really what we're doing is dealing with angry people who are frustrated by the system.

    - Nick Smarrelli

    And as a business leader, it is hard to keep people motivated to do that day in and day out. I sympathize with our front line team sometimes with kind of where their responsibilities are because everybody is frustrated. So the we really try to kind of put a focus on that experience that at the end of the day, in a 20 minute engagement that you have with that person there, just a little bit a little bit better, we kind of do it akin to there's a rock in your shoe, we take the rock out.

    - Nick Smarrelli

    So we really kind of focus on metrics that tie back to an emotion because we believe that that's the end of the day. We're keeping systems running. But we're we're we've got to acknowledge that that person comes with a whole load of baggage and emotions to that phone call as well.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Well, I love that awareness of the whole person that you're interacting with. And it makes me wonder, just in an informal sense, I mean, I picture the last year has been hard, complicated. There's quarantine, there's people schooling at home, there's relatives getting sick and the tolerance level for anything going wrong on the system side, I imagine being even lower than is already low bar. Have you have you people felt that on the other side of calls or chat interactions like just a higher intensity of anger or despair or all of the emotions of the people they serve?

    - Nick Smarrelli

    You're this question is so incredibly relevant. It's painful. So I'll take two steps back and I promise I'll answer your question. But sure. You know, March 2020, obviously, everyone's going in lockdown. You know, the team is getting to X, the number of phone calls, everybody. They're dealing with their own personal crisis. And now they're also dealing with every fifteen thousand clients that are moving back to their homes or to their homes to work indefinitely.

    - Nick Smarrelli

    Our job at that point is can be tied back to in some capacity saving lives. At the time, you didn't know how contagious this was. We didn't know what it was. But at the end of the day, we are creating space for people to continue to operate, to continue to keep their jobs and to keep themselves safe. Fast forward March 2021 and now really, but it really kind of came back really March 2021 and people are starting to come back.

    - Nick Smarrelli

    We're in this kind of weird purgatory zone. Some people are being forced back to the office when most of them don't want to go back to the office. Most businesses have stopped hiring in that 12 month period and now the economy is ramping up. So their workload is higher than it's ever been. Couple that now with you know, if you go on LinkedIn, go on Inc.com, you'll see kind of this this mass turnover that's happening seemingly across the board.

    - Nick Smarrelli

    So people are stressed, they're anxious. They are. This is the last, I would say four weeks have been the most eye opening in terms of kind of our responsibility emotionally to honor the people calling in, because it is it is a different just a vibe now. And it's been it's been interesting as a leader, it's been interesting to receive the feedback, but I don't know what it was where we were fully locked down, that everyone is still feeling this like solidarity of we can do it.

    - Nick Smarrelli

    And now I just feel like people are just completely spent and burnt out and have just have nothing left to give to the cause. And they're in some sort of like adrenal fatigue at this point. And it's it's manifesting itself every single day to our team.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And I and they're they're looking to discharge that stress on or to someone or something. And that that can be a big load to carry for the person at GadellNet Consulting, answering the phone. Is there anything that you have found has been really effective in how you train and equip your support staff to really meet that emotional moment? And let me backfill it with an observation of my own, which is I am a USAA insurance client. They do auto insurance, home insurance.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And I remember being in my MBA program, we did a case study about USAA and just how they encountered that moment because, you know, a little bit like what you do. They're fielding calls of somebody who has just been in a car accident or their home has been robbed and that sense of their presence on the phone as being a business and a valued differentiator in the minds of clients. It strikes me that you're hoping to do something similar. How do you equip people in their training and then in the way that you support them in an ongoing manner so they can keep consistently delivering that to your clients?

    - Nick Smarrelli

    That is a great question, and we have been seeking avenues with which to provide, I would say at this point we've named it, so that's our first step is acknowledged that fundamentally, I think people people the reason why we hire people that come to our company is they take everything very emotionally. They took a high degree of pride in their their jobs. And because of that, they feel when their clients that are upset, whether it's at us or just at the situation in general, they take it very personally.

    - Nick Smarrelli

    So for us, we've kind of identified it as this is a this is a pervasive issue across the United States, across all businesses. We support three hundred businesses. We are a business ourselves. So much like last March where you were feeling it, the business itself is feeling it. Plus, we're also now bearing the responsibility across our client base as well. So that was really our first step. There is a series of books that our technicians are offered up.

    - Nick Smarrelli

    Most of them have read, I would say probably about 80 percent have read it. The talk about kind of being that kind of empathetic engineer and and our team has kind of advocated for it's a light book. It's nice and easy for reading it. And then our last step is our training developing manager is out searching and for finding kind of how do we how do we provide that type of training. So our goal is in the next two weeks, we can have lunch and learn to talk about, you know, when people are feeling this or you're feeling it, kind of how do you how do you how do you how do you deal with it?

    - Nick Smarrelli

    How do you not bring it home with you after five p.m.? How do you be empathetic to the emotion but then not have it add? I mean, again, these individuals are having eight to 12 phone calls a day to not be burdened with kind of a Lego stack of everyone's problems that are now building up, that you're bringing that home to your family. So we haven't done anything great yet, but I feel like I know somebody that may be able to help us.

    - Nick Smarrelli

    That's you, by the way, to kind of help. How do we how do we have those conversations?

    - Liesel Mertes

    And thank you for thinking. Well, it reminds me of some training that I've done throughout the course of the year with the Indiana Primary Health Care Association, because these are all of these frontline people and it's exactly what you're talking about. It's compassion fatigue, this emotional residue of exposure to other people's grief and trauma. And how do we not carry that into all of these other areas of life? Because, yeah, it's really real. And especially when your job is a frontline person.

    - Liesel Mertes

    What have you done that has really worked over the last year to care for your people in a way that keeps them sustained?

    - Nick Smarrelli

    So for us, we've hopefully we've done we've done a number of items, one of the key items is kind of start taking a step back. We we we use a tool called Tiny Balls. We're actually in the process of moving now to amplify. But it is a it is a tool that has allowed us to remain connected. If there's one thing that especially as somebody who has my personality, I like to be able to see people's faces and kind of read that feeling of exhaustion or exasperation.

    - Nick Smarrelli

    And when you don't, you have a hundred and fifty employees in one hundred and fifty different places. That was impossible for us. We really ramped up our efforts around 20 plus questions that really tackled a lot of the key. Emotions during the last 12 months allowing for people to be expressive either directly or anonymously in terms of where that can shore up support, more than that, we've really kind of opened up avenues of communication. I, I if I look at my calendar pre March in terms of my engagement directly with employees that don't report to me or indirectly slightly report to me, I would say that was five percent of my day.

    - Nick Smarrelli

    If you look at my weeks now, I'd say 30 to 40 percent of my days is talking to individuals across all layers of the organization and kind of hearing their stories and understanding their concerns. It's a big reason why, frankly, we're not pushing people to go back to the office just yet. As much as I would love to see their faces back in the office. The stories that I hear from them are saying we're where we want to go back, but we're just not ready yet.

    - Nick Smarrelli

    And so for us, we've really tried to take that feedback, share the feedback directly to folks, and then really kind of take action on what we heard. Some of the tools that we've also used that I think are impactful. We created for the last six months I presented our state of the company is a scale we talked about the scale of kind of 10, which is operating on pure overload, pure, pure adrenaline, and then zero is just not getting anything done.

    - Nick Smarrelli

    And for us, that March, April, May timeframe when everyone is moving remote, we all had to operate at an eight to a 10 and we wanted to make sure that we were operating at a at a zone that was capable for us. We kind of created this whole numbering system that people would use to check in with their managers, because sometimes you just can't name the word or name the feeling. But numbers seem to help. So this numbering system really kind of helped.

    - Nick Smarrelli

    I would say open up dialogue to people to say I'm feeling like a two right now and saying that they're fine. Me as CEO, there's days I come in and I feel like a two and and that's OK. So really opening up the discussion around it, we've we've had lunch and learns around mental health. We've done training around it. We've we've really we've opened up employees being able to get access directly to therapy that has has I think I forgot the number.

    - Nick Smarrelli

    We're three to four x the use of that service in the last 12 months now. So we're making sure we're putting money in the places that we're finding to be important. So, you know, I would say, were we the best at it? I would I would I would likely say no. But we really did make sure that the conversation was always open. I spoke frequently to how I was feeling, and it never was with my usual rub of optimism.

    - Nick Smarrelli

    It was a lot of just kind of really open dialogue around the cell, I feel. And I'm running this company and it's OK that I'm not feeling bullish and optimistic today. That's that's an OK feeling. So. I just think it opened up dialogue and I think it was appreciated by the team.

    - Liesel Mertes

    I love that it's so important and just for listeners, as I work with companies, I find again and again a mark of differentiation between companies that really can move forward in creating a culture of care or that are stuck in old patterns is members of the leadership team and top level managers being able to give the space for these conversations to be available and not like a one off an aberration, but important and sharing out of their own vulnerability. And I really like what you said, even if the awareness of putting aside what might be like your preferred way of operating with optimism and vision and leadership, when we so celebrate that, especially at top levels and and it is great, it really can help excel and drive a company to growth.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And yet especially in moments of profound disruption, if that's just where a leader stays, like, I've just got to only, you know, it's like just keep pounding the optimism, Peg. It can really be discordant for people. So I hear that the growth in awareness that, you know, probably was necessary. Was that hard for you the first time that you were like, OK, I'm going to let them know where I'm really at?

    - Nick Smarrelli

    So I would say without question, I am not. If you look at where I see a therapist and I talk through things as I do, I am I am a classic case of imposter syndrome. I mean, I'm a classic case of often feeling that if I am not acting perfectly and seen perfectly that in some capacity I'm failing. I take into account to too much what people think of me. So exposing that the CEO, which we have been taught since we were kids, are, you know, at the helm.

    - Nick Smarrelli

    You're you're you're leading the way. My emotions trickle down to everybody else's emotions. If you're optimistic, people will follow you. And the reality was it was so dissonant to how I was feeling and how other people were feeling. We call it emotional intelligence. Call it something else. It felt fake to try to go out there and say everything is perfect, everything is great. Let's continue to move this way. And so, yeah, it was uncomfortable.

    - Nick Smarrelli

    And it's frankly still is. I don't I don't like talking about where I'm falling short. I think an example is this week I was flying to Colorado. I was landing. I landed at forty five or nine o'clock at night. I was supposed to stay at a state, a colleague's house. And I texted him like, I just don't have the mental capacity with which to not be alone right now. And that was odd. That was odd for me.

    - Nick Smarrelli

    And he was he was obviously very accepting of it. But to me that was me saying I, I just can't and I can't do it all. I can't come into a house and be in a good mood after being in a good mood all day. That was that was taxing on me. And so I think the last year has really opened up a chance for me to show. I think I learned throughout my career it's OK to not be the smartest person in the room, but it was never OK to show that much emotion.

    - Nick Smarrelli

    And I think the last 12 months is really kind of allowed me to to show a bit more and to walk away from things. Just say like this is too much for me right now. And being OK with that and frankly, everybody really rising to the challenge when I wanted to do that.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Thank you for sharing that, what has been one of the most unexpected things that has come out of your vulnerability, whether that is something it has elicited at other people or how you felt afterwards, like has there been anything that you would say, I didn't really want to do this, but this has been good on the other side.

    - Nick Smarrelli

    So I would say merely exposing if you look at kind of the different aspects of yourself that you tend to not show to others, I think, you know, social media is always gets blamed for this idea of building a personal brand. And certainly my personal brand is zero excuses. I I'm doing these ridiculously long races and look at me. I'm a great dad and that's my personal brand. And the days where I'm not crushing it is quite the opposite of that personal brand.

    - Nick Smarrelli

    And for me, I think. I've set aside this necessity to always be and I'll use the word perfect, but maybe I'll call it on brand that. It's OK to showcase those those feelings and at the end of the day. That position has not changed. People still don't respect what I'm doing and frankly speaking, have have really stepped up and. Kind of allowed me to do that, and that has, I would say, kind of absolved a lot of the stress of the job because I haven't had to fake my way through it on the days where I couldn't.

    - Nick Smarrelli

    So like I said, I think it just it just, frankly speaking, just allowed me to have a bit more grace than I ever have of not being this perfect person all the time and. I don't I think it's better and I'll give a story quick, we had an individual who I would say in September, October time frame, came to us and said, I'm all I was off for two weeks. And at one point during those two weeks, I considered taking my own life and we had sent him both my director of HR and myself had sent him a note in the middle of the week.

    - Nick Smarrelli

    And I said, hey, this is how I'm feeling today. And I was feeling down and our director of H.R. said, hey, take the time, we support you. And that one two punch to him, he thinks saved his life. And he again, I don't mind sharing the story because he shared it with the whole team. He held a lunch and learn on mental health later that month. But he really kind of talked to what the impact of of those programs are on him.

    - Nick Smarrelli

    So, again, I had the selfish motives of in the sense that it made me feel more comfortable as a leader being true to myself. And then I think for others, it allowed them to do the same thing to.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Hmm. The powerful effect of those meaningful gestures, I feel like sometimes as we in the face of disruptive life events, they can seem so big, whether that's pandemic or a death or sickness. And we can kind of negate the power of sending out an email or sharing how we're feeling or just sending that text of encouragement and the impact that those gestures can have and do have. Because when somebody's feeling. Suicidal when they're feeling underwater, they're really looking for something to to lay hold of, and if we can offer those things and be, you know, even even just the small gestures, I think that story really shows the power and the impact of those times of reaching out.

    - Nick Smarrelli

    It's crazy to me, I had a great conversation with my father in law talking about just cuz listen to the podcast then and anything I'm on, he's he's a he's he's my number one fan. So any, anybody has on the podcast, you're guaranteed at least one more guest because of because of my father in law. But he talks about how incredibly different businesses today it is 20 years ago and how know companies like that, but also so many other great companies talk through these things.

    - Nick Smarrelli

    But you couldn't even imagine having those conversations back then. And to me, I just feel like it's it's really is a huge shift. And I think more and more and more a bigger shift. And I'm hoping people take notice of those companies doing some great things that this is this is the new reality is people if you expect people to bring their whole self to work, there are some parts of that aren't as pretty. And we've got to we've got to honor that, too.

    - Nick Smarrelli

    And that stuff that starts with leadership and saying if you want people to bring their whole self to them, to things, talk about your family, talk about your emotions, talk about your great talk about your bet. And again, to your point, I can't be a source of doom and gloom. If there are there are times where I have to shine and show and and push through those bad days with a smile on my face.

    - Nick Smarrelli

    But at the end of it, you know, you can't be listening to the reality. It can't be you can't be talking about how fantastic things are when things don't feel fantastic because then you lose all credibility and that's what people want. I think in leadership these days.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Well, and in my work as well, I oftentimes and party to that sort of generational divide of this is a different paradigm of doing work and I would definitely say a healthier, more inclusive, less even even if you just want to look at the the dollar cost. I mean, the cost of stress that was absorbed in people's bodies, in their health and their rate of burnout in that prior way of doing things was really high. And it's it is an important, necessary and competitive shift that we're engaging in.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah. And it's it's what people want. It's the way the world is moving. And I think the pandemic has really highlighted that if we could have played nicely and pretended that everything was OK, all of the pretension of that performance was stripped away in the month after month of covid and everybody coping with that.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    I want to take a moment to adknowledge our sponsor, Handle with Care Consulting. In today’s episode, you heard about the mental stressors and the toll of compassion fatigue on workers. And maybe you thought, that is going on for me and on my team as well. If so, let Handle with Care Consulting help. With trainings on coping with compassion fatigue, how to have hard conversations, and how to build empathy in the workplace, we have an offering to fit your needs and help you skill up in empathy. Contact Handle with Care Consulting for a free consultation today and start to put empathy to work.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    – Liesel Mertes

    You are a psychology undergrad and currently doing master's work in industrial organizational psychology at and a little local school called Harvard. How does your knowledge of psychology affect how you lead as a CEO?

    - Nick Smarrelli

    I think people always ask because I have a psychology and a finance degree, so it's almost you've got these you know, you've got the angel on one end and the devil on the other side and it often flips. I'm implying one is one or the other. But for me. You know, it's so funny where people always ask kind of where what do I use the most as finance or the psychology? And I would say finance. I use two percent of my job psychology.

    - Nick Smarrelli

    I use the other ninety-eight and not the learnings necessarily from university, but more so the study of human potential, the study of. And at the end of the day, most business owners are managing people, we don't I don't run a factory where I've got precision in robotics, where I don't have to kind of honor brain and home and a lifetime of experiences as they bring that to work. So for me, psychology is required. It is it is the you know, you wouldn't have you wouldn't have a manufacturing facility with a bunch of equipment and not an engineer who could fix that equipment or understand how that equipment works.

    - Nick Smarrelli

    And yet we seem to be OK to have and teach specifically at business schools. I have a very big contention with the curriculum of the business schools. It's so much practical curriculum and not. The people that execute on said curriculum, and I think that for me is a huge mess. So to me, I think leadership is ultimately, you know, you're an engineer of how things work and how if you put two things together, what happens if you put seven people together?

    - Nick Smarrelli

    What happens? And so understanding team dynamics, understanding. You know, if you bring in this personality, how does that shift things? How do you how do you identify the right talent? I mean, that is all psychology. And I don't care how great your knowledge is of finance at the end of it, it's it's a people game and it's it's such a big part of the job recently. So for me, psychology,

    - Nick Smarrelli

    Psychology always wins. And I love the study of it, which is why instead of pursuing an MBA, I opted to pursue a master's in industrial organizational psychology is how do I bring that psychological theory back to the business base?

    - Liesel Mertes

    Well, I like that so much. And even the the framing like an engineer, because all too often it's turfed to H.R. like, well, get a person or a department for that. But how much that misses in the day to day of managing, deploying, you know, optimizing and engaging with people. I you shared a little bit earlier that sense of, OK, I want to lead with vulnerability, but I don't want to be doom and gloom.

    - Liesel Mertes

    It reminds me of an article I came across. I reposted it and it was like the response was huge of people resonating with it. It was talking about four leaders being able to share without being leaky was the term this author used finding that sweet spot of encouraging vulnerability without just dumping on the people underneath you. It makes me think that oftentimes being at the top is a lonely. What have you found has been important to support your mental health. Where have you found a community that you can, you know, be leaky with that has allowed you to be able to be present for the people you lead?

    - Liesel Mertes

    Especially over the last year or so?

    - Nick Smarrelli

    I have been fortunate enough. I have been part of, let's say seven years ago, decided to join Vistage, which is a kind of a CEO group that has been hugely impactful into both business and then kind of just general mental health or kind of finding people that are going through the same problems. And then recently moved from Vistage to YPO, which is the Young Presidents organization here locally in Indianapolis. And also I'm part of the St. Louis chapter as well.

    - Nick Smarrelli

    For me, it's hard to explain the stress and pressure of being the leader. Everything is big and I often say I get too much credit for the good stuff and I get too much credit for the bad stuff. At the end of the day, everything's my fault. It is a system or a person that I allowed to fail that created whatever problem we're experiencing. And that's that's a hard. Part of the job and then couple that with covid, where you've got two hundred and fifty people that are looking at you whose spouses are sick or spouses are not working anymore and looking at you to make sure that every decision you make is going to ensure that two weeks from now they're going to still get their paycheck.

    - Nick Smarrelli

    It's it's it's it is lonely. And I think that is a great way to describe it. And my wife is just one of the most supportive people in the world. But it's hard to describe that feeling. It's hard to describe kind of that burden that sits on you. Even on Saturday afternoon when you're not sitting in front of a computer, you're still working, you're still processing, it's still there. There's still a little smelly in my subconscious that's processing all the forty seven things that we're trying to trying to improve on at any point.

    - Nick Smarrelli

    So for me, finding people that are very much aligned with my values and then finding people, frankly speaking, that are so definitive, my values, that I would say in some capacity force me to either reevaluate or. Double down on the way that I think as a leader, but for me, creating space for me to talk about how hard it is sometimes and how I yearn sometimes to work at Starbucks. And when I leave, you know, there's no emails coming in afterwards or any of those type of things.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And the biggest mistake you can make is misspelling somebody's name on the correct, which I would never say doing wrong milk.

    - Nick Smarrelli

    Yeah, it my my ability to learn people's names, they would say, what's your name? And I would, of course, immediately forget it because that is that is my my go to. But but yes that is that's exactly. Nobody loses their job or their house or puts them in a crate in a strange place or I'm not pushing people to complete burnout or all the other stuff that kind of comes along with how do you push people to reach their highest potential but not push them over the ledge.

    - Nick Smarrelli

    And this is such a fine line. So either way, long, rambling story here, to me, it's it's finding like minded people that you can truly be open with and and truly share the inner workings of how you're feeling, but how the business is doing and and people who just kind of understand what that burden is like. I can't articulate more as a leader is having what that group has meant to me in terms of getting through, especially the last year, but getting through the last 11 years of of of running a definite.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Hmm. Thank you for sharing, this has been a great conversation. Are there any questions I haven't asked you that would be helpful for me to ask you? Oh, man, we want to share.

    - Nick Smarrelli

    No, I can't I'm sure I think if there's anything else, that's. That's out there. You know, nothing nothing comes to mind. I'm sure will later.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    Here are three key take-aways from my conversation with Nick…

    As a leader, you need to be consistently making time to get the pulse of your people.Pre-pandemic, Nick said that he spent about 5% of his time checking in. Now, the number is closer to 40% of his time. These check-ins inform GadellNet’s decisions about pivotal work moments like when to ask people to go back to the office. How much time are you setting aside to purposefully get the pulse of your people. “Psychology always wins”.I love and deeply resonate with this line from Nick. The way that we train people often doesn’t align with this reality, that leaders spend most of their time managing people. A knowledge, an interest in the inner workings of your people will allow you to hire the best talent, to motivate your staff, and to troubleshoot problems as they come along. Is a deep knowledge of people, of their psychology, a value in your organization? How much is this awareness present or absent in your leadership team? There is a particular stress that leaders feel at all times, but especially within the dimensions of a global pandemic.In the midst of these pressures, Nick shares with vulnerability with his team, but he has also found it to be immensely helpful to have an external group that “gets” and understands what he is going through as an executive and can support him along the way. Do you have a group of people that you can be real with and that can help you as you lead?

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    OUTRO

  • - Jorge Vargas

    And sometimes we forget that at work. We forget that in other scenarios. And at the end of the day, work is important and matters. But but it's work. And we are we're humans and we're people. And we were feelings and we're joy. We're sadness first. And that ends up having a huge influence and work at the end of the day and not recognizing that it's a little bit naive and dismissive of it makes us better workers if we actually are a little more self-aware about how we're feeling, our emotions in general.

    NEW INTRO

    Today’s conversation is wide-ranging. We explore the importance of engaging with your own emotions, the absence of one-size-fits-all solutions to emotional and social health, and the particular challenges of empathetically managing multi-national teams. I learned so much and I know that you will too.

    My guest today is Jorge Alejandro Vargas. He works at the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit that supports our favorite research tool, Wikipedia. There, Jorge leads Regional Partnerships, engaging with teams across the planet to leverage both private and public sector partnerships.

    Jorge calls San Francisco home. He moved here seven and a half years ago from Bogota, Colombia where he was born, educated, and worked as a lawyer specializing in Intellectual Property and Copyrights.

    He recently moved to the Lower Height neighborhood from the Mission.

    - Jorge Vargas

    I love walking around the city, a good friend and colleague said the San Francisco is a collection of neighborhoods rather than a single city, and each neighborhood has its own vibe and its own thing. And walking around is really nice. I also enjoy tennis a lot, so I try to fit a game of tennis at least once a week. Not that I'm very good at it, but I am trying my best to get that time out in the tennis court.

    And as we ease into our conversation, perhaps there are some listeners that will remember the evolution of Wikipedia with me. I remember when Wikipedia was looked down upon. I was DEFINITELY never, ever allowed to use it as a source in high school or college. But somehow, over the years, we have all come to rely upon the shared knowledge that the platform represents.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Even the turn of phrase, it's almost like like Kleenex, like you Wikipedia something, because that's where you would go for trusted information. And even as my children use it, how much of a go to resource, which as it relates to your work, I feel like, you know, just in the span of my adulthood, I've seen readership grow, you know, participation, access. And it sounds like that sort of movement of building acceptance, you know, getting stakeholders together is what you're doing in these regional partnerships in a way to continue like moving there.

    - Liesel Mertes

    The influence and the participation of Wikimedia and Wikipedia is that is that like an accurate enough summation of some of the things that you're doing? I realize there's probably way more to it than that.

    - Jorge Vargas

    One hundred percent. And I think that it's been very interesting that so this year we're celebrating our 20th anniversary, actually.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Happy 20th.

    - Jorge Vargas

    Thank you very much. And it's been 20 years human and we call that. And that's kind like the the tag that we've been using for this big milestone of a birthday, because we really acknowledge the fact that Wikipedia is built by humans. It's because of hundreds of thousands of volunteers around the world that we have what we work with. They are volunteers. And the movement as a whole, as we call it, is the fuel and the magic that actually keeps Wikipedia alive with a foundation.

    - Jorge Vargas

    What I do and the partnerships team as a whole tries to do is support that mission that is highly built by all those volunteers in the world and work with those partners that want to help us in many different ways further that mission and pretty much reach that vision that we have as a movement of imagining a world in which every single human being has access to the sum of all knowledge, which is an ambitious statement. It's a very bold move, but at the same time, that's what we want to do.

    - Jorge Vargas

    But to do that, the only way is to work with others, and that is the whole spirit and DNA of the partnership's team and the work that we do.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And what I hear in that is at its best, you know, Wikipedia is democratizing the the spread of knowledge, you know, with the with its kind of participatory platform. And yet still fact checking that people are able to do and getting voices from different sectors and different cultures and languages is so important in that continued growth of that mission.

    - Jorge Vargas

    That is absolutely right. I think that what Wikipedia has done in the last ten years has disrupted the parroting. That knowledge should sit with with a few group, with a group of few folks. I would say I remember growing up with the concept that knowledge and information was trapped in this few books that we held with pride in the living room as the encyclopedia that we should look at as the source of trust. The knowledge and Wikipedia, although sounds on paper, is a crazy idea.

    - Jorge Vargas

    Twenty years later, as finding ways to show that knowledge can be shared and can be produced by many people and really democratizing the notion that we all can be experts as long as we follow certain editorial guidelines that the encyclopedia relies on, as long as we are doing the homework. I would say in actually producing information in a way that is accurate, verifiable, neutral, and where consensus can be reached to make that part of the encyclopedia. So it's fascinating.

    - Liesel Mertes

    You talked about managing teams across countries and I want to hear more about that, especially with what's gone on over the last year.

    - Liesel Mertes

    One of the things that we really love to talk about on this podcast is how to build empathy and connection at work. And oftentimes that is something that is seen as not really having space in the workplace.

    - Liesel Mertes

    What comes to mind when you think of within your personal experience, a story of a time when you really experienced the impact of either experiencing empathy at work or experiencing a lack of it in a way that made an impression on you.

    - Jorge Vargas

    Thank you so much for that question. Does it bring some triggers, a lot of the positivity and like the things that I love about the work and specifically about my team. So the partnerships team and specifically the regional partnerships team is focused on, as I mentioned earlier, expanding and bringing ways to create more awareness and increase readership in particular parts of the world. And in order to do that, we needed to hire folks that are living in those parts of the world.

    - Jorge Vargas

    So we have a regional manager for Latin America who in Colombia, someone who is in Indonesia, someone who's in India, someone is in Ghana, someone who was in Jordan recently relocated to to the U.S. So that brought me for I want to say the first time. The feeling of having to work on the same topic, on the same thing with five or six completely different people that came from completely different backgrounds, contexts, languages, time zones. And one of the big things where I realize that empathy was needed was the fact that we were just sitting in completely different parts of the world.

    - Jorge Vargas

    And that meant that maybe someone was going to be having lunch or dinner while the other person was trying to feed them and have a conversation with them. Or maybe someone was in the middle of child care when the other person was actually in the middle of what they thought was an important meeting. So definitely trying to break that construct that we continue to see and that maybe the pandemic has a silver lining left or is leaving of not centralizing everything of where the place of work is physically located, the headquarters of the Wikimedia Foundation or in San Francisco.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Can you unpack that a little bit more? Because I think it's a very interesting point. What does so paint a picture for us? What does it look like for you to be checking in with yourself in a way that makes you a better manager as you think about what you're about to ask of, you know, a partner or a teammate?

    - Jorge Vargas

    I think that for me, the first thing to I check in with myself is trying to think where the other person is. And by that I mean not just geographically or the times in which they are, but like try to understand maybe where that person is in their life. At that moment, particularly the last year and a half, has shown us that. Work and life, for better or for worse, or the day to day life are completely together, like it's very hard to separate, particularly when we're working from home.

    - Jorge Vargas

    We know that we may have kids in the background. We may have like the mail come in. We may have someone that is needing something from somebody else and requires attention. And for me before this and when I used to work back in Columbia or when I started working for the foundation, I never thought of that. I was just like, well, working like it's just work, which like think of this thing that we need to do, period, no matter what.

    - Jorge Vargas

    Now, I think that being more self aware. Sorry, more self aware about. Where the person is, is it late for them this morning for them. What happens if I sent them right now a ping that I need to talk to someone? And I make the assumption that even though it's late for them, they're probably awake or maybe they are awake, but they shouldn't be responding, but they're under the pressure to do so. So it's really checking in and being like, OK, where is the other person?

    - Liesel Mertes

    Right, that's so good and being part of teams that span the globe, I imagine, really necessary. Do you feel like you're, you're learning curve has really had to, like, accelerate over the last year and all of those things?

    - Jorge Vargas

    Absolutely. I think that for better or for worse, the fact that the partnership's team of the foundation is so remote from its inception allowed us to have a leg up before the pandemic because we were already building in the routines of what being on camera all the time would look like. Having this multiple time zones would look like at the same time, I think that this last year and a half through COVID has trained, has reinforced even more the idea of trying to understand and recognize where the other person is mentally and physically and trying to really be self aware of this is a good time for us to speak, not necessarily timers in the time zone, but.

    - Jorge Vargas

    Maybe this person is going through something right now. Maybe they are going through a lot of stress because they haven't been able to deal with child care at the moment. Maybe there's been health complications with them or for their loved ones. And I think that before the pandemic, I wouldn't have thought about that. I would be like, oh, yeah, I know the Times Zone works or let's let's talk at 7:00 p.m. just so it's easier or whatever.

    - Jorge Vargas

    But now it's more of a check in and think through first, like, oh, OK, but I remember that they said that this was happening mean I should think this through before sending this or asking for that. So it's been a it's been an interesting learning curve, I would say.

    - Liesel Mertes

    So those sorts of things in my work, I call them disruptive life events, which 2020 and 2021 have been full of across the world, whether that is in people's immediate sphere of family and influence or, you know, a little bit more to the periphery. There have been there have been hospitalizations. There have been funerals. I find that even in even in like a singularly within one country, even in, let's say, just a strictly U.S. experience, there can be like people respond differently based on region conditioning personality.

    - Liesel Mertes

    I imagine that that becomes even more complex in how people experience grief and disruption when you expand it to global teams. Are you how have you found yourself navigating, you know, within different cultural norms of expectations as to whether it's OK to speak about these things at work or OK to cry or OK to show weakness? What are some stories or wisdom that you've gleaned in navigating those dynamics?

    - Jorge Vargas

    That is a very interesting point and one that I can speak for me on a personal note. I grew up in Colombia. I shared earlier, and that came with me building myself from a work culture that was very conservative, very strict, where we wouldn't be open about things we wouldn't share or overshare or where feelings were not necessarily part of it, particularly in a law firm. And I remember moving to the U.S. and started working with the foundation and feeling that there was some sort of culture shock on how folks were maybe a little bit more open to do things and how I felt I was not necessarily in a position to be open or share or bring something to the table.

    - Jorge Vargas

    And it took me a little while to understand how the culture would work at the workplace and how different it was to take that years later. I think for me it's now trying to understand the opposite side and now seeing how folks in parts of the world were. Maybe there is a little bit more of a restriction or of an apprehension to be open about things or share grief, share feelings or emotion where power dynamics, especially when it is an interaction between you and your manager, immediately puts you in a situation where you don't necessarily feel comfortable opening up or saying one thing or the other.

    - Jorge Vargas

    So I think that it continues to be a learning curve for me. I think that it will always be a learning curve for me, but. Having to be exposed to so many different cultures, so many different ways to see life, to see disruption, to see grief, sadness or joy or positivity has showed me that there's no one size fits all solution for any way that we want to communicate among humans, particularly in a global context, that we keep working and evolving towards in this and many other places of work.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    We will return to the conversation with Jorge in just a moment. I’d like to take a second to recognize our sponsor, Handle with Care Consulting. If you’ve been listening this long into the podcast, you probably agree that empathy and connection at work are essential for keeping your people engaged. But how can your grow your empathy skillset? Let Handle with Care consulting help. With keynotes, certificate progams, and leadership coaching, we have a solution to meet your need. These sessions are engaging, combining stories with data, merging science with really actionable tips you can put into practice right away to build up a culture of care at work.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    - Liesel Mertes

    I imagine to be able to do your job well, there is a necessary measure of curiosity and adaptability, you know, to continue, as you said, to find those things fascinating and rewarding. Would you say that that has would you say that that's a part of you and has always been a part of you, or is that something that you've had to cultivate as you have, you know, moved into different cultures and continue to expand your cultural competency?

    - Jorge Vargas

    I have to say that it's more of the latter. I never thought that. I mean, I do consider myself a curious person and someone who wants to learn more from others from a personality basis. I'm always. Very chatty, very open, very sociable, and to meet people, learn from them, and at the same time, I never embedded the cultural element or the understanding of where others come from as part of that. Being exposed to that now through work has put me in a place where I now are more sensitive or more sensible is the word to that and have my eyes more open and my ears more open to that, the receptiveness that we need in order to make sure that we're taking that into account.

    - Jorge Vargas

    I also think that being the U.S. were, for better or for worse, there's a mix of personalities, approaches in life, cultural context, whereas in Colombia it was way more. One note, a lot of people that would think similarly or act similarly. That also just the fact of me being in the U.S. and being exposed to other different things allowed me to fine tune a little bit more. That element that you're describing as being more perceptive and more curious to understand that cultural part of what just being human and having a human interaction.

    - Liesel Mertes

    What has it been like to build connection across these international teams, because like those truly human elements of connecting, feeling like that person has my back, we celebrate wins together, we support each other during losses that can feel like a complex task even when everyone is coming from the same cultural context. What have you done that has really helped build those elements of connections in the teams you manage?

    - Jorge Vargas

    I definitely think that there's been a lot of conscious or unconscious effort and just being very open and honest about myself with others and just putting myself in a situation where I try to be as human and as real as I can, which that definitely has been a work in progress and hard in the sense of. Being very close and very reserved before being here, much more in a in a space of work, but showing that openness and that willingness to just be human with others, I think that no matter if the cultural context could be different or there's like some translation to be done allows me or has allowed me to build those connections, those personal connections that ease down a little bit of the tension that exists on not just the cultural friction and challenges and differences that we may have, but the dynamics that would exist between you and your manager or you and somebody else that maybe has way more experience within the organization or whatnot.

    - Jorge Vargas

    So. I think that at the end of the day, one of the things that I've noticed myself doing more and more is. Finding ways to come across as approachable as I can and as real as I can and honest about my feelings as I can, and that has required a lot of work on my own self-awareness and realizing that it's important for me to check in how I am feeling at the moment, like maybe I'm not happy for something. And coming up to a conversation with someone in a different part of the world or in the U.S. or whatnot.

    - Jorge Vargas

    Without me realizing, like, no, first I need to know, like, OK, I'm not thrilled right now because of X or Y, is this the right time to talk about this? Is the right time for me to have a conversation about this or that topic that for me, I think has also helped open myself more to others and recognize that, OK, maybe this is a great time for me to say, you know what, I'm not having a great day, but we need to talk about this.

    - Jorge Vargas

    And this is something that we should just do. And that openness has and that being real about things has allowed us as a team at large to just really is way more into each other and see each other more as human, particularly when there's not an element of physical interaction, which is also one of the bigger challenges that we have in in this work and in general with remote work and in the past year and a half with covid. I've worked with people that I've never met in my life in person, and it's been two or three years like I've met my team, which is great pre covid, but usually would have like one or two opportunities a year to do so.

    - Jorge Vargas

    So having to build that rapport and that connection behind a camera and a microphone is very, very different. And I just can, like, wrap up with a nice, I think, example in practice that me and my colleague Yael has instituted in the team. We have a weekly team meeting where we don't start the meeting until we all go on around and just share what's going on in our lives and sometimes is very sad and sometimes has us sharing grief or loss or challenges with each other.

    - Jorge Vargas

    Sometimes it's time to celebrate and share funny memories and happy things and just recognizing that we're all human before being just robots. That work has been critical to being able to build that empathy and that connection with my team and with folks across the organization.

    - Liesel Mertes

    That's so good. And I see that again and again in in high functioning versus, you know, like low functioning teams is this element. Of vulnerability from the top and granting permission in some ways, because so oftentimes there's this power dynamic that exists where especially if leadership like if they never appear vulnerable or human, certainly the people underneath them don't think that it would be appropriate to accept it, OK, for them to share something hard. So, yeah, I think that is incredibly powerful.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And you touched on the, the important thing and the challenge of being able to express your feelings, which is knowing actually how you're feeling, which especially, you know, I know for me and for many people who succeed in in the typical ways of succeeding like, that, you know, their high efficiency, they're going one thing to the next. And it really does take purposeful work and pausing to interrogate yourself and be like, I think I'm actually feeling things right now.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Hmm. What, what could they be? So, yeah, I resonate with the importance of doing that.

    - Jorge Vargas

    And I think that it's a work in progress, I think that I I mean, I hear myself say that and I realize that that hasn't been or that has never been the constant in my life. Right. Like just having that level of self-awareness is taken a while and is definitely taking a lot of therapy and a huge fan of therapy. I encourage everyone to go to therapy. It's just recognizing that were that were people that were human, that were flesh and bones.

    - Jorge Vargas

    And sometimes we forget that at work. We forget that in other scenarios. And at the end of the day, work is important and matters. But but it's work. And we are we're humans and we're people. And we were feelings and we're joy. We're sadness first. And that ends up having a huge influence and work at the end of the day and not recognizing that it's a little bit naive and dismissive of it makes us better workers if we actually are a little more self-aware about how we're feeling, our emotions in general.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yes. Well, and if we have punishing internal voices that never allow us to feel our own feelings, certainly we are transmitting that sort of energy to the people that we manage, you know, like that's not acceptable here. And agreed. Huge fan and participant in therapy over the years and that work in progress. You know, we I have a there are six people living in my household that span the age range. And so there's lots of emotions and lots of volume all the time.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And but but just because you're expressing them doesn't really mean you're fully aware of them. We put up a poster on the wall that was this like concentric circles of feelings to even be able to look at. And it's helpful for me. You know, I put a sticker on my water bottle. My daughter was asking me even today, someone what you seem a little preoccupied with, what are you what are you feeling? And we went through, you know, the the little circle.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And I it was helpful to get me to what I was actually feeling, not just preoccupied, but something deeper than that. All right, what are times for you as a manager that building connection has felt easy across your teams? And why do you think it felt easy?

    - Jorge Vargas

    I think that the times we're doing that empathy building or that human connection has been easier has been the times where I've managed to be with my teammates and my colleagues in person. I think that being in person definitely makes things makes things easier to just open up, be a little bit more human, be a little bit more approachable. And I have to say that it's been very hard not being able to do that in the last two years, year and a half, because that, I guess, like to to the question like it's hard to like be able to build empathy and understand where others are when we don't really have a proper read on where someone stands.

    - Jorge Vargas

    I think that the physicality of how we act and the faces that we make and the body language that we show to other folks helps a lot when it comes to building that empathy and that understanding of the other. And doing that behind a screen on a little box that shows up in your screen is hard. It's tricky. And sometimes it's very hard to read where others are, right? Yep. I think that being in person has definitely. Or when we are in person, building the empathy and building more of that report, it's definitely easier, right?

    - Liesel Mertes

    And well and especially working cross culturally. I spent a year living in Nairobi and even in person because of some of the cultural differences, the body language differences. You know, I was just always progressively learning like, oh, I'm I am misreading what is going on right here. And I'm in the room, let alone when you know that interaction is reduced to a two inch by two inch screen. What what has helped, as you have done all of the the ZOOMIN or the Microsoft teams or whatever platform you prefer, have you adopted any best practices for effective communication mediated by technology?

    - Jorge Vargas

    Definitely. One of the points that I've been trying to enforce more and more to myself. Is just learning to listen, like just listening more and making myself sure that even if it's behind a screen or even if it's in person, I allow myself to get as much information as possible that allows me to break some assumptions or where someone is emotionally or where someone is presently or not. And that listening or. Has been very, very important, but I also think that someone or something I would say sorry that has helped or that helps a lot, is just allowing myself to be wrong and be OK with that and letting others know that.

    - Jorge Vargas

    I can also be wrong sometimes, and assuming that someone is OK or the opposite and not deluding myself, but by thinking that I have to know it all and that I have to be the super, highly, emotionally, emotionally intelligent person that knows where and how, like just for giving myself a little bit more and allowing others to. Feel OK that they can be wrong about how I'm feeling about X or Y or Z, that has helped both in person but also behind the screen, you know, so often.

    - Liesel Mertes

    The story that we tell our stories of our victories and successes and times that we've done things well, if there's a story that you can share, I would love to hear a story where you realized that you were wrong and went about making repairs and the impact that that had.

    - Jorge Vargas

    I think that sometimes we make assumptions about people that puts us in a situation that makes us defensive or makes us biased towards trying to find ourselves right in an argument and win over something. And specifically, I see that in the past there's been situations where I've allowed myself to join a conversation or start a discussion with a colleague or with a teammate with a lot of assumptions in my mind. And probably that makes me. Weaker to begin with and makes me fail and just takes me to being wrong at the end of the day, and I realize that sometimes that would even take me to a situation where I would have to.

    - Jorge Vargas

    Even think of like, OK, maybe I should actually apologize, because I was I came into this conversation thinking that they were going to do A, B, C or C ABC, and even though they didn't, I took the conversation or two the discussion to that route. And I also, because of the assumptions, I came to that discussion with a lot of emotions, with a lot of anger, a lot of resentment towards was what was going to happen.

    - Jorge Vargas

    And and that made me fail. And that made me be a bad manager at the moment or that made me be a bad colleague or about teammate at the moment and those situations where I failed. For me, it has made it even worse, more complicated to understand is the fact that sometimes. We don't even know that we failed until we really went deeper on that, failing until we really hurt someone or until someone actually calls you out. Sometimes you're not even called out or sometimes it just.

    - Jorge Vargas

    This hurt or damage that you did and you're not even aware of it

    - Liesel Mertes

    And you mentioned that that feeling like, should I apologize? Do I need to circle back? Do you find yourself in the aftermath of some of those situations going and making repairs that way?

    - Jorge Vargas

    Definitely. And I think that I mean, that applies a lot, not just on the the professional level, but like on the personal level. I tend to be someone who and definitely something that I keep working on day and day that could say things and afterwards be like, oh, crap. Like what did I just say? Or like, was this what I really wanted to say? Or was this like my frustration speaking for me and then coming back to being like, OK, what did I actually say?

    - Jorge Vargas

    I wish that I could have like a recorder playback of what I said and how I set it to make sure that what taste left in my mouth after I was in an interaction with someone, actually. Was right or wrong, but usually there's like an aftermath where you're like. Oops, I think that maybe this was not what I had to or maybe I came across completely wrong in this or that, usually if there's that gut feeling, it's because something was wrong, I think.

    - Jorge Vargas

    Yeah, the good thing for me at least, has been just being able to recognise that and be open about it and go back to a person and say. You know what, I may have been wrong, did I say something, did I do this or did I do that instead of just staying with the assumption that maybe it wasn't?

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah. That I that I'm just going to double down on this or hope that it goes away or all of these coping mechanisms that can feel easier than just, you know, being straightforward and owning our stuff. And I think so often, you know what what I have experienced and what I consistently observe is that can be hard for leaders actually to want to do. They feel like I'm the I'm the leader. Other people apologize to me. I don't apologize to them instead of really embracing them, the transformative power that there is in owning your stuff.

    - Jorge Vargas

    Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that I mean, there's a lot of ego attached to positions of management that sometimes they bring really great things, but sometimes they don't. And oftentimes it's just realizing that no matter if we are in a different power dynamic, we are all human, we're all the same people. We all have feelings. We only have approached something the wrong way or the right way and. I think it's better at times to go back to someone and say, I think that I may have said something and be wrong about it and be told, no, you were fine, don't worry.

    - Jorge Vargas

    Even, even if it's not really true, even if that person is just letting it pass. But it's better to do that and then be like, OK, at least I did it then just staying with a weird afterthought and knowing anything about it.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Right. Just trying to push it to the side. Yep. What words of insight would you offer to listeners who are sitting here and they think, you know, I, I there's some work that I can do, I want to be cultivating more connection and humanity at my workplace. Where should where should they start? What are some things that have been helpful for you?

    - Jorge Vargas

    I think that a good way for me to kind of like start that conversation or like give those specific tips here. And there is maybe broadly saying that recognizing that we are all people that bring our own baggage to the office and recognizing that that is OK. Like, I think that for me personally. My culture and my context. Was very pushy about the idea that you left your baggage at home and came to work, acted, worked and developed whatever you needed to do and then came back to that, and that is not really true.

    - Jorge Vargas

    And I think understanding and acknowledging that we are human and come to work and engage in work relationships and conversations with the baggage that we have with waking up grumpy, not having a good night's sleep, having issues with our child care, having a fight with your spouse or maybe the opposite, coming in very happy because you had like a phenomenal night the day before or you've been having really good things happening. At least recognizing that that is there and not feeling guilty about feeling those feelings is a good way to start.

    - Jorge Vargas

    And I'm speaking for myself. I used to feel very guilty about feeling feelings at work. And it sounds kind of dumb now that I think about it. But that's pretty much like how a lot of the work culture has been shaped and the idea that we have to separate completely our feelings and our work and our humanity with the day to day office. But then in addition to that, I would say that trying to stay as open and as transparent and as approachable to folks is really is really important.

    - Jorge Vargas

    And that usually starts with just trying to share a little bit more about who you are, about where you are at the moment. I think that you put it very eloquently by saying giving permission to others to recognize that you are human, that you're not this wall and a manager that is just this person that is looking at your work and giving you a qualification that at the end of the day will give you a yes or no pass grade, but actually just a fellow human that needs to recognize that sometimes they have good things going on, sometimes they don't, and allowing yourself to give that permission to others.

    - Jorge Vargas

    And I think that also applies even outside of work.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Mm hmm. It's so good. What is a person or a book, and if a few come to mind, you can feel free to say, that have really positively affected your development as a leader?

    - Jorge Vargas

    I'm going to cheat and not say a book or a person, but I'm going to go to a podcast, although that or very poorly paid work. And Shankar Vedantam has this phenomenal podcast that I think of my favorite podcast called Hidden Brain on NPR. And it's really about understanding all of this things that we as humans have in our brain, in our personality and our humanity, and how that impacts the day to day life, how that impacts work, how that impacts conscious or unconsciously the patterns in human behavior that are part of everything.

    - Jorge Vargas

    And it's a fascinating podcast. It goes on a weekly basis. And I strongly encourage folks to go through it because it also touches to a lot of things that sometimes speak to me personally. Sometimes it speaks to me about work. Sometimes it speaks to me about something specific that's going on in the world. And all in all, I think it has really shaped me, or at least has awakened a lot of curiosity about more of the things that we have hidden in our brains as the name of the podcast stands for.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Are there any questions that it would be helpful for me to ask you that I haven't asked you yet?

    - Jorge Vargas

    I think that I would love to understand or maybe hear based on your experience in the conversations that you've had with many folks about this topic, how much of the cultural context and cultural background that we'll bring that we've discussed in the last hour or so, how much data that comes up? How much do people actually recognize that? That is something that we all need to identify in the context of empathy and empathy at the workplace?

    - Liesel Mertes

    Hmm. Well, that's that's a good question. Let me give you kind of an impressionistic take on the question, which I I was a political science major. My favorite area of study in my undergraduate work was post-colonial theory, you know, different different cultures, speaking back to power structures. So I've I've taken some of that curiosity. Even in my MBA program. I was I was studying supply chain and global management. So it it caught my interest consistently.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Like, how are the assumptions that we're making about how business functions? How do they hold water? How do they not how do we need to be pivoting in a more global context? And the reality is whether it's whether it's global writ large or even within, like, you know, I consult with companies who everybody is living in central Indiana. You know, it's way more homogenous. Some of the companies that I work with on a smaller scale.

    - Liesel Mertes

    But still there are these these differences. I, I introduce people to empathy avatars in my training. These are these go to like postures of our personality that we take on when we encounter someone else who's going through a hard time. So you could manifest as like a Buck up Bobby, which is someone who is that mentality we were talking about, which is, you know, work is for work. We're all about productivity. It's a stiff upper lip.

    - Liesel Mertes

    You know, you just have to keep on keeping on or at. Cheer-Up Cheryl. You know, someone who is always wanting to look on the bright side, forcing someone else to look on the bright side or a Fix-It frank, someone who is all about like, let's let's just what's the solution? Like, how can I get you not to feel poorly? And there's there's seven or eight of those. And they're there like ways of being that people have adopted out of their own personal experience, out of the norms of their cultural context, out of what helped them survive formative pain in their own lives.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And it's continually fascinating to me.

    - Liesel Mertes

    So that's a roundabout way of saying I'm a student. I've seen how these things express themselves when I you know, when I talk about even to talk about like. You know, places like like Japan or China, like those are huge, complex, diverse cultures, but, you know, those are when people are doing work, you know, with their counterparts in those countries, those people identify a lot more with like, again, that the Buck-Bobby or the Fix it Frank.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Like, it's it tends to be that the normative cultural experience is we don't talk about those things and like that. We are not showing vulnerability in those ways. Like you, you have to find somebody else in your life to deal with that stuff is not going to be here. So I'm continually learning. Does that answer your question about some of the things that I've seen?

    - Jorge Vargas

    Absolutely. And it's fascinating that you mentioned something that probably we we didn't look more deeply into, but it's the fact that the power dynamics and the differences in cultures and contexts also speak a lot to just the historical dynamics that have put some cultures, quote unquote, above others and might oppression that has existed in the hundreds of years that we have as like people interacting with people. And that also comes to play a lot when it comes to the workplace and finding ways to build empathy and try to break some things that unconsciously have been ingrained into our system culturally.

    - Jorge Vargas

    It's hard and sometimes it's even hard to recognize, I think that for me, speaking for myself, although I was very. Happy and lucky and privileged to grow up in Colombia, still in an international setting and going to an international school, there was always the sense that. You as a Colombian were less than someone in the U.S. or someone in Europe simply for the fact of where you are, where you were coming from, and that plays a big role as well in understanding that cultural context and that cultural baggage that we bring to human interactions and to human interactions in the workplace.

    - Jorge Vargas

    So I appreciate that you bring that point because it's definitely very relevant and still something that we see now in understanding how history, how race, how political systems keep just influencing the ways in which we bring ourselves to work and bring ourselves to interacting with others. And it's not just that different cultures are different. It's also the fact that some cultures have been historically oppressed by others and. Denying that or not, acknowledging that that is also part of how we interact in the workplace in a global context is this is harsh justice complex and we just have to remind ourselves of that.

    - Jorge Vargas

    So thank you for making that point.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And that's that's part of why one of the foundational tenets I talk about is it's something that that you touched upon is just the importance of paying radical attention to the person in front of you to free yourself a lot of the times from feeling the responsibility of, like, I need to fix this or I need to get out of this situation because I feel personally uncomfortable and triggered.

    - Liesel Mertes

    But to be able to do the work and just coach yourself to like I'm going to be radically attentive here and I'm going to I'm going to have in my mind, you know, almost like a decision tree, different ways that I can pivot and respond based on what this person is indicating that they need.

    - Jorge Vargas

    That is so true and like so, so powerful. And I love this. Time of radical attentiveness, I think that it's really, really great that I'm definitely taking that coined term that you shared with me, because I love that it actually describes a lot of what we were talking about.

    - Liesel Mertes

    So, yeah, well, and it's I mean, we feel it right. Especially with so many devices and demands that take our attention, like whether it's whether it's a partner or a friend when somebody I mean, even if you're not going through a hard time, when somebody just like zeroes in on your story and they're really there with you, you know, I feel like we realize how rare it is just because, you know, we so seldom give that to people or even experience it.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And it's just one of the most powerful gifts that we can give.

    - Jorge Vargas

    That is absolutely true.

    - Liesel Mertes

    All right, this has been a pleasure. Thank you so much you I really I am better as a result of the conversation and it is expanding my perspective and my available toolkit. So thank you for sharing.

    - Jorge Vargas

    Thank you so much, Liesel, for doing this work and for inviting me to chat about this, and this was a fascinating conversation.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    Here are three key takeaways from my conversation with Jorge…

    In order to fully engage in empathy and support, it is important to know how you are feeling in a given moment and interaction.Jorge described the process of pausing to really acknowledge his own emotions, his willingness to share his emotional moment with others, and the work of counseling and introspection that it took to get him to that point of self-awareness. How aware are you of your emotional state in the course of a given day? Grief, sadness, joy, positivity.Jorge has experienced a range of emotions across cultures and, as he said, there is no “one-size fits all” solution to how people experience grief. This leads to the importance of radical attention, cultural attunement, and the importance of checking in with those that you work with and manage. Good leaders go back to make repairs, they apologize, they interrogate their experience and develop the gut instinct that Jorge talked about, the one that reminds them to prioritize the person instead of their own ego.When was the last time you apologized? Has it been a while? It might not be that you are always acting excellently. If you haven’t apologized in a while, it could be an invitation to deeper self-awareness.

    OUTRO

  • This is the Handle with Care: Empathy at Work podcast. I’m your host, Liesel Mindrebo Mertes helping you build a culture of care and connection through empathy at work. MUSICAL TRANSITION Welcome to Season 2. Empathy matters. It isn’t just some squishy personality trait, it is a set of skills and a capacity for connection that you can develop, if you have the desire. And that is what season 2 is all about. I am going to introduce you, in each episode, to a leader that is purposefully building connection and engagement at work. They will share best practices, the ways that have grown and their occasional failures.

    My guest today is Scott Shute. Scott is the Head of Mindfulness and Compassion at LinkedIn, which is this great role that sits at the intersection of ancient wisdom traditions and a technology company. He is also an avid photographer, a musician, and, most recently, a published author. His book, “The Full Body Yes” launched in the middle of May. His mission is to change work from the inside out by “mainstreaming mindfulness” and “operationalizing compassion.”

    This was a deeply enriching conversation about how to build up mindfulness…and in a year of so many distractions, don’t we all need a little more attention and mindfulness? And how to operationalize compassion, which is right up my alley.

    We began talking about his book. I got to read an advance copy and enjoyed a passage so much that I called my 13 year old daughter into the room one morning to read it aloud to her. It was that spot-on.

    Scott Shute

    I was saying what you just said about response is what has been typical, like what I'm not getting is I send the book to my friends and they're like, oh, hey, cool. Got your book. Thanks. Not getting that. What I'm getting is like, oh, my God, Chapter eight, like, we got to talk about this because blah blah, blah, blah, blah. And and there is at least one story in there for everyone that's been super meaningful and has moved the needle on their life just a little bit or something that resonated with just a little bit or a lot.

    Scott Shute

    And so that's been super gratifying.

    Liesel Mertes

    Absolutely. Well, and as someone who prizes the craft of storytelling, I enjoy just all the places that the full body. Yes. Took me from Japan to Kansas to dealing with bullying in your adolescent years and back again. So I enjoyed both the wisdom but also the delivery of it. And I I have some questions to ask about certain sections of the book. I can't wait to jump in.

    Liesel Mertes

    What is your personal connection to why empathy matters and why it specifically matters in the workplace?

    Scott Shute

    And thank you for that question and thanks for having me. It matters because we don't work in isolation. We work with others, we live with others. And so to me, empathy, I talk a lot about compassion and I'll separate the two a bit. So I define compassion, is having an awareness of others, a mindset of wishing the best for them, and then the courage to take action. And some people say that compassion is empathy plus action.

    Scott Shute

    And so if you're talking about these first two pieces, it's first being aware of others and then having a mindset of wishing the best for them or a mindset of kindness. And why that's important in the workplace is, yeah, we don't work by ourselves. We work in teams. And what we've discovered, what science has shown us Project Aristotle at Google has shown us is the number one factor in creating a high performance team is, well, it's not their IQ, it's not what school they went to.

    Scott Shute

    It's not even the level of diversity in technology or overall diversity. It's psychological safety. This ability to say, hey, can I can I be myself in front of you guys, can I can I fail in front of you and know that you have my back, but actually even harder? Can I succeed? Can I win in front of you and know that you have my back? So if we're on a sales team and I just made two hundred twenty percent a quarter with two weeks to go and my friends at eighty five percent of quarter, are they really going to help me out.

    Scott Shute

    Are they going to look at me the same way. Am I going to look at them the same way. So this idea of empathy, this idea of being aware of others and having a mindset of wishing the best for them, really putting ourselves in their shoes builds powerful work environments where we end up being more creative. We end up with better solutions. We end up delivering something much better for our customers.

    Liesel Mertes

    I love that. Just touching on the data points, some of the business case that's there, I'd like to dig a little deeper. Would you tell me about a time in your work experience where you think, man, I was not OK? I was really going through a hard time and this person's care, attention, what they did or said really made a difference and paint that picture for us.

    Scott Shute

    Sure. Great question, I think for me, I'm trying to find a specific one, but for me it's that feeling of connection. I, I felt the sting of isolation in high school. You know, I had a really great junior high. Some people hate junior high. I loved junior high. But my first two years of high school were really painful or really hard. And they were, upon reflection, upon a lot of years of reflection.

    Scott Shute

    I realize this because I felt isolated, that I felt loneliness, that I felt, you know, other than and I eventually ended up changing schools. And what was so great about finding a new school, as I found people that I connected with, people who enjoyed me for who I was. And this is the antidote to loneliness, this is the antidote to isolation and this being connection, and when we feel like we're connected to others. And so I've what I appreciate about your work is that, you know, a lot of stuff when we're going through it, it's about that isolation.

    Scott Shute

    Sometimes it's about the isolation we feel about ourselves, like we don't feel good about ourselves. That inner critic, that obnoxious roommate in our mind is going crazy and we just feel gross. Sometimes it's feeling a disconnection from others. Sometimes that can be about performance, right? If I'm if things aren't going well, then it it comes back to feeling disconnected, feeling like, oh, well, are they going to throw me out of here? Am I going to lose my job?

    Scott Shute

    And so anything that builds that connection, whether it's a manager's kind words or a cross-functional partners kind words or just having a friend at work that you can go take a walk around the block with or, you know, now assume call and and say everything you want to to. That is such a meaningful thing because it's like, oh, here, here it is. I can remember again what's really important and what's really important are these relationships. What's really important is feeling connected to myself, but also connected everything else

    Liesel Mertes

    That that reminds me of a passage from your book, The Full Body Yes.

    Liesel Mertes

    Would you mind if I would it be OK if I read aloud to you just as a section you're talking about this process of discovering what your dream job would be. And you're write, "If companies were more conscious, they would treat their customers better. There would be more integrity and trust in the world. If companies and their leaders were more conscious, they would treat their employees better. There would be less trauma and stress. There would be more healing, more creativity.

    Liesel Mertes

    People could be whole. We wouldn't need to think of our work life as bad and the rest of our lives as good. We can bring compassion into everything we do at work, not just because it makes others feel better, but also because it's a better strategy for success. The research bears this out. We just haven't quite caught up to it in practice yet."

    Liesel Mertes

    I feel like that echoes what you just said, and I would love to hear in your position and scope of influence.

    Liesel Mertes

    Tell us a little bit about your role at LinkedIn and how you've gone about being part of actualizing some of those beautiful sentiments. And I love for you to also include some of the pain points along the way from concept to reality. There's oftentimes some stretching that goes.

    Scott Shute

    Sure, sure. I've been at LinkedIn for nine years and the first six of those, I was the VP of Global Customer Operations, which was essentially customer service and a lot of other functions that are customer facing outside of sales. And part of me is I've I was able to bring my mindfulness or my contemplative practice to work, starting about two years in as a volunteer for my for my other job. And I've been in this this role now for three years as a full time role, Head of Mindfulness and Compassion.

    Scott Shute

    But what does it mean? So there's two parts of my role, mainstream mindfulness and operationalise compassion and in mainstream mindfulness, we're just trying to make mindfulness as meditation really and overall mindfulness like self awareness, just as normal as physical exercise. So you can think of it like mental exercise and physical exercise, because our employees, they're almost all knowledge workers. Right. We don't need to run six minute miles or lift heavy things, but we do need to stay mentally focused and emotionally balanced and all those sorts of things.

    Scott Shute

    So this is why it's important. And what it means is we offer things like meditation sessions. We have, well, pre pandemic. We had 40 to 60 a week across the globe. LinkedIn is about a fifteen or sixteen thousand person company. We offer an app called Why Is It Work, which we really like from our partners at Wisdom Labs. And every year we do a 30 day challenge involving that app, usually in October, where we get people to use it and the challenges, you know, meditate or, you know, use the app 20 times within the month of October and we'll give you a T-shirt of this year.

    Scott Shute

    We give Hoodie's said, never, never underestimate the power of a free hoodie on behavior.

    Liesel Mertes

    Absolutely. I'd do much more for a hoodie than I would for a t shirt. That was right.

    Scott Shute

    Right. It was pretty good. We do things like mini retreats if people want to go further. Speaker series, again, just trying to make these mental exercises and these this idea around self awareness just as commonplace as physical exercise. Now, for that part, and it's been super successful, you know, every year we have more and more and more people, but also as a percentage of our population taking part in these things.

    Scott Shute

    And during especially during COVID time, during quarantine time, you know, there's been an uptick because, one, people can come to it. When now when I lead a meditation session, I'm getting people from all over the world instead of just, you know, the people from my building on fourth floor on Thursday at four thirty in the afternoon. And the second reason they come is because they need it like we're we're all having challenges in our own ways.

    Scott Shute

    And so that those challenges are forcing people to go inside.

    Liesel Mertes

    I also want to hear about that part that you said operationalising. Yeah, and it is because it makes me think of another quote you have in your book that we don't rise to the level of our expectation would fall to the level of our systems, which is something that I do. Yes. And my training and consulting all the time to move from good intentions and thoughts and prayers to actually how do we have replicable systems of care and training that make us good instead of poor in these issues.

    [Liesel Mertes

    So I'd love to hear more about that.

    Scott Shute

    Let's talk about that. So I first talked about all the things we're doing with mindfulness. The second part of my job is operationalizing compassion. And look, I think mindfulness is interesting and it's all about self development and it's really powerful. And that's going to happen with or without me. There's a huge move towards mindfulness, but compassion, compassion, I think, is where the juices, because this is how we work. It's how we work together.

    Scott Shute

    It's how we work with our customers. So if you think back to my definition, three parts, you're building capacity to be aware of. Others have a mindset of wishing the best for them and then the courage to take action. Now, put that in the context of a business context. So as an example, this and what I would say is I'm not the one making LinkedIn a compassionate place. It was already like that. It evolved that way.

    Scott Shute

    This is why I have this job. The more my role is to codify it, to say, how did we get here? You know, if the executive team was going to leave LinkedIn and go to any other place, like what would the top three or five or 20 things that we would do, like how would we bring the magic somewhere else? And so this is what I mean. And I'll share some examples. So as an example, our head of sales will stand in front of whatever five thousand salespeople at sales kickoff and say something like, look, hey, our job as salespeople is to provide long term value.

    Scott Shute

    So don't sell something our customers don't need just so you can hit your quota. Hmm. Right. And that's I was a salesperson too at 25. That's not how I was taught. Or in product development, you know, every week we have four or five or eight product reviews, and this is kind of like Shark Tank without the attitude, you know, a product manager will come to the product executive team and say, all right, well, here's the next revision of my product and what we expect to happen.

    Scott Shute

    And something like, OK, Will, if we do X, Y and Z, we're going to result in 13 percent more engagement. In other words, 13 percent more clicks on the site. And the first question, if the person doesn't answer it themselves, the first question is always, all right, well, how is the member experience and the customer experience? And if the answer is, oh, well, hey, did I mention it was 13 percent more clicks than the meeting just stops and then it becomes an object lesson on our first principle, our number one value, which is members first.

    Scott Shute

    And so these types of things are built into our culture. But it goes back to this to I have the capacity to be aware of others and wish the best for them and then the courage to take action, meaning sometimes, you know, we deeply understand our customers. We deeply are trying to solve their problems. And sometimes I need to do something for them. That's not great for me either. The company in the short term. But I know that over the long term, it's going to be better for both of us.

    Scott Shute

    We're going to provide long term value and in the long haul will be more successful financially and as a company in general. Right.

    Liesel Mertes

    You know, the question that that prompts in thinking about operationalising and also potential pain points, I find sometimes in company cultures there can be a focus on the customer, the member, whatever the title is, and that sometimes that happens at the cost of the employee experience. You know, where we're driving, for results, you know, whatever whatever metric is held up there. How are you taking some of that same degree of intentionality, especially in a year that has been so full of disruptive life events, death, job loss, relationship transition and operationalising internal compassion in those shows?

    Liesel Mertes

    And and I assume that, like everybody else, it's kind of been a finding your way in the midst of that.

    Scott Shute

    Yeah, there's I think business is best-run not by writing in a thousand places, a thousand sorry, a thousand page playbook, but by these high level things. And then each situation is different. So compassion goes back to it's a balance for all of the stakeholders, not just the shareholders, meaning a company who takes care of their customers, as we described, but also takes care of their employees as described, you know, have an awareness, a mindset of wishing the best and courage to take action and the shareholders.

    Scott Shute

    So you have to stay in business in order to meet your vision. Right. In addition to the broader environment, you know, the community that you work in, the broader global environment you live in. So when we're creating this, when we're moving from me to we thinking, I think that has compassion at the roots of it. And each situation brings up a different set of solutions.

    Scott Shute

    There are sometimes where we need to do absolutely the right thing for the shareholders, you know, and there's sometimes we need to do absolutely the right thing for the employees or the customers or our neighbors and next to the buildings where we work, whatever it is.

    Scott Shute

    But if I'm trying to do something that for the long term is best for the whole, that's when we win. So what does that mean on the ground? Well, let's say that we have a call center in India and in the city where they're in. They can't even get to the office or they can't. They're worried about their health. There might be a time when we just need to close our customer service center for a day or several days knowing that it's not great for our customers, but our employees need to take care of themselves.

    Scott Shute

    And sometimes the opposite is true. Sometimes employees need to work extra hard to take care of our customers, but it's finding the balance over the long haul that is important.

    Liesel Mertes

    What are you taking away as valuable lessons from a leadership level of what, supporting people well, during disruption, looks like?

    Scott Shute

    Sure. Well, it for sure starts at the top at the language that people are using. So there's a couple of things that have happened. One is, you know, when we do company meetings in the old days, like every other company, C levels are standing on stage. Everybody else is kind of watching and there's a separation between us. Well, now we do the company meeting and the same sea levels are at home. You know, we're on Zoome or whatever the technology is.

    Scott Shute

    We see their dogs walking by or their kids or, you know, we have technical failures. They have technical failures, just like we all have rain. And it has humanized it has equalized us in terms of that. We're all people like we're all humans first and workers somewhere second or down the line. And so as a leader, if I can be conscious about this, it's it's being more vulnerable. It's talking about my own challenges, but it's also a recognition of everybody else's challenges.

    Scott Shute

    And, you know, early on, our leaders were very clear and saying, hey, look, you and your family, your health, your physical, your mental health are the most important things to us. So please do what you need to do. The work will be here when you get back, you know, and that was the that was the messaging. But then it was also in our policies and everything that we did that supported that messaging.

    Scott Shute

    So I think this is it as a leader, be vulnerable and then be aware and treat people as people, treat them like you want to be treated like if your grandma or the person you treasured most in life worked at this company, how would you treat her?

    Liesel Mertes

    Yeah, there's a good grounding question. What is

    Liesel Mertes

    So pulling back a little bit in your book, The Full Body. Yes. And in your work and mission in general, building compassion in our lives and our workplaces, I imagine that there could be some pushback that you receive from other people who have risen to executive positions within their companies. What is some of the most common pushback that you hear when you talk about building compassion at work?

    Scott Shute

    Right. I think usually it's a misunderstanding of what compassion means. People often think that it sounds soft or it's just about loving each other or some like they put you know, they even make that. They even make that voice. It's soft. It's about loving, you know, airy fairy. And they have their hands in the air while they're doing them. And this is not what compassion is all about. Right? It takes real courage. Like, I think it's much harder to be a compassionate manager than to be a command and control jerk manager.

    Scott Shute

    It's super easy to stand up on your pedestal and say, just look, I told you what to do. Just do it. Come on, why haven't you done it? And then scream at people when they don't do. Exactly. You know, it's managing out of fear. That's super easy. That takes no skill, but to be compassionate means you deeply understand other people means you have to take the time to listen. And sometimes compassion requires a strength that you really have to work up to.

    Scott Shute

    Right that strength to have the hard conversation. You know, if somebody's struggling, the strength to really find out why and to in some cases either coach them up or eliminate their role or move them on to another role, these are things that require a strength of our own character and conviction and values. And it's not easy at all. So usually it's a misconception of what it means. And then when you get down to it and we say things like like I was talking about the salesperson or the product person, they're like, oh, yeah, well, of course you put customers first.

    Scott Shute

    But then when we really dig into the conversations, like, do you have the courage to put the customer first when it's hard? Yeah, it takes real courage. Do you have the courage to put your employees first when needed to? You know, so it's a lot harder than it sounds. It's easy to understand, but it's hard to put into practice.

    Liesel Mertes

    Right. I'm a I'm reminded when you you talked about that somewhat easy default behavior that can happen. That's an avatar that in my training's I'll introduce people to one of these default behaviors that we go to in the face of other people's pain, because it's how we've had to survive some of our own psychological, emotional, spiritual pain. And that my character I term the the Buck-Up Bobby, the just have to keep going. And whether it's, you know, a Commiserating Candace or a Cheer-Up Cheryl, these these postures that we take on to avoid some of the the skill of going deep, of being present.

    Liesel Mertes

    You know, you you mentioned in your book and I deeply resonated with it, that our deepest need is to be seen, heard and acknowledged and both in our successes on our average days and especially on the days where, you know, everything feels like it has gone sideways.

    Liesel Mertes

    In your capacity as a worker, as a leader, how did you personally skill up? Because your book is, you know, sprinkled throughout are anecdotes of having meaningful conversations with, you know, someone who worked under you, who is deciding, you know, to start a new relationship or to pursue graduate education.

    Liesel Mertes

    Do you remember feeling out of your depth and like you needed to skill up? How did that process go for you as you acquired the skills necessary to get where you are?

    Scott Shute

    Sure. So part of it I always wanted to be a manager. Like I. I was always interested in psychology and the way our minds work. And I tended to be when I was an individual contributor as a salesperson, I tended to be somebody that people would come to ask for advice. And so it took me a while, but I figured out how to start being a manager. I had to change industries, you know, to be a manager.

    Scott Shute

    And I remember that job was the most stressful job I ever had. And I was 29 and leading a team of, I don't even know, eight people or 10 people. And that I was that was a job I was freaking out the most in not leading a thousand people organization, but leading eight for the first time because you have to figure out like oh whoa, this is totally different. Like this person's career is dependent on me. There a lot as dependent on me.

    Scott Shute

    And I felt that weight and it didn't happen all at once. But, um, but in every conversation, you know, you get that feeling in your stomach like, oh, that went really well. Or I know that could have gotten better. Yeah. And so over time I scaled up by you know, I got coaching certified. I took extra trainings on how to be a manager, how to be a better listener. And I was just also reliant on my I've always had a deep kind of personal development bent.

    Scott Shute

    So reading books and, you know, going to classes and just continually trying to learn to to be better at it. So it seemed like most things it comes with a failure. And I don't mean that in the big way, but like doing something and walking away from it, going that could have been better. Yeah.

    Liesel Mertes

    Yeah. At its at its worst it can be the, the unrelenting voice that is always desiring improvement that you have both give space to you as a potential for good, but also reign in in those moments. That's right. Leave me alone.

    Scott Shute

    That's right.

    Liesel Mertes

    It was good enough.

    Scott Shute

    Well this is this is one of the hardest challenges in development in, you know, how do we be a hard charger, whatever you want to think about that, how do we be super successful and how do we have a mindfulness practice or be a good person or continuing developing, you know, on these softer skills?

    Scott Shute

    And I struggled with that for a really long time because

    Scott Shute

    I have been at other companies where I'd look up at the roster of the C suite and think to myself, oh, my God.

    Scott Shute

    Like, do you have to be a jerk to be a VP here? I'm like, is this that's I don't want to do it. And and then I had have now had the luxury of working at other companies and especially LinkedIn, where in fact jerks are not allowed. I could look at the entire C suite and go, I'd be proud to be any one of those people or to work for any one of those people. And realizing that some companies and some leaders and some organizations have figured this out, like there is a way for each of us to be successful and to be a good person.

    Scott Shute

    They are not mutually exclusive. In fact, I do think they go together at the highest levels.

    Liesel Mertes

    Well, and what what I have found also as I have worked with companies domestically. Internationally, in a small, medium, large, especially over the last year, is that. There's there's still an element almost of permission that is needed to be able to see people in top levels of influence and scope being able to have these moments of weakness, you know, not not failure, but to but to say like this actually is really hard. Like we we have our kids schooling at home.

    Liesel Mertes

    And I feel like it's just kind of overwhelming or I just want to bury someone within the last week. And I'm not fully OK for this meeting because there's only things that people are in the hard driving cultures where leadership hasn't purposefully wanted to be more connected and more human. There's a tremendous amount of just having to absorb stuff, defer those messy, both bodily feelings and also emotional ones, which just wreaks havoc. Yeah. In the long run,

    Scott Shute

    These, I'm going to reframe the weakness to vulnerability.

    Liesel Mertes

    Yes.

    Scott Shute

    When we express our vulnerabilities, it's actually a real, real strength as a leader when you know, when done appropriately. Because people want to identify with the people that lead them, right? And if someone is they see as perfect or, you know, then it's like, oh, I'm not like them. I can't ever become like them. But if they see leaders as, oh, wow, I really see myself in them and I aspire to be someone like that today, I aspire to be more like them today.

    Scott Shute

    That's really, really powerful. And it is accelerated by these leaders ability to be vulnerable, to be real. It's actually counterintuitive, but but showing some vulnerability now and then is a real strength.

    Liesel Mertes

    Yeah, I like I like that pivot towards vulnerability. Tell me you introduced the concept near the end of the Book of microcompassions in the workplace. I really liked that term. Tell me more about some of the power that you're seeing of microcompassions in the workplace.

    Scott Shute

    Sure. Well, we're probably familiar with micro aggressions, right. So I was trying to figure out what the balance of that is. Not that it solves every microaggression, but a micro compassion is just this idea that compassion doesn't have to be complicated. It's just the simplest, simplest things like smiling at someone or saying, hi, you know, so you're in the grocery line. And instead of just being lost in our phones or we're waiting to check out, like, why not say hi to somebody and ask them a question that gets them started?

    Scott Shute

    Because going back to what is one of our deepest needs, our deepest need is to feel connected, to be seen, to be acknowledged, to be heard, ultimately, to be loved. And we don't have to go all the way to love right there in the grocery store. But how about seen and acknowledged and heard to feel connected? And so we can do this at work by saying hi, by smiling, by remember someone's hobbies, you know, it's like, oh, hey, Colin, did you have you been surfing lately or, you know, have you been fishing lately or whatever?

    Scott Shute

    Knitting, you know, what's the what's the latest project you're working on? Or ask about their daughter or their son or something they're excited about. It just shows that you remember and you are seeing them as a person. And let's see what's another or you know, sometimes we have these meetings either by Zoom or we're in person and somebody hasn't said something for a long time. It's just bringing them in like, oh, Katie, we haven't heard from you for a while.

    Scott Shute

    I'd really love to hear what you have to say about this topic. Anything that we can do to create more of the we and less of the me moves us forward and helps people feel connected.

    Liesel Mertes

    Well, and creating these cultures of care. Yeah, I talk about how. It's a competitive advantage for you, it comes out in employee attraction and retention and how people are able to survive, stabilize and return to thriving when things go sideways. I imagine at Linked In, as it is so much about connection at work, you actually know that the numbers behind the LinkedIn matrix are seeing what are being reported in jobs reports, which is that companies, especially right now, as we are in May of twenty twenty one, they are looking to hire.

    Liesel Mertes

    You know, we're ramping back up. It is difficult to find people talk a little bit about. I'd love to hear. Yeah. Just compassion and a culture of it as the competitive advantage and how you succeed and how you pull in the right people to accomplish what people classically talk about. As you know, the the more business-y ends of your your profit and loss.

    Scott Shute

    Sure. I will get there. But first, I'm going to digress into the history of work for just a real quick second.

    Liesel Mertes

    Yes. I love a good digression.

    Scott Shute

    So we started start, I don't know, at some point there were kings and slaves, like when we were building the pyramids 5000 years ago and workers were not highly regarded. And we had the agrarian age for a long time where you had landowners and slaves or non land owners and workers were not highly regarded. And then in the industrial age, you know, you imagine a factory where with a thousand seamstresses or people on an assembly line all making the same thing again, workers not highly regarded.

    Scott Shute

    Well, now you fast forward to today and a company like LinkedIn and not everybody has gotten are not everybody's in this position. But at LinkedIn, we don't have any hard assets. Right? We're not selling cars or copper or commodities. All we have is information. And so that means that the number one asset we have are the employees. And so we want our employees to have we want them to be at their best, i.e. the mindfulness programs.

    Scott Shute

    And then we want to create an environment where they can do their best work, where they where they feel wanted. Now, as a worker now in Silicon Valley, the power is in the workers hands. Right. So an engineer in Silicon Valley can write their own ticket. They can work wherever they want because they're in such such high demand. This is the opposite of where we were 5000 years ago. And so people want to work in places where they are valued.

    Scott Shute

    They want to work in places where their company is doing good things in the world, you know, where they are trying to make a difference, where there's a purpose driven. They want to work for good leaders, people who care about them, people who are honest and have the same set of values that they do. So this whole idea of creating and we don't even have to use the word compassion, but a culture where people are valued, where it's about the we instead of the few me, where it's about the we of the world instead of just the me of the company.

    Scott Shute

    People want to work in those environments and over time they'll vote with their feet. You know, people don't leave jobs. They leave managers. Right. But they also will be disenfranchised by companies who are, you know, not that honest or they're doing bad things or create an environment where the bad seeds get bigger stages. So it is it's a competitive advantage over time in the talent that you attract. But it's also a competitive advantage in terms of the quality of products and services you end up offering your customers.

    Liesel Mertes

    Absolutely. I appreciate the added coloring of the history of work, and I like that I like that to thank you for that digression.

    Liesel Mertes

    You've written this book. You've launched it in the midst of pandemic time. Still tell our listeners a little bit about The Full Body yes. And what made you write it when you did?

    Scott Shute

    Sure. Well, I've been thinking about writing a book for 35 years since I was a 15 year old in my ninth grade English class. I always knew I'd write a book. And every time I sat down or virtually sat down to write it, it wasn't there.

    Liesel Mertes

    Can I ask, did it as like, did you know what kind of book was it? Fiction or poetry? It was just going to be a book.

    Scott Shute

    I just knew I would write a book. Like, I just I just had that knowing and and I figured it would be something about my life journey. But, you know, when you're 15, you don't have much of a life journey to write a book about. So I got to go live first. And then in December of 2019, I'm coming home with an from an event with a friend and my friend is driving and I'm in the passenger seat and gets this funny look and he goes.

    Scott Shute

    The universe has told me to tell you it's time to write your book. Yeah, and I kind of checked in. It's like, wait, does it feel right? It's like, oh, yeah, it does. It does feel right. And the timing was just, of course, just, you know, it all lined up. I found an editor. She helped me create an outline because I never wrote a written a book before to turn my hundred stories into 35 or 40 stories and put them in order.

    Scott Shute

    And then I just started writing. And then exactly at the time it was time to start writing is when the quarantine happened. And so I traded commuting time for essentially meditating and writing time. And the book came in 10 or 11 weeks, which, according to my publisher, is extraordinarily fast. But it was time. And then, you know, now it's a year later. This is the wild part about the publishing industry. It takes a while to get it out there.

    Scott Shute

    And so releasing of, you know, kind of hopefully towards the end of the pandemic when they can actually. Yeah. You know, the people can actually get out. And but but I think that what I'm talking about, these things that I'm talking about are universal. It's talking about really finding our true selves right. When we when and when you are deeply aware of our own selves, our own values, what's really important to us. And then we make decisions based on what's important.

    Scott Shute

    This is, I think, what we're all going through. I mean, in the last year, how many people do you know have moved or they've gotten divorced or ended their relationships or started relationships or changed jobs? To me, it seems like those big life events are on turbo. And, you know, part of it. Yeah, it's the challenge, the crucible of what we've gone through. But part of it is people are getting they're like, no, I know who I am.

    Scott Shute

    And I I need to be something different than who this is right here. I'm making a change. And that's what this book is about.

    Liesel Mertes

    Well, and even in that story of some of the, you know, writing with a colleague who who spoke that it was time, there's a thread that goes through of a paying attention to to the concrete, to the mystical, to the range in between of what is going on within our life story. So even the story of that, the final nudge from a pandemic and from a friend that are in line with some of the themes.

    Scott Shute

    Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that, you know, in my own life, I believe that, you know, science from the universe, whatever you want to call that thing, the divine, whatever are all around us. You know, I see signs in billboards and fortune cookies and license plates in front of me not all the time, but they'll glow. I call it the golden tongue wisdom. Like, they'll just light up and the message will just match, like something I've needed to hear.

    Scott Shute

    And because I believe it and because I then act on some of those insights, like more of it happens. And so I believe that life happens this way. But or and if someone believes that life doesn't happen that way and there are no science and it's just the way it is, then, you know, that's how their life happens. I believe that's true to me.

    Liesel Mertes

    I deeply resonate with that. The the receptivity and the expectation leads to a very different level of attentiveness and receiving. That's true.

    Scott Shute

    Yeah, receiving and then action, I think, you know, so if we get a message and then we're like, I'm going to do anything, well, then I think it's less likely that we'll be, you know, that the science will show up the next time. Yeah.

    Liesel Mertes

    Well, thank you for for sharing in The Full Body, yes, as listeners, if their interest has been piqued as they are paying attention to their life and even to this moment as they're listening and think maybe this is for me, where's the best place for them to go to get a copy?

    Scott Shute

    Sure. Well, you can get a copy wherever books are found, Amazon and Barnes and Noble and everywhere else. I learned something new in the process, like if you have an independent bookstore that you love, you can actually buy online at bookshop.Org. And if and if you designate your local bookstore, they will get the profits from that book from online. I think that's really, really cool. I did not know that coming. If you want to know more about me or the book, you can check out my website at Scottshute.com or the fullbodyyes.com either way, or follow me on LinkedIn for kind of daily updates.

    Scott Shute

    And where else? Oh, if you're into meditation, I'm on INSIGHT. Timer And about every two weeks I do a live event on Insight Timer where you can do a I often am talking about compassion and compassion practices, but that's another place to find me.

    Liesel Mertes

    And Scott, as you are paying attention to your life, do you have a sense of the what next? I realized that you took a year ago and that is now out in the world. And we might think that this is your current work, which I know it's a part of your current story, but we're particularly excited about right now.

    Scott Shute

    It's in this moment I'm first I'm giving this book some time and time and attention to breathe. I'm taking and taking a couple of months away from LinkedIn just to focus on the book release and then I'll go back. But I'd love to spend the next part of my career really diving into the operationalising of compassion, because there's there's I think that's my unique place in the world. Like I've spent time as an executive, but I've also spent time in a really deep way as a seeker and as a, you know, a cleric.

    Scott Shute

    I'm a member of the clergy and there's not that many of us. And so I'd love to find a way in really simple and secular terms of how to bring. These divine concepts, really, of compassion and love into the workplace in a way that everybody just goes, oh yeah, like, yeah, why aren't we doing it that way?

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    If you are interested in getting The Full Body Yes, finding out more about Scott and his mindfulness offerings, or even seeing some of his beautiful photos, those links are in the show notes.

    Here are three key takeaways from our conversation

    Practice micro-compassions today.Asking a colleague about their life outside of work, connecting with a smile or small talk. These moments of connection are incredibly powerful. Compassion is a competitive advantage for companies, especially in today’s knowledge economy where people have options and are, as Scott noted, voting with their feet.What are you doing to create a culture where compassion, this empathy-in-action, is given and received regularly? I like how Scott broke down what compassion looks like at work.He described it as “How should I act at work if my grandma or if someone that I loved most in the world worked here?” This is a good guiding sentiment for the day.

    OUTRO

    Links:

    To find out more about Scott and The Full Body Yes: https://www.scottshute.com/

    Resources to Operationalize Mindfulness:

    From Wisdom Labs: https://wisdomlabs.com/Mindfulness-Kit/ More on Mindful Workplaces:https://www.mindfulworkplacemovement.com/playbook
  • - Mark Vroegop

    I mean, it's just so private and so painful and so isolating at so many levels. And that's why I said grief isn't tame, because part of the viciousness of it is its unpredictability. Yeah, something can remind you, something can be a trigger. And it's just it's it's not controllable. It's not tameable. And I think understanding that is actually really helpful

    INTRO

    Grief can rob you of language. The feelings are so totalizing, so big and unwieldy. You don’t know when or if the pain will end and the people around you seem to have little more to offer than trite platitudes like “It’s always darkest before the dawn.”

    If you have been that grieving person, feeling so very alone with no one to listen or respond to your cry of pain, or if you have been that awkward friend or colleague, fumbling around for the right words and finding none, than this episode is for you. Because this episode is all about lament.

    Lament is a language of pain, of giving voice to the sorrow. And my guest today is no stranger to lament. In fact, Mark Vroegop has written a book on the topic called Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy.

    The book is borne out of his life experience and the death of a daughter. But I will let him tell you more about that in the course of our interview.

    Mark Vroegop is the Lead Pastor at College Park Church, a church on the northside of Indianapolis. And, on a personal level, Mark has powerfully intersected with my own journey of pain and grief. He was the one who stood graveside when our daughter, Mercy’s, body was lowered into the ground. Sharing our pain and giving voice to our grief. His honest reckoning with his own struggle and, ultimately, hope has ripple effects into my work as a Workplace Empathy Consultant. So I am glad to welcome him to the show today.

    And, just to note, Mark’s story is deeply intertwined with his Christian faith. For those of you who do not share his faith, there might be language or concepts that are foreign to you, I welcome you to listen, as we listen to all of our guests, with a welcoming curiosity, embracing the concepts and wisdom that finds resonance with your spirit and letting anything else pass along.

    And for those of you that are rooted in the Christian tradition, I believe that Mark’s writing and story could deepen your understanding of how the language of lament allows you to hold both grief and sorrow without having to just plaster a happy, religious platitude over your pain.

    A little bit more about Mark: he has taken up roasting his own coffee beans in the midst of the pandemic. He loves the outdoors, although his is quick to clarify that he and his family no longer sleep in tents.

    - Mark Vroegop

    Yeah, we love the outdoors, love anything exercise related outside of a big park nearby. Here you go. Creeks, my favorite place to go, kind of my happy place. And we are big campers. So when I say camper, think glampers.

    - Mark Vroegop

    So we have a travel trailer that we now have that we've upgraded from a pop up. And we love just taking that thing out on a Friday, Saturday and enjoying the outdoors and some quiet. And we're looking forward to more opportunities to do that here soon.

    Mark is the father to four living children.

    - Mark Vroegop

    Yeah, so we have four children. We have three boys who are adults, twin boys. Our number one number two are out of college and one is married and two others are getting married soon.

    Mark Vroegop

    We have a daughter who's in high school and mother in law that lives with us and a dog named Stella.

    - Mark Vroegop

    So we have a really full and vibrant home with people coming in and out all the time and just love the opportunity to be in their lives and are thankful that they live in close proximity here to Indianapolis. So we can see them quite often.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah, what a robust household and what a number of transitions you guys are collectively standing on, on the brink of.

    - Mark Vroegop

    Yeah, for sure. Yeah, we are in the middle of all kinds of transitions, that's for sure.

    Yeah. Tell me a little bit.

    - Liesel Mertes

    We're going to be talking about disruptive life events, the comforters that come alongside as poorly and the moment.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And I know that your journey into that, both as a writer, pastor, speaker began from a really personal place. Would you set the scene of that story for us?

    - Mark Vroegop

    Sure. So our first children were twins, so pregnancy wasn't a problem for us. In fact, the problem was we were too pregnant and my wife carried our twins to thirty nine and a half weeks. So she was a college athlete and twins were born six pounds, seven ounces, six pounds, 11 ounces. Kendall came on three days later. Just beautiful, fairly easy pregnancy apart from enormous discomfort. Third sons born, no complications whatsoever.

    - Mark Vroegop

    Healthy baby boy and then 2003 we were pregnant with our daughter that we learned she was a daughter, Sylvia. And throughout the pregnancy, my wife just had this this fear that something wasn't right and she can be more fearful than what she would like.

    - Mark Vroegop

    And so we just were praying through all of that. And at the very end of the pregnancy and their ninth month. Thirty nine weeks, actually, just a few days before delivery and Sunday night, she said something doesn't feel right.

    - Mark Vroegop

    And I thought, wow, she's just nervous and fearful, like pregnancy is coming here to an end. And I get that. And we went to the doctor's office just to be sure, because she hadn't felt any movement. In a while and in the doctor's office, we found out the tragic news that are in utero daughter at thirty nine and a half weeks, just like I said a few days before delivery had mysteriously died and then she had to give birth to a deceased baby.

    - Mark Vroegop

    We named her Sylvia.

    - Mark Vroegop

    And yeah, that was not just a shock, but a trauma that really deeply affected us, because prior we had, you know, had all kinds of difficulties. Life wasn't easy, but nothing of this sort of caliber. Persay. So, yeah. And from there, we just then tried to begin moving on and healing and in that process had multiple miscarriages, had what was is called a blighted ovum. So we thought we were pregnant, dared to hope that we were pregnant, got excited, went for an ultrasound, only to find out that there's no baby there.

    - Mark Vroegop

    And we had actually caught a miscarriage before we knew it. And so it just it was this. Year, two year journey of just immense, gut wrenching, everyday kind of grief that sometimes came in a tsunami and other times came like the tide that would come in and go out.

    - Mark Vroegop

    Yeah, it was quite a journey to try and navigate through. So that's the hard providence that the Lord graced us with as a huge lesson in a way that we've also been able to help speaking to other people's pain as well.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Thank you for sharing that. For sharing a little bit about Sylvia, I. I have your book in front of me. Dark clouds, deep mercy. And you write in there, My grief was not tame. It was vicious. Could you could you open up? You know, there's there's the overview. But I imagine in that first year or two, what did what did a particularly vicious moment that comes to mind for you look like?

    - Mark Vroegop

    Yeah, it was one in particular is laying next to my wife and used a few days after we had buried Sylvia and she's just crying in a way that I never heard her cry before.

    - Mark Vroegop

    And there was just this bone chilling fear of what if my wife is never happy again?

    - Mark Vroegop

    What if our marriage is going to be in trouble? Because, you know, so many couples, when they lose a child, it creates an unusual level of stress.

    - Mark Vroegop

    You know, how how do I help my kids move on and process grief when. You know, I don't even know how to process my own grief and and then just to the real pressure of, you know, in pastoral ministry and every week there's hospital visits and babies that are born and messages that need to be preached.

    - Mark Vroegop

    And so, you know, and then when it's a miscarriage or we're trying to get pregnant and we're struggling, you know, it's not as though I can share a prayer request with the church. Hey, my wife got her period this week. Pray for us.

    - Mark Vroegop

    I mean, it's just so private and so painful and so isolating at so many levels. And that's why I said grief isn't tame, because part of the viciousness of it is its unpredictability. Yeah, something can remind you, something can be a trigger. And it's just it's it's not controllable.

    - Mark Vroegop

    It's not tameable. And I think understanding that is actually really helpful because it tends to normalize what at times you feel like is a sort of a crazed perspective on I've never felt this way and I don't know that it's sustainable.

    - Mark Vroegop

    And by God's grace, it we made our way through it as the Lord helped us. But I felt like in the book and in helping people with their grief, to be honest, that no grief is not tame and it is vicious.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    We will return to Mark and his story soon. I want to take a moment to thank our sponsor, Handle with Care Consulting. The rate of change and disruption in 2021 is unrelenting. As employers adjust to new rhythms and regulations, so you know if you are giving your people what they need to stay engaged and thrive? Empathy training is an essential element of building a culture of care that supports mental health and values the whole person. With keynote options, certificate programs, and coaching options, let Handle with Care Consulting help you confidently, consistently offer meaningful support when it matters most

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    - Liesel Mertes

    As you're carrying that grief, who who did you find, especially in that, you know, immediate two year people? That we're really your people, that we're more in the know and actively supporting you.

    - Mark Vroegop

    Yeah, for sure. Family was super helpful, you know, extended family member walking out of the delivery room prior to Sylvia being born.

    - Mark Vroegop

    And I grabbed my brother in law who's a dear friend, and I said, I need you to do something for me. And he said, What's that? And I said, Here's a camera. I need you to come in to this delivery room and I need you to take pictures, because this is all that we got. Yeah. And I mean, what a huge gift. Had two pastors who literally when I walked into the birthing room. I saw a little signia, picture on the door, which I knew was a symbol that a stillbirth was going to happen in this room from my chaplaincy orientation at the hospital when I saw it, it just my knees literally gave out and they literally carried me across the threshold into the room.

    - Mark Vroegop

    It was a powerful kind of metaphor of their help.

    - Mark Vroegop

    And then there were just other people we didn't locate our counsel or our support. And one particular person for some folks, that might be helpful.

    - Mark Vroegop

    In our case, we had sort of a team of folks who didn't even know they were part of a team, quite frankly, former seminary professors, other people who had walked through seasons of difficulty, who at different times we were able to, you know, to talk with.

    - Mark Vroegop

    And I think more than anything, besides just talking to the Lord, my wife and I, by God's grace, were able to process our grief and pain together.

    - Mark Vroegop

    And so in that respect, my wife was my greatest advocate in the midst of grief and I hers, although that kind of bounced back and forth depending upon how each of us were doing throughout the course of a week.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah, I, I, I hear and resonate with. Some of the ways that especially, as you know, partners and spouses in the death of a child, you know, for for Luke and I as as Mercy died, you would want to think if anyone else understood what I was going through, it should be this person.

    - Liesel Mertes

    You know, they've also lost this child.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And there we found that there were ways that, yes, we really could be of help to each other, come alongside each other. But then the ways in which you miss the other person can just feel so painful.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Like if you can't see me in this or if you're wanting, you know, if I'm feeling like I need to be with people and you want to be alone in those those aspects of distance could just in our story feel so wounded.

    Liesel Mertes

    And yeah, I hear I hear dynamics of the complication that it can be to both support and miss each other in shared grief.

    - Mark Vroegop

    Yeah, very much so.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Is it OK with you if I read you a short section from the introduction to your book? OK, you were talking about the comfort that was given to you at that time and you said, "When occasionally I candidly shared a few of the struggles of my soul. Some people reacted with visible discomfort. Others quickly moved to a desperate desire to, quote, find the bright side, a quick change of the subject in awkward silence or even physically excusing themselves to escape the tension.

    - Liesel Mertes

    When people stayed in the conversation, they often responded in unhelpful ways. In moments of attempted comfort, people said things like, I'm sure the Lord will give you another baby or maybe more people will come to the faith because of the death of your daughter. Or the Lord must know he can trust you with this. Every person meant well. I appreciated their attempts to address our pain, but it became clear that most people did not know how to join us in our grief."

    - Liesel Mertes

    That is in deep alignment with what I hear again and again in my work with businesses. But I would love for you to just expand a little bit on that sentiment. What was it like to absorb those misses from well-meaning people?

    - Mark Vroegop

    Well, it was it was hard, but I don't blame them. I mean, grief is scary. It's we. Look at loss, and we want people to not be sad because there's something about loss and death and sorrow that just penetrates our sort of self-sufficient mindset as human beings.

    - Mark Vroegop

    So grief is just terribly uncomfortable. And if you don't understand it or don't have a language to engage with it. My experience was, is that people and even I did this in pastoral ministry, we tend to revert to sort of these default positions that we think are helpful but end up not being helpful at all and then not having the skill set or the competency to walk with somebody in pain by having the courage and the competency to know it's OK for me not to say anything right now

    - Mark Vroegop

    Because our bias towards fixing or explaining or wrapping it up in a nice little bow is often, in my experience, not designed to really comfort the griever. It's designed to relieve the tension that the person observing the grief feels. And so, you know, that's where I think lament is helpful, doesn't solve all the problems. But I think that gives us a language that we can sort of plumb the depths of deep sorrow with a little bit of a framework or some guardrails, if you will, to help us know what to do and maybe what not to do.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Let me jump in there, because I know for some listeners, this might be one of the first times apart from, like studying a vocabulary list in high school or for the jury that they have encountered the word lament.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Could you unpack that term? Tell us more about how lament has been helpful.

    - Mark Vroegop

    Yeah. So lament, broadly defined, could just be thought of as, you know, deep sorrow.

    - Mark Vroegop

    But from a Christian perspective, when I talk as a pastor and when I think about biblical lament, I define lament in my book as a prayer in pain that leads to trust. Each one of those words is really important. It's a prayer. So it's what people do. They talk to God. It's a prayer in pain. So something difficult has created this this unique kind of prayer. That's a prayer in pain that leads. It's designed to be process oriented.

    - Mark Vroegop

    So it moves us from where we are to where we need to be. And it leads to trust. So in the Bible meant always has a resolution, even though the pain is it resolved. The prayer has a resolution where the person works through. I'm going to turn to God, I'm going to lay out what's wrong. I'm going to claim the promises of the Bible and I'm going to choose to trust and then I to do that over and over and over and over.

    - Mark Vroegop

    And what's fascinating is the Bible is filled with this language, the book of Psalms, the song Book of God's community. One out of every three songs is a lament. And that lament speaks to all kinds of different experiences, whether it's personal lament, corporate lament, repentance, lament or something. It's also called an precatory lament, like when injustice happens, what people say lament can be that language. So it's not just at a personal level, but even at a corporate level.

    - Mark Vroegop

    Lament is the language of people who are in pain.

    - Mark Vroegop

    And as they talk to God,

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah, this this deep soul-ish movement into not hiding from the sorrow, but naming it and embracing that process.

    - Liesel Mertes

    As you said, you you mentioned within that, you know, we read a little from the book Ways in which people missed you in your pain, some of these well-meaning turns of phrase that are much more to escape the discomfort of the moment.

    - Liesel Mertes

    What were some of the best things that people did as they came alongside you and your family in those immediate stages of grief?

    - Mark Vroegop

    Yeah, presence mattered, like the ability to just be with us and to be quiet and to sit in our pain, the ability to just say I'm sorry and be OK with the tension of that grief, folks who simply tried to meet a need, brought meals, just tried to love us as human beings, not just as grievers, people who loved on our kids and helped them to know that they were special and important as mom and dad were in a hard and difficult place.

    - Mark Vroegop

    And all the things the church did was they sent us to Florida for a period of time, maybe five to six days. And it's just a silly thing, you'd think. But they actually paid for us to go to to Disney World. And, you know, you lose a baby and then go to Disney World. But I'll just never forget walking through the streets of of Disney World there with the castle in front of me and my kids literally kissing on my wife's arm.

    - Mark Vroegop

    And it was just really good for them to be happy for just a moment, even though we were deeply grieving.

    - Mark Vroegop

    And I remember standing in line and my wife still showed the signs of pregnancy. And a woman, well-meaning, asked her, "how far along are you?" And I forget when my wife answered, but she mentioned something really graciously, just not giving her the whole story. But what do you say? I don't have a baby with me, but I look pregnant and, you know, so it was just and so here we are really grieving.

    - Mark Vroegop

    But our kids were able to experience some level of of happiness and joy, which was our joy, too.

    - Liesel Mertes

    I'm a I'm glad as a podcast host that you told that story because I I think of that community of people who.

    - Liesel Mertes

    We just felt, you know, felt the goodness and the movement to send you that way, because as Luke and I walked our own journey with mercy, I think I think it was out of that story. I think we had heard you say that, that we we thought we we have to get out of you know, I really felt I have to get out of Indianapolis. We have to have a change of scenery. And it gave us the freedom.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And I actually reached out to a business school professor and mentor at the time who I knew had an extra house in Arizona and said, can we can we just stay there?

    - Liesel Mertes

    You know, my my daughter has just died and she so graciously let us stay. And it was such an important and a good time. And I had the same thing happen standing in line at the airport, some really well-meaning family who was just elated to think I was pregnant. So I connect deeply with that. And I it just makes me think of the ways in which we extend ourselves to bless people that are hurting, like the ripple effect of that goodness, you know, came down to my family, however, many years later through a colleague at a business school, you know, to to bless us and that kind of way.

    - Liesel Mertes

    So I love the the legacy of blessing that comes out of that sort of attuned encouragement in the moment for sure.

    - Liesel Mertes

    It also causes me to tuck away, I so seldom ever comment on a woman who looks pregnant after those sorts of experiences.

    - Liesel Mertes

    I think you have no idea what is going on.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And there are so many other ways to make small talk. If they want to tell you about their baby, they will.

    - Liesel Mertes

    I have found in as I have worked with couples who have walked through miscarriage or even within, you know, Luke's own story, miscarriage is hard to bear. If it is acknowledged at all, it's often couched within the woman's experience, I remember a mutual friend of ours telling Luke, Gosh, I think this is probably sad for you.

    - Liesel Mertes

    It can't be as hard as it is for Liesel. But, you know, and just kind of passing over.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Did you find within your own experience that some of that misalignment or or failing to grasp how miscarriage could impact the life of a male partner was present?

    - Mark Vroegop

    Yeah, that wasn't a huge issue for us. And I can understand why it would be for others. I would say that I did find that where I was processing and where Sarah was processing, that we were, in fact in different places as relates to miscarriages.

    - Mark Vroegop

    So she felt that more deeply than than what I did. And that took us some time to be able to kind of work through or just, you know, I was sort of the one who was optimistic, like. Look, it's OK, we got time, you know, let's let's just keep trying, keep praying, and she it was deeper for her.

    - Mark Vroegop

    It was. And it took me a while to realize that. And so, yeah, thankfully, nobody mentioned sort of that as a, you know, statement.

    - Mark Vroegop

    I did find that I had to get my head around how to process my wife's grief differently than mine, so we were both were grieving but grieving in different ways and for different reasons. And sometimes that manifested itself in some pretty challenging ways.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Tell me more about that. What was important, as you learned and navigated that journey of sometimes misaligned grief?

    Mark Vroegop

    Well, one was just trying to be sure that we were understanding where each other were, because, you know, the challenge with grief is it can make you really selfish.

    - Mark Vroegop

    You've got every right in the world to only think of yourself. And grief tends to give you tunnel vision.

    - Mark Vroegop

    I remember one time one of our biggest conflict moments came when I came home and Sylvia's room had been all set up for her.

    - Mark Vroegop

    You know, we were expecting her to come home. So the crib was set up, all the clothes were out. And I came home and my wife was packing all of that up. She was taking the crib apart. And I was like, what do you what are you doing? And she's like, we're not going to get pregnant. And I want to take this down. And that crib and that stuff in that room was like a symbol of hope for me.

    - Mark Vroegop

    And it was a vicious teaser to her or an accuser that this was never going to happen. So here we walk into the same room and I see it as a place of comfort and future. She sees it as a place of mocking.

    - Mark Vroegop

    And yeah, that so that's just like one example of how we're coming at the same thing from two very different angles.

    - Mark Vroegop

    I think it is important for folks to realize that their processing of grief can't be projected on other people. No two people grieve the same. And our tendency is to think that the way that I've grieved is the way that everybody should grieve because of how intense it is. Hard to imagine that anybody could grieve any other way in which I do because of how hard it is.

    - Mark Vroegop

    So that would just be an example of how there were moments when we missed things and we just need to give each other a lot more space to grieve. Well, but also realizing to realize, but also to realize that we're not the only one grieving here just to be more sensitive to each other and by God's grace, that happen, but not without without some bumps along the way.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah. There's David Kessler is a writer and psychologist and is he was talking about some of the numbers that are put to the number of marriages that fall apart in the aftermath of a child's death.

    - Liesel Mertes

    One of the things that he has found in his counseling, study and research, he would say a huge contributor to that is just judgment of another person's grief process.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And that really struck me. I was like, that rings true experientially of how that can underlie a lot of aspects of dysfunction as the volume is just so high, everybody is feeling what they feel pretty intensely.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Sylvia died, there is the immediate grief journey, what has been how many years has it been now since her death?

    - Mark Vroegop

    Well, I'm a terrible mental math guy, but she died in 2004. So 17 years, 17.

    - Liesel Mertes

    You did it

    - Mark Vroegop

    I did it

    - Liesel Mertes

    Mental math, right there.

    - Liesel Mertes

    What has been important in intermediate and long term grief as people have continued to support you?

    - Mark Vroegop

    You know, I've got a pastor at my previous church that every birthday. That Sylvia would have had he sends me a text and just says, hey, just thinking of you today and praying for you means the world like it's just it's crazy how kind and helpful it is, because, you know, one of the deep pains, particularly with stillbirth or the loss of a child, is the loss of the future.

    - Mark Vroegop

    And when somebody says, you know, how many kids do you have? Well, for the first year or so, we felt like we needed to say, you know, four because Sylvia counted. And then over time, after our other daughter, Savannah, was born, you know, we stopped adding. All of that into the equation and. So just the fact that folks remember and that she counts because she counts for us, she counts deeply.

    - Mark Vroegop

    So those sort of moments, Christmases and and birthdays are extraordinarily, you know, important.

    - Mark Vroegop

    And then also just folks who who saw the redemptive nature of what kind of God was doing in us through all of this that was meaningful as they would indicate or share how they saw God's grace shining through us in the midst of our brokenness and how helpful and instructive it was.

    - Mark Vroegop

    So, so not forgetting and also helping in some measure to see over the long term the fruit that God was reaping was helpful, doesn't bring Sylvia back, but it does serve to help us to see how that.

    Mark Vroegop

    Pain isn't pointless.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah, those those questions, like the number of children in your household can can feel very tricky. I, I connect with that. I have I've had times where, you know, we have had five children and I've people have just asked me socially and I said, well, we have four and I will have a child with me say, no, we have we have five made conversation stream.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And just to reflect on a. Yeah, how particular can be for those remaining children at various moments to want to hear that acknowledgement, even if I've gauged socially, like maybe maybe I won't say it now, maybe it's just not worth going into. And, yeah, those little reminders along the way.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Your book, which I would love to hear more about, but it is full of ways in which you have taken some of your personal experience and it affects your practice with other people. I want to hear more about your book, but I want to start with that place.

    - Liesel Mertes

    How how is your posture different now as a result of Sylvia in the way that you come alongside people in their grief and sorrow?

    - Mark Vroegop

    Yeah, it's sort of like I speak a different dialect or even different language, so that when they're saying something, I sort of have a translator to know. I think I know what they're saying. Other people maybe have an experience. Deep levels of grief may not understand what the grieving person is trying to communicate. It certainly made me more aware of the nature of grief and lots of other spaces.

    - Mark Vroegop

    And it. It made my first step to be one of deep sympathy and empathy with folks who are grieving and gave me a little bit of a resolve or a balanced conviction that it's OK for me not to have to fix this mess and just

    - Liesel Mertes

    Can I pause for for just one second?

    - Liesel Mertes

    I I'd love to dig a little bit deeper that you talked about that first inclination of empathy and being with what what does that look or sound like for you in different situations?

    - Mark Vroegop

    Yeah, it looks like being present. It looks like personal touch.

    - Mark Vroegop

    It looks like saying I'm sorry. And in many cases it means being there silent with a grieving person.

    - Mark Vroegop

    It's being OK saying I have no idea what to say right now and realizing that that's some of the most comforting things that you can say

    - Mark Vroegop

    More, I think it just helps just to know maybe what not to say and to kind of resist the urge or inclination to to solve, to fix, to and to silence, to contain grief is a wave that just needs to be ridden with somebody as opposed to some problem that we need to solve.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah, I, I talk about that in my work, we have some some avatars we'll talk about. Are you manifesting as a Buck-Up, Bobby right now? Or a Cheer-Up Cheryl or a Fix-It Frank, amongst others, these postures that we take...Well, as you said, out of our own personal discomfort, the ways it triggers us, the way we feel inadequate or just.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah, the desire to to make it better for someone and the release that can come in realizing there's there's not actually something to be said that magically makes all the pain of this better. And I can release myself from having to find that in this moment.

    - Mark Vroegop

    Right, exactly.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Tell us about your book, Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy, Discovering the Grace of Lament.

    - Mark Vroegop

    Yeah, throughout the years following Sylvia's death, I started just exploring kind of the contours of grief as I would read things in the Psalms.

    - Mark Vroegop

    And started doing some teaching and kind of the darker Psalms, and when I would teach on them, people would kind of come out of the woodwork and like say things like, you just described what my last couple of years have been like. And then I did some teaching on the Book of Lamentations on Lamentations is the longest lament in the Bible. And it just became apparent that this language of lament was a gap that so many of us, including myself, just needed to think about.

    - Mark Vroegop

    And, you know, most people don't set out to study lament. Usually lament finds them.

    - Mark Vroegop

    Hmm. And as I began to investigate the subject more fully, began to realize that people need this language and it could be helpful, therapeutic, empowering in terms of helping and serving other people who are in the middle of their grief. And folks just started asking me, like, do you have anything else on this? And I was like, no, I don't. And have you written anything? Like, No, I haven't. And. Do you know anything that's out there that's, you know, theologically robust and, you know, compassionate?

    - Mark Vroegop

    I'm like, there's just not much many books on this. And so I thought, well. Seems like maybe I should try to do something to meet that need, and so 2014 and 15 developed the idea and. Just wanted to try and do something that would help people, and quite frankly, I, I didn't didn't know if the book would be well received. When I first pitched it to some people in the publishing world, they were like, aren't we talking about.

    - Mark Vroegop

    And I was like, I know, I get it. But let me explain this to you. And so, by God's grace, got the opportunity to publish the book. And it's it's proven to be way more helpful than what I thought. I knew people needed this language, but my experiencing in publishing the book is just really even proving it a 100 fold. Mm hmm.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Well, and something that I love about the book is.

    - Liesel Mertes

    It's it's full of your heart as someone who has grieved, as someone who has come alongside people in grief, it is both spiritual and conceptual, but even the last chapters that are eminently practical, how do we take this idea of, yes, I buy-in, lament is important and begin to integrate it into our practices and personal lives?

    - Liesel Mertes

    You know, even even the movement that funerals are all celebrations of life. What does that, how does that constrain instead of release us in some of those ways?

    - Liesel Mertes

    So it just comes through richly in your work

    - Mark Vroegop

    Thank you.

    What is one of the ways, you know?

    - Liesel Mertes

    Publishing something like a book is is releasing its I imagine it could be like releasing a child into the world, like go forth and grow. What has been one of the most surprising and pleasing ways to you that your book has been used or made connections out in the world?

    - Mark Vroegop

    Yeah, you know, the book released in 2019. And by. May of 2020, it had gotten into spaces and had been put in the hands of people that I would have never imagined would be reading it. And so it. And there's a book award called the ECPA Book Award, and and so that it won the Book of the Year award in Christian Publishing, and it just was stunning to me that in the midst of our sorrow and loss here, now we enter into a global pandemic where people are lamenting everything.

    - Mark Vroegop

    And the way that lament serves not only for personal grief, like I thought that it would, but lament now has an expansion from a cultural standpoint at so many levels and then that. Led to another book that connects lament and racial reconciliation and how does lament play a role in that? And so what's been remarkable is just to see the way the language of lament is really helpful at so many levels and in ways and in places that I hadn't thought that it would be.

    - Mark Vroegop

    And so I I didn't anticipate the book being very well received by God's grace. It has been. And I just think it. It's an example of how much grief and pain there is in the world and how much we need a language that can help us.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Mark, are there any questions that it would be helpful for me to ask you that I have not yet asked you?

    - Mark Vroegop

    Sometimes people wonder how exactly do I lament the back of the book? I even have some worksheets. And, you know, it's it's a helpful framework for processing through grief and for prayer, because laments involve kind of a movement of turn, complain, ask and trust. And so I, I use that as a regular prayer for him. Not every day, but each of those steps are super helpful. In fact, I've often recommended that somebody study, lament, psalm and look for those four key movements, turn, complain, ask and trust, see how the Bible expresses each of those four movements and then kind of on the other side of the page to write out your own prayer in light of what you see.

    - Mark Vroegop

    The Psalmist praying. So, for example, Psalm 13. How long, oh, Lord, will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? And I find it really helpful to see that the Bible talks that way so that then I could write my own prayer and finish the sentence. How long will the Lord will?

    - Mark Vroegop

    And, you know, every so many days I kind of need that prayer because my life got lots of grief in it. And so lament by using these varying forms or elements can can really be a helpful way to navigate difficult times by regularly turning, complaining, asking and trusting and doing that over and over and over and over.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Hmm. That's good. Thank you. Anything else that you would like to add?

    - Mark Vroegop

    I just think it's wonderful that you're engaging in this space, because I think. People need to know how to help other people grieve, and it's one of the most important, one of the most transformative and one of the most complicated seasons of a person's life.

    - Mark Vroegop

    So, you know, I've heard senior executives say you should always be reading a book on leadership.

    - Mark Vroegop

    I think it's true. But it would also seem that every person ought to have some sort of competency in how to navigate grief, because either we're going to be grieving at some point in time or we're going to be in proximity to someone else who is grieving and in that. Opportunity, you can do a lot of really good stuff and be really helpful. I think it's presented a great opportunity for Grace to be extended to hurting people. And that's what people who are grieving the they need a lot of help.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah, absolutely. I couldn't I couldn't agree more. As I say, I look back on my own training in, you know, master's degree in management studies.

    - Liesel Mertes

    I thought, how is this such a complete oversight in the curriculum? Because if you manage any number of people for any amount of time, you will be managing someone and leading and being in relationship with someone who is grieving. And a non-acknowledgement or a misstep is its own form of mismanagement. And, you know, we can grow in this.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And it's so good to have tools like your book to help people along the way.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    Here are three key takeaways from my conversation with Mark…

    I agree with Mark, we all need a competency with grief; it is a key part of leadership and just being human.Whether it is in our own life or in the lives of those we care about, hard things will come. A language of lament that willingly looks at and whole-heartedly enters into pain is so essential for healing. If your interest has been piqued by Mark and his work, there is a link to his book in the show notes. Some griefs cannot be fixed, they can only be carried.Sometimes silence and presence are the most powerful ways that you can come alongside another person. Release yourself from the pressure to suddenly have the right thing to say. Give a hug, bring some cookies. Through your empathy, your compassion, and your care, your can have ripple effects that extend way beyond a single moment.When you care for someone well, you are co-creating a wider culture of care. The community that blessed Mark and his family with a trip led Mark to encourage Luke and I to take our children on a trip after the death of our daughter. Their kindness poured into us in ways that are powerful. Take heart, you might never know the full effects of your kindness in the life of another person.

    OUTRO

    You can find out more about Mark’s book, Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy, here: https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Clouds-Deep-Mercy-Discovering/dp/1433561484/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1534035599&sr=8-1&keywords=dark+clouds+deep+mercy

  • - Wendy Noe

    We are we have been dealing with a crisis with with the disease of addiction. And again, I think that we can see that because we're talking about it more than we've ever talked about it. And that's because we're seeing so many people affected by it. But it is a it's a huge health crisis that we're living in right now. It's just gigantic. And I don't think, quite honestly, we've seen the worst of it at this point.

    INTRO

    Hi everybody. Today we are talking about the disease of addiction. There is so much important ground we are going to cover, including why it matters that we call addiction a disease. Because this wasn’t the language that was used when I was a kid growing up in the “Just Say No” to drugs era.

    And my guest today has a ton to share. That is because this is Wendy Noe’s work. She is the executie director of the Dove Recovery House in Indianapolis, which is a recognized residential program for women with substance abuse disorders.

    But Wendy doesn’t just talk with us as a professional who works with women dealing with substance addictions, she talks to us as a woman who has been directly impacted by addiction. She walked with her brother as he spiraled deeper into addiction. She helped check him into and watched him leave treatment programs and she has really, really good words to offer if you are just feeling at the end of your rope as you try to help someone you love who is grappling with their addiction.

    As we dive in, a little bit more about Wendy. She is from central Indiana, lived here her whole life, although she has a love for Michigan, particularly South Haven.

    - Wendy Noe

    I just love the area. I love the peace of it all. I love the little bitty towns up there. I love the winetasting. I just feel like, you know, to be able to drive two hours, two 1/2 hours north and it's just such a peaceful getaway for me. Quiet's I love the nature. You know, her house is just a perfect space for me to retreat and just calm down from life. I just love it up there.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah, I love that. Well, in the Great Lakes are their own national treasure. I mean, they are these sweeping landscapes that really when people talk about the Third Coast, my my in-laws are from northern Minnesota. So when we encounter the Great Lakes, it's usually from the western side driving through Wisconsin and into Minnesota. But my sister has recently moved to Michigan and it's beautiful. We hadn't really done Michigan in the same way because we'd always been on the other side.

    - Liesel Mertes

    But it's charming. And you can drive in Michigan forever like we we did a day coming through that Upper Peninsula and then all the way down to Ann Arbor.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And I was like, it's been like, you know, eleven hours all in Michigan. I was stunned at how large it is.

    - Wendy Noe

    It is. It's huge. And my husband and I always talk about retiring. And I mean, we're too young yet. But

    - Wendy Noe

    He loves snow. He loves the winter. So he's always said he wants to move to Montana and snow and all cold things. And even though Michigan has a winter, I'm like, we could move to Michigan when we retire. You could have, you know, the cold and the snow. And yet I still get beach time in summertime.

    - Wendy Noe

    Yes. So I don't know, maybe one day we'll find our way into Michigan as residents

    - Liesel Mertes

    Michigan, Montana, those states.

    Not that to the north.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Well, it's it's a certain thing if you've grown up with snow and ice, like I grew up in the Midwest and it's you know, I similarly, I think about like it's like eight months of winter up in northern Minnesota. There's just a lot of winter. I mean, summers are great, but there's a lot of winter soon. So you have to have a hearty constitution.

    - Wendy Noe

    Yeah, definitely.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Well, which is probably why whether it was, you know, people of Dutch descent, you know, colonizing Michigan or the Scandinavians in northern Minnesota have been like, oh, yes, it was like this in the old country. You weren't shocked to come and find these brutal winters.

    - Wendy Noe

    That's true. That's all you know.

    - Liesel Mertes

    So you are married. You also have some teenagers in your home, is that right?

    - Wendy Noe

    Yes, I have two daughters.

    - Liesel Mertes

    OK, are they getting ready to graduate? Lower high school that have have

    - Wendy Noe

    I have a freshman and a senior. Oh yeah. Yeah. So they're both June babies, so I have one getting ready to turn fifteen and one getting ready to turn eighteen.

    - Wendy Noe

    So my life is. It's weird right now my baby is leaving me for college, and she's, you know, she I we have been very fortunate to not have senioritis and she's not been an unenjoyable teen. She's just this really impressive, amazing young lady. And I really enjoy being around her. And she's a huge help.

    - Wendy Noe

    You know, my 15 year old or soon to be 15 year old, my freshman. She's like, I'll do it later. I'll do it later. You know, I'm certainly going to have the teen angst, I think, with her. And she's enjoyable and incredible in her own way. And I just love I'm blessed to have two amazing daughters.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah, well, in I'm a couple of years behind, my eldest is thirteen. But I've been saying to people, I mean, we are we're having a recalibrating of our relationship to suit her age.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And I think especially with your oldest, as they encounter these different life stages, we can be aware as parents of their need to skill up like, oh, they need additional skills and these are growth moments as they're entering. And but I I think there's a corollary that I experience in myself of being like, I've got a skill up as a parent for this new stage as well.

    - Liesel Mertes

    You know, it requires different aspects of my, you know, my training and engaging as I engage with this new stage. And it sounds like you're on the brink of doing some of that as you have a child leaving the home,

    - Wendy Noe

    You know, so that is one hundred percent spot on

    - Liesel Mertes

    You talked about. Working throughout their growing up years and the different professional roles and capacities you've been in.

    - Liesel Mertes

    You are in a leadership role at the Dove House. Would you tell me a little bit about your role there and about the Dove house and their mission writ large?

    - Wendy Noe

    I would love to. I'm the executive director at Dove Recovery House for Women. I supervise a staff of 16 and Dove Recovery House provides a residential treatment for women with substance use disorder. We're the largest in Indianapolis. And and really, our program model is is really the only type of its kind in the state of Indiana.

    - Wendy Noe

    We house 40 women every night. And, you know, we we serve the most vulnerable women in our community, women that have experienced homelessness and near homelessness, sex trafficking, prostitution, trauma, women without the ability to pay, women without health insurance who really need treatment but can't always afford or usually can't afford to go to those other places.

    - Wendy Noe

    We've been around since 2000 and we've been recognized by the Department of Mental Health and Addiction and the Governor's next level recovery office as the best practice model for the state of Indiana that they would like to replicate. So I'm I'm really proud of that and how hard we've worked for it.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And how many years have you been at the Dove house?

    - Wendy Noe

    I've been here just over six years.

    - Liesel Mertes

    OK, yeah. I have so many questions to come out in the course of our conversation about good ways to encounter people who are dealing with addiction issues, ways in which we compound the problem by our responses. I have a number of questions

    - Liesel Mertes

    I would like to tie, also, a little bit, also to some of your own experience. I remember you telling me when you began on this learning curve at the Dove House, it helped you in kind of looking back at some of the experiences that you had with your brother within your personal life.

    Liesel Mertes

    How how were those two like a, awarenesses coming together as you began at the Dove House?

    - Wendy Noe

    It's really been a fascinating journey for me. And I've learned so much in my time here at Dove House. So a little background. I've always

    - Wendy Noe

    I've spent my entire career in the nonprofit industry and working primarily in women's issues. And so I was ready for a new role, a new chapter and executive director position. And this one opened up here at Dove House. And I didn't really know a lot about addiction and substance use disorder, and I certainly hadn't ever heard of Dove House.

    - Wendy Noe

    And but again, just passionate about women's issues and met the board of directors and was offered the job. And I really took it upon myself to educate and become knowledgeable about substance use disorder and the issues of the women that we treat face.

    - Wendy Noe

    And it wasn't, you know, until I started working at Dove House and really educating and becoming educated by my women and by my staff about substance use disorder, that my eyes really opened up to the disease.

    - Wendy Noe

    And I have a younger brother who had really kind of gone off the rails. He was in and out of jail. He had several arrests.

    - Wendy Noe

    You know, it was the common theme that if we hadn't pain pills our house, make sure you hide them before he comes over knowing that he always had what he said was back pain, always had back problems and always needed some medicine.

    - Wendy Noe

    And I had chronic ear issues. And so, you know, it wasn't unusual for me to have pain medicine in my house due to those those chronic ear issues, you know, and then so was the running theme in my family that lock these things up or he's going to ask for money here. He always wants money and never taking any ownership of the fact that he could never keep a job. You know, he was always good about getting a job, but never keeping a job.

    - Wendy Noe

    He'd over sleep or it what was someone else's fault.

    - Wendy Noe

    And so I saw some of those same things with the women that we were working with. And again, he was in and out of jail for for theft or possession of marijuana. And then he got arrested again. And I honestly can't recall what what what the charges were for. But it was then that I started getting clued in to some of the flags that were being raised.

    - Wendy Noe

    So I remember having a conversation with my mom and I said I think he might have some addiction problems and sort of having some of those questions and conversations with not only him, but also with with my family members, with my my twin sister and my mom. So

    - Liesel Mertes

    Wendy, could I could I jump in and ask you a question?

    - Wendy Noe

    Yeah. That so.

    - Liesel Mertes

    I imagine that there's there's this family unit dynamics as your brother is struggling along the way. You you mentioned kind of this this emerging awareness.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Is this addiction prior to that? What what were the family like, feelings and conversations? Were you feeling like he's just so irresponsible, he's totalizing the family's attention, why can't he get his act together? Like what were some of the things that were being absorbed within the the wider family structure?

    - Wendy Noe

    It is such a good question. I so I'm very much a look. You want something, you work hard for it, you get it. And it irritated me. I had no patience for him.

    - Wendy Noe

    I had no patience for the fact that he would not take ownership over his own behaviors. I was sick and tired of him hurting my family, our family. My mom was a single parent. My mom did not have a lot of income and yet she felt like she needed to take care of him.

    - Wendy Noe

    He had always been the baby of the family. And she, you know, I couldn't understand why she would give him money or she would bail him out or she would help him.

    - Wendy Noe

    And then my sister was the mediator. You know, she was always his caretaker. My mom had to work. And so she was always the one that would help him with his homework and make sure he was eating and that very nurturing older sister. And I was the hard ass one, you know, in a job, which I need to do.

    - Wendy Noe

    I'm tired of taking care of you. So we had a very interesting family dynamic, you know, and my mom and my sister would get very frustrated with him, but they always seem to rescue him. Yeah, and I didn't. And so we had a very fractured relationship. We did not talk. We did not talk with each other. I didn't want anything to do with him. He made me mad. And so I really I really kind of cut him out of my life with him.

    - Wendy Noe

    I didn't I didn't know him. I didn't understand him. And I certainly didn't respect him.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for for giving that background because it's a struggle. It's a struggle for so many people to think, is there a right way of encountering someone with these issues? And, you know, is it right? Is it wrong? Is it just what you do to survive, to get through and be able to live a life beyond that? So that's I appreciate you giving voice to some of those struggles.

    - Wendy Noe

    Yeah, of course. I mean, I think, you know, he would be the first to recognize the challenging relationship that we had.

    - Wendy Noe

    And yeah. And he was very good at keeping things away from us. You know, he presented what he wanted us to see. He was trying to get a job, but he couldn't get a job. There was no one hiring. And I didn't live in the same town as him. My mom did. So I think maybe she was more abreast of things, but and as a mom protecting us. But we had a very, very fractured relationship.

    - Wendy Noe

    And he only let me see what I what he wanted me to see.

    - Wendy Noe

    And so I remember him calling me from jail and needing my help. And I asked him, are you addicted? And he said, yes, I have a problem.

    - Wendy Noe

    And I said, OK, let me help you, but here are my conditions. I will only help you or I will only do this if you go into treatment. And he's like, fine, OK.

    - Wendy Noe

    And at this point, I think he was kind of looking at some homelessness and didn't have anywhere to live. And so I remember picking him up from a friend's house after he had been released from jail and he was living in a camper on their land.

    - Wendy Noe

    So no running water, no electricity. So he was you know, it was pretty rough for him. I think he was willing to do whatever it took at that point to have a house.

    - Wendy Noe

    So I remember taking him to the grocery store and hooking him up with everything that he needed and took him to a recovery house because I at this point, I'm working in recovery. I know it works. I know what it takes. I called people I knew and got them into a program and he lasted 30 days.

    - Wendy Noe

    He met a girl on an online dating site. And he's a charmer. I mean, he has a heart of gold. He he always said he loves well, he loves while he didn't have the rest of it together, but he loves. Well, yeah. And and he left the. Program, and it went right back to to his and my relationship.

    - Wendy Noe

    I was frustrated I couldn't keep it together. So, again, you know, fast forward wheels fell off. He they were doing good for a while. My sister, who is you know, she and I were talking this morning, she's she's like that that that old town neighborhood mom that knows everything and is in everyone's business and knew that things were falling apart.

    - Wendy Noe

    And my sister, if she doesn't know you. She'll figure out who you are and start a relationship with you.

    - Wendy Noe

    And she uses social media, Facebook as a way to communicate with people that I know of people and found out through a friend of of my brother's girlfriend that they were no running water.

    - Wendy Noe

    They had kids in the house, no running water, no electricity. They were filling up water jugs at a local gas station. And and the house was trashed. And then that we found that they were both addicted and they got arrested. For theft, and which was some of my brother's charges before, and she was released because she had no priors, my brother went back to jail and I had her come to Dove House and tell me what had happened.

    - Wendy Noe

    And I still feel bad about that because I have to imagine that, you know, here I hold this responsibility in this role of this this large organization. But yet I'm also her boyfriend, sister. And she needed my help and had to have community service and needed resources. And so she's sitting in my office and telling me everything. And it was then that I learned that my brother was addicted to heroin. He ended up getting out of jail.

    - Wendy Noe

    I got him into another program. That program didn't work out for him, which I don't blame him. I blame the program.

    - Wendy Noe

    And quite honestly, they failed my brother, but he gave it to me that

    - Liesel Mertes

    Could I have you pause just for a second?

    - Wendy Noe

    Yeah. Sorry, I go on and on.

    - Liesel Mertes

    No, no, no. Well, I'm just struck. You said they failed my brother. From your experience with your brother and also within your area of competence, what makes for a more or less effective program more helpful?

    - Liesel Mertes

    Whatever whatever term applies best?

    - Wendy Noe

    I think so, for for in this instance, this program allowed clients to have medication in their room. And my brother's drug of choice was with pain pills and graduated to heroin because pain pills became much more difficult to obtain. That program failed him because they had pain pills in the room and my brother used one of the pain pills. And so they looked at that as a discharge and that discharged him because they looked at that as a relapse and discharged him due to that relapse.

    - Wendy Noe

    So I think that and there's a lot of programs out there Liesel that that discharge individuals when they have a relapse. And, you know, people have relapses all the time. When you look at diseases, you know, whether it's an asthma relapse or cancer comes back or diabetes flare up, you know, who knows? And, you know, you treat that. You treat that disease. Something's not working. Let's figure it out. But to just charge a person from a program because they relapse does not help them.

    - Wendy Noe

    They're not going to be able to maintain sobriety. They're not going to be able to figure out what caused that relapse. And that's what Dove House does differently, is that we don't discharge due to a relapse. We we look at what happened, how can we help them? Because ultimately they're going to come back. They're going to need our help. And if we discharge them, then the chances of them dying or getting our services in the future are significant.

    - Wendy Noe

    But in that instance with my brother, you know, they failed him in two ways. They they discharged him due to his relapse. But they set that relapse in front of his face by having a medication that could was easily abused. Yeah. Newly into recovery. He could not he couldn't resist it.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Well, and that that movement a little bit, what you were saying of giving it another chance that the language of disease as it relates to addiction, I feel like has been a movement among practitioners and social services in science, in the medical field to talk about addiction more as a disease than as a matter of willpower. Why why is it important to make that move in the language and our conceptualizing of what addiction is?

    - Wendy Noe

    Addiction always been looked at as a character flaw, and it's personal choice that you're making. You're choosing to use drugs. You're choosing to use alcohol. And and the reality is, is that at first choice you are you know, you may choose to drink alcohol or you may choose to to do something to put something in your body that perhaps you should be putting in there. But then something changes. And there is evidence that supports that when you use drugs or alcohol, there is a chemical.

    - Wendy Noe

    A chemical imbalance that occurs in a person's brain and for some I can have one my brother cannot. And so it's a very interesting study and research that's come out that shows that this is a disease, that it is an imbalance in a person's brain.

    - Wendy Noe

    The other part of this is that if you look at what the root cause of addiction is, something came before that. And what I say is trauma is the gateway drug. Those individuals experience some form of traumatic experience and they're using those external influences like drugs or alcohol to self medicate.

    - Wendy Noe

    So, for example, my clients here at Dove House, and this really is across the board for women in and of itself, the average age for drug use is 13. And evidence shows that the age you start using drugs and alcohol on a regular basis is the age your brain stops maturing. So the average age of drug use for my clientele is 13. That means they're stunted. Their brain is stunted at the age of 13 or 14. Ninety five percent of my clients and again, this is this is evidence in general.

    - Wendy Noe

    So while I see it in my client population, if you look at nationwide evidence and research for women. Ninety five percent of them experienced some form of trauma with 90 percent of them experiencing childhood sexual abuse. And again, this is across the board.

    - Wendy Noe

    So if and then if you remove this notion that's a character flaw, you're bringing the disease and the the judgment out of the closet. People are using in secret, in secrecy. They're not reaching out for help because it's so stigmatizing.

    - Wendy Noe

    So if we can remove the stigma from it, people are more likely to reach out for help at an earlier age and early onset of point because they know they're not going to be judge.

    - Wendy Noe

    You don't judge people if they have cancer. We don't judge people if they have diabetes or asthma, we look at them as getting help. And so you're right that the narrative or this conversation around substance use disorder and addiction has really started to shift.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    We will return to Wendy’s story in just a moment. I want to take a second to thank our sponsor, Handle with Care Consulting. As the economy starts to recover, are you doing all that you can to help your employees return to a place of thriving? From death to disappointment to addiction issues, your people are facing a host of challenges and empathy is more important than ever. Let Handle with Care Consulting equip your team to practice empathy when it matters most. With keynote sessions, certificate programs, and coaching options, there is a solution that fits for your team.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah, and you were in the midst of the flow of your story. You were talking about helping your brother in and out of these different treatment centers, which I imagine in the midst of being a parent of two children, a partner, a professional, is taking a lot of your emotional and social bandwidth at the time.

    - Liesel Mertes

    What what sort of a strain was that like for you trying to navigate these moving pieces on your brother's behalf?

    - Wendy Noe

    The hardest thing for me was the two roles that I was playing. And, you know, I educate people and I see the women that come through the doors of Dove House and I love on them. And I educate people in substance use disorder. And I see these women as the women that they are, these incredible human beings that experienced severe things in their lives. And we are giving them the opportunity to become their best versions, the women they're designed and meant to be. And I've always felt that that my life's purpose is to provide a voice for women who have yet to find theirs.

    And then I'm I'm dealing with my brother who hurt my family and hurt my mom is an active addiction and I'm judging him for it and I'm mad at him for it. And it was really hard for me to shift and think, why is it OK for me to treat him that way when I don't treat these women that way? And I'm telling other people not to treat people with substance use disorder, with negativity and with isolation.

    - Wendy Noe

    And yet here I am doing it. And so I really had to train myself and evolve as a human being and as his sister, that my brother suffers from the disease of addiction. And this is not a choice he is making and I need to help him.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah, well. And I imagine. It's always it's always hard when we feel personally triggered or like this isn't just an abstract question, like your choices are affecting me, they're affecting people I love.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And it can be hard sometimes to do those pivots in real time. Like when you're in the midst of a conversation, what kinds of things were important for you to be doing, like prior to interactions with him afterwards? Like what supports were you getting that what allowed you to evolve in the way that you're describing?

    - Wendy Noe

    I asked a lot of questions and I leaned on team members who had family experience with addiction. I ask questions of women that came through our programs.

    - Wendy Noe

    I really wanted to know and I I wanted to be vulnerable. I wanted to share why my own issues, my own insecurities, why I was acting the way that I was, and really helping to gain more of a personal understanding, getting inside the mind of someone that suffers from this disease. That really helped me to ask those questions to to not only know it from a literature standpoint, but to know it from a personal standpoint, to know it from a very intimate perspective.

    - Wendy Noe

    How does it make you feel when when a when a family member disowns you or when a family member says these things to you? How did that make you feel? And so it really it it it opened my eyes in a way that they hadn't been opened and. It allowed me to help my brother in a way that I never had been able to help him patient with him, I was more understanding. I was compassionate. I ask the right questions and I listened.

    - Wendy Noe

    And it honestly helps our relationship when I could tell him from a factual educational standpoint, like you are making this decision right now and this is an impulse decision and and having a very forward conversation with him, you know, instead of saying to him, you are leaving this program and moving in with your girlfriend, why do you think that's a bad idea? This is why I think it's a bad idea. And pushing him away, if I said it to him that way, instead of saying you're making an impulse decision, why do you think that is?

    - Wendy Noe

    And what has happened to you in the past when you've made an impulse decision? And can you slow down? And instead of leaving today, can you think through while you're angry right now because you're in this program and somebody made you mad and so you're just going to go move in with your girlfriend? Can you slow down and think through this? If I make this decision based on emotion and impulse, how is that going to benefit me tomorrow? Right.

    - Wendy Noe

    So really helping him understand and slow down and make have those conversations, because that's how we do here at Dove House.

    - Liesel Mertes

    What I hear in some of those questions and tell me if I'm characterizing this correctly, inviting him into more of his own reflective process beyond just like judging or offering advice on what could seem to you, like really bad decisions.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Like, let me just tell you what I think, instead of kind of pressing deeper and inviting him into his own deeper reflection, is that a good characterization of some of the things you were doing and asking the right questions?

    - Wendy Noe

    100 percent. Because if you if you make all the questions, make all the decisions, and when things go wrong, guess whose fault it is? Your fault. It's my fault. Yeah. Really helping him slow down. And what we say here at Dove House, play that tape all the way through. He has to learn and lean on his own understanding. And if I know that today I make a decision to eat unhealthy and I'm trying to lose weight, well, guess what?

    - Wendy Noe

    If I eat unhealthy, I'm going to gain weight. If someone tells me, Wendy, don't eat that, one, it's condescending because I'm a grown adult. I don't need you to tell me what to do. But if I do it, it's because then I'm not owning that decision. Someone own that decision for me. And so it really, you know, he he's a grown man. And the women that we serve, they're grown women. I am not their parent.

    - Wendy Noe

    I can help them lead them to a place of understanding and help them think for themselves. And that's what we do, is teaching them, helping their brain to mature. It's it's very similar to raising my daughters. You're going to make decisions when I'm not around. What you have to do is think about the consequences with those decisions, whether they're positive or negative. How do you want to live your life? Are you going to go to a party and drink alcohol?

    - Wendy Noe

    Would you do that in front of me? And if you make a choice to do so, how will that benefit you? I will help you in the long run. Ultimately, you're going to have to make those decisions. So it's really providing them with the tools that they need to make healthy lifestyle choices for them.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Right. Something that I hear sometimes from support people who are walking with people with addiction is that sense of social taboo, of personal failing. It affects both the addicted individual, but also their support systems. Because what I've heard from some support people, as they said, you know, it's it's something I don't feel like I can ask for help with or talk because I'm also judge, you know, what did I do wrong that my child or my partner is dealing with substance abuse, that there's this extension of the shame narrative that goes even to the support people who are seeking help.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Did you find that to be true within your own story, or is that something that you also hear for support people?

    - Wendy Noe

    I guess it's not it wasn't really part of my story because, you know, I. I think. I don't know, I think I've been very careful about who I invite into my world, and I think because I had people around me that understood substance use disorder that I was in a place unlike what a lot of other people experience. I had I had a built in support system through my job. Right. They got it. They knew it.

    - Wendy Noe

    They didn't judge me. If anything, maybe it allowed me some street cred because, you know, they call you ignore me because you've never experienced a recovery yourself. And yet when I tell share with my clients that, like, this is the walk I've walked and this is the world in which I live and my get it, you know, it allows some different level of credibility.

    - Wendy Noe

    But I do think and it's the same with people that that suffer from the disease, is that fear of judgment? It's the same with those family members is again, we've looked at this as a personal failure. And so people don't talk about it because. Yeah, how how will people look at me? They're shocked or they're surprised and they don't share their story. I mean, I have people that are donors that don't share that or that are volunteers that have a personal history with addiction or a family member, and yet they won't share that knowledge publicly.

    - Wendy Noe

    But they feel a calling to help, hmm. And so I think as we continue to break down the walls and stigma around substance use disorder, we can we can really shape the outcomes of how we help those individuals suffer from it.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah, I'm struck that you have sat in the room with many people who are walking their stories. You mentioned some earlier in the podcast. You know, their parents disowned them. The what are as this is

    - Liesel Mertes

    One aim of this podcast is to help people be able to avoid some of the minefields that are response patterns. What would you say are some of the worst things, like whatever you do, just avoid saying this kind of stuff to someone who is in the midst of an addiction struggle?

    - Wendy Noe

    You know, it's a fine line because you don't want it, you don't want to enable bad behaviors. You know, I think.

    - Wendy Noe

    I think I think the worst thing we can do is isolate a person from love and isolate them. So if you use again, I will never speak to you again or you are not welcome in my home. I mean, you certainly have to put boundaries up and put boundaries in place. I think when we attack their character, it's the worst thing we can do because, again, it's it's it's a disease. They're not making this personal choice. I mean, we always say that this the addiction is a monster in your brain.

    - Wendy Noe

    And if you open the door to that monster, he's going to be in that door all the way open. And it's really hard to get him out of the room once you've invited him in. So I think that, too, to dis. To disconnect a person from their family, they won't reach out for help when they need it because they've been booted from it before, so they're not going to go back.

    - Wendy Noe

    I mean, if you are kicked when you're down, are you going to reach your hand back out to that same person who you know you're not because you don't want to be reinjured.

    - Wendy Noe

    I think that would be probably my greatest advice now with the understanding that we we can't give them money, you know, we can't give them the financial support or inviting them into our home. We certainly have to lay boundaries and put things in place, but. I think we still need to be present and available.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah, but the flip side of that question, what are some of the best or most helpful general principles in helping someone who is struggling with addiction?

    - Wendy Noe

    Well, obviously, I think the person that needs I think a person struggling with addiction needs to understand and be educated about the resources that are out there. We can't do it on our own. And I think they need treatment. And I'm not a big fan of just, you know, detoxing and then they can come home that such that such treatment is getting the the chemicals out of their body. But it's a treatment. They need long term.

    - Wendy Noe

    They need long term treatment. But the big thing is that it has to be that individual's choice. So I can I can force you into treatment. But if you don't go there willingly, you're not going to stay. So we really have to say I'll help you with this, but ultimately has to be your choice. I'm willing to to to call I'm willing to pay for two weeks. But this is all this is all I'm willing to do.

    - Wendy Noe

    It has to be up to you. And that's what I learned even with my brother. He I told him that he had to go to the first treatment program and then he left. But then he I kept the door open to him and he came back and said, OK, Wendy, I'm ready to try this again. Can you help me? And that time it stuck. And today he's three years sober from heroin. But it was a it was a personal choice.

    - Wendy Noe

    I don't absolve him from bad behaviors. I don't enable bad behaviors. When I feel like that side of him is creeping up. I don't, I don't entertain it. I don't entertain oh, woe is me behaviors. And he knows that about me. But he made choices and we can have conversations. But ultimately it was his choice to get sober and to do the hard work.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah. Was that, was that movement into treatment or the decision to go. We talked about some of the family unit dynamics. Did that get messy or were you did you feel fairly aligned with your mom and your sister?

    - Wendy Noe

    Very much aligned. My mom trusted me to make the I mean, I think at that point she really said, you do what you need to do. I trust you to help save his life. And she really backed off when I told her, don't give him money. Don't do this. If you want to buy a pack of cigarettes, then buy him a pack of cigarettes. But but stop doing this. She did. And that helped a lot because she trusted me and really walked alongside me and my sister as well.

    - Wendy Noe

    I mean, my sister and I are exceptionally close and, you know, is even educating her on on how to help him. And I think the fact that he was a united front, he couldn't play my mom. He couldn't weasel his way into things. You know, it helped him because he knew he couldn't he he he couldn't do the things that he'd done in the past.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Right. Speaking of best practices and ways to be helpful, what were some of the ways that your support system was most helpful to you as you were going through the ups and downs of your brother being in treatment?

    - Wendy Noe

    For me, you know, the people that I didn't work with that didn't understand addiction, never passed judgment, and they always were just there for me to listen because, you know, you have to put on a certain front around your family when you're figuring this out.

    - Wendy Noe

    But, you know, I could let my guard down with my people and knew that I was loved and listened and understood and maybe they didn't have the advice and that was OK because I wasn't looking for advice. I just needed to vent and have a support system that when I needed it, they held me up.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah. For people listening right now, some people might be thinking, I don't know anyone who is dealing with addiction issues, I'm sure that I don't that my life doesn't touch anyone who's been affected. I think oftentimes were unaware of the scope of the problem.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Do you have any, like, numbers or ways of conveying? I also imagine that covid potentially has kicked up a number of addiction issues as people are dealing with a lot more depression. They're stuck at home. They're looking to numb or dull all kinds of pains. What does it look like in Indiana or nationwide as to numbers of people who are dealing with addiction issues?

    - Wendy Noe

    Addiction is a huge issue. It's a lot more prevalent than people would realize. And I think the chances are that everyone would know someone that is dealing with a disease of substance use disorder. I can't tell you what the number is at the moment because, again, that's a self reported number. We think it's much more prevalent than even what the data would say.

    - Wendy Noe

    What we do know that in the world of covid right now, that overdoses are up by 80 some percent compared to this time last year and overdose deaths are up by 40 percent compared to this time last year.

    - Wendy Noe

    So we are we have been dealing with a crisis with with the disease of addiction. And again, I think that we can see that because we're talking about it more than we've ever talked about it. And that's because we're seeing so many people affected by it. But it is a it's a huge health crisis that we're living in right now. It's just gigantic. And I don't think, quite honestly, we've seen the worst of it at this point.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Tell me more about that.

    - Wendy Noe

    I think that we are we're seeing the overdose rates and we're seeing the death rate or the overdose and the death rates skyrocketing. But right now, people are getting stimulus checks, they're getting unemployment, and so they're financially managing. I think that when the money runs out, we're going to see a lot more homelessness. We're going to see a lot more need than we've ever seen. I know our numbers are going up just in terms of of requests.

    - Wendy Noe

    Right now, we have 88 women on our waitlist level, which is the most I can remember we ever having.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Wow, yeah, those are huge numbers if people are listening and they think I want to learn more about the Dove House, perhaps I know someone who should go or I want to support the work you guys are doing. Where is the best place for them to go to get more information?

    - Wendy Noe

    The best place to go would be our website doverecoveryhouse.org . We have great information about where our who we are, what we do here, some really great videos and testimonials from clients that have been served through our program. We're also on all social media, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn. We even have a YouTube page and our videos are up there. I do every other week or so. I do just a two minute kind of log called once Wednesdays with Wendy and just highlighting kind of what's been happening at our house.

    - Wendy Noe

    So if you go to our Web Web page, you'll find all the links for our social media channels.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    You can find links to the Dove House and their available resources in the show notes or on the web posting. That way you can learn more and support the good work that Wendy and her team are doing in Indianapolis.

    Here are three key takeaways from my conversation with Wendy…

    Listen and make space for caregivers to share without passing judgment or defaulting to advice.And this is hard, just in life in general. It is so easy to try to fix someone or to shut them down as they are expressing their feelings. Addiction is all too often shrouded in shame and secrecy, and this extends to caregivers as well. If you know someone who, like Wendy, is supporting someone that is living with addiction, do your best to be a safe person for them to share with. Wendy was able to talk with women who were recovering addicts, to hear their stories and get their perspective…and this helped her with her brother.You probably don’t work at a place like the Dove Recovery House, but listening to or reading the perspective of former or current addicts could help you have a more grounded perspective on what it is like for the person you care about to walk with addiction. Many times, people who are struggling with addiction need treatment to combat their addiction.Wendy talked about the common theme of trauma and how just getting chemicals out of someone’s system is not enough. And not all addiction treatment programs are created equal. And I know, we usually only have three take-aways, but I want to add one moreWhat would it mean for you to consider addiction as a disease?As I mentioned at the top of the podcast, this was not the paradigm that I grew up with. Addiction was seen a much more of a choice or a moral failing. How would this affect how you interact with a loved one or a colleague that is struggling? How would it affect how you show up with resources and care?

    OUTRO

    Find out more about the Dove Recovery House at https://doverecoveryhouse.org

  • - Tara VanderWoude

    That has been so supportive of me, is just knowing that I'm not in it alone, not alone individually, but then not even alone as as a Korean American, as an Asian-American, but that there are others cross ethnic, cross racial who who care about this and who want to learn, grow and who want to take action when necessary toward toward the this hatred and this anti Asian sentiment of this past year plus.

    INTRO

    Anti-Asian hate crimes have skyrocketed over the last year. There have been disturbing stories of violent attacks on California street corners, accusation from the highest levels of government, and, last week, a devastating slaughter in Atlanta, Georgia.

    How do we talk about the painful experience of Asian Americans living in the United States? Does their story even get told? What does it mean to create space to hear from your Asian friends or coworkers? What are ways that you are subtly discounting their experience and creating a forced culture of silence? It is vital that we make space to listen, grieve, and create meaningful societal change in partnership with Asian Americans.

    My guest today is Tara VanderWoude. Tara is a Korean-American. She is a social worker, advocate, and educator. As an adoptee, she writes and speaks often about the complexity of adoption as well as the Asian American experience. She is married to a Dutch man who was her high school sweetheart and they have adopted two children from South Korea. She is also a founding board member of Korean-Focus Indiana. She speaks with power, insight, and eloquence about her experiences as an Asian American woman.

    As always, I like for you to know my guests as people as well. Tara is an educator who is really excited about the coming break.

    - Liesel Mertes

    What are some of your favorite things to do in central Indiana? You will not be going anywhere for spring break. What will you do to enjoy the time there?

    - Tara VanderWoude

    So my favorite time of day are the mornings. And so for me, I work full time outside of the home on a schedule, a school schedule. So you can imagine I have to be out the door decently early. So in central Indiana, in my own home, I will just be thrilled to wake up and to be able to stay at home during my favorite part of the day. Whether that means a slow morning, whether that means just being in my home and being able to cook and clean and do my dishes, connect with my kids, one of whom will be on spring break next week, I will just be really, really pleased to do that.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    As simple as it sounds, I love being home. And, you know, we do a lot of walking and a lot of running and a lot of outside backyard front porch. So during covid times, that's kind of where we find ourselves, you know.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Do you have a favorite breakfast that accompany your favorite time of day? Like, is it wrapped with food at all or a cup of coffee?

    - Liesel Mertes

    Because I'm also a morning lover and if I'm talking about mornings, breakfast has to be woven somewhere in is my favorite meal.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    Yes, it's funny you ask, that is an important part of my life. So coffee and I am very fortunate. My husband does not drink coffee, but every single morning he brings me coffee in bed. I know every day of the week, of the month of the year. So definitely starting with some coffee and then I eat a little bit later. But when I'm at school, I can not have this. But when I am home, I do have this breakfast I wake and it is sauteed brussel sprouts with a couple of eggs and some pickled onions.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    And this this dip that I get at Costco, it sounds very eclectic, but I just really like it. And I eat it many days of the week.

    - Liesel Mertes

    That sounds actually very tasty. I like the pickled onions as well being thrown in with that.

    - Liesel Mertes

    I have read some of your bio, but would you give me just like a ten thousand foot view of your vocational trajectory, some of the things you've done and been involved with?

    - Tara VanderWoude

    Sure, sure. So after college, I spent a very short time as a medical social worker and I worked at a large hospital in Michigan. Did that just for a little bit before my husband and I moved.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    I then went and worked for Healthy Families of Indiana. And so I did a home based services and actually worked in three quite rural counties, which was a very new experience for me. Working in the rural world did that for a bit and then I moved into some gerontology work.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    It was also home based and we just really aimed to keep individuals safe at home. And then from there, I found myself in the world of adoption and worked as an adoption social worker for several years. Did that help families throughout the process of adopting?

    - Tara VanderWoude

    And then from there, let's see, what did I do? I started some independent consulting and some education on post adoption issues as it relates to race, adoption and identity.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    And then I also found myself working for the school to make my kids attend and currently am working as an assistant dean of students at a at a lower school and elementary school.

    - Liesel Mertes

    I have so many questions that we could delve into, but with limited four by the time of one episode. And so we've had some some prior episodes where people have talked as adoptive parents. We've got that perspective. But I would love to hear more. And there's so much in our current events, like in this immediate week in March of twenty twenty one, where with this horrible killing in Atlanta and just frankly, the rhetoric of the last year under the Trump administration with covid that I imagine it has been particularly difficult to be an Asian-American woman.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Could you tell me a little bit about what the events of just even the the Atlanta shooting, what that how you received that in your person, in your body? What was that like for you to be

    - Tara VanderWoude

    Sure. Sure. You are absolutely right. It's it's been an interesting ride both this past week and a half since since the shooting in Atlanta and then really this last year, like you mentioned, of just some anti Asian sentiment and some hatred that has really been highlighted this past year during the pandemic, a lot of scapegoating and blaming and violence toward toward Asian-Americans, toward people who look like me.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    And then I think as an adopted person who was raised by two white parents, you can only imagine that that adds an entirely other level of complexity and of missed connections, so to speak, because I am living this experience that my that my adoptive parents, that my greater extended family and community are not are not experiencing.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    When I think about Atlanta, you know, I actually had a friend, a friend who lives in D.C., someone who's very invested in racial justice and equity work, and she's an African-American female. And we talk about these topics regularly. She sent me a text on Tuesday night, the evening of the shooting in Atlanta. I already had put my phone to bed, so to speak, and I had not seen it.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    But I woke up

    - Tara VanderWoude

    and I saw that text and I clicked on the link to the news coverage. And then I was up. Right. You can imagine it's 2:00 in the morning. And I saw that. And I just thought, oh, no, I had already been reading about some physical violence and even murders of Asian Americans that really has been happening throughout the pandemic.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    And then to read about this, the shooting at three different locations that this that this man that he thought to these three different businesses, I was up for a few hours and just fell asleep for a very short time before I had to be at school.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    And I just I just felt a heaviness. And when I woke up, I, I didn't exactly know what what to expect, but I checked the news again and throughout that day, checked in on a lot of my Asian friends.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    And likewise, I had some Asian friends reaching out to me just, hey, whoa, how are you? And kind of taking in that news that that was the first kind of twenty four hours, so to speak, for for me and really before I left for school to mentioning it to both of my kids who are currently 12 and 14.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    Obviously my older my older child has more access at school, at high school, to the Internet throughout the day and news sources. So I knew that it would come up and I wanted to be the person that told them about this. And because we have been building in on this conversation of race and racial matters and racism toward Asian-Americans and others, it was just another conversation and really made me grateful for for the previous conversations and work that we had done really within our family just to create this atmosphere where we can talk about such topics.

    - Liesel Mertes

    There's a lot that for white members of majority culture that we are just beginning to read and discuss more about, about the lived experience of Asian-Americans, our news cycle is highlighting some of those things. I think it's a really important conversation to engage in. If you were making generalizations and saying, I wish that the majority culture could understand this aspect about what it is to be Asian-American right now, what are some of the things that come to mind?

    - Tara VanderWoude

    OK, ok, sure. Yeah. When I when I think about that, you know, I feel like so often the Asian-American experience gets lost. Like I said, you know, in this in this racialized society that we that we all enjoy. And so I I think that there's a number of things, a number of things come come to mind. But it's almost as if we're invisible on one hand. Right. Because when we have conversations about race relations, it is a black white conversation often.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    And, you know, my own daughter once just said, are we black? Like, I just wear black, right. Because she very, very seldom would hear anyone mention Asian or would hear anyone mention Latino. So she's trying to figure this out. We're not even in the room when you don't even say that we're here. And so what? What does that do? And it's almost I don't want to say it's neglect that's too strong of a word, but it does do something to your psyche.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    And in some ways, it's like, all right, keep your head down more. Don't say anything. Don't rock the boat. This isn't about us. So that kind of comes comes to mind.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    And then another thing that comes to mind is you've probably maybe read that people just assume that Asians are very white adjacent, so to speak, that we're closer to white and so other perhaps racial groups, they perceive us perhaps in that way. And what's interesting is that I feel like we're never quite white enough, so to speak, whatever that means, and then we're never black enough or of color enough, so to speak, as well.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    And so I think perhaps different groups perceive us differently based on perhaps what is what is comfortable for them or maybe what is you know, they point out the differences in us, so to speak. So.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    You know, the Asian American history is rich and complex and nuanced, and I have not even done enough work and reading in that area, but just the little that I've started to just self teach myself. That's another another point is in our US history, we don't talk a lot about the Asian American experience, so to speak.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    We don't talk a lot about, you know, that the eighteen hundreds and we don't talk a lot about the different legislation. We don't talk a lot about the exclusion of of different people groups when it comes to some of the different ethnic groups of of Asia. So hopefully that's helpful.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    When when you think of our experiences, it's that of for me speaking for myself, it's of where do I fit in when I'm not even mentioned? And then it is can I even speak out? Because I've been told often that how dare you speak about your hardships or your your racialized experiences because so-and-so has it worse.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    I very much remember a conversation with an extended family member and I was just sharing some really hurtful things. We saw that happen to me because of my skin color and, you know, you know what empathy is. And a person just looked at me and it's like, well, you're not black, so you should be thankful.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    And I just that's very I remember where I was sitting when this conversation happened, and here I am pouring out something very hateful that happened to me. And to have it completely like it doesn't matter because someone else has it worse. Yeah. And that, I think is a is a regular occurrence as well for for Asian-Americans. Certainly the model minority stereotype doesn't help that in which Asians perhaps are perceived as these hardworking individuals that achieve and everything comes well to them and their income is higher, et cetera.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    So I hope that's helpful. So that kind of comes to mind when you when you ask that very much.

    - Liesel Mertes

    How have you experienced some of that silencing or needing to go underground or just slights based on being Asian-American within your work in social spheres?

    - Tara VanderWoude

    Yeah, you know, I think some of the silencing simply comes from the fact that are we even in the room if we're not being mentioned? I trained it to be a CASA, a court appointed special guardian for kids who are in foster care. And I just remember being in that training room and one of the judges came in and it was a room of individuals who had identify as black, African-American or white. And then there was me and I just remember him saying, we're all gathered here together.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    Isn't it so great, black and white. And he just went on and it's again, one of those moments like, am I in the room? Does my experience matter? And so that comes to mind. And I think every time that that happens, it does in some way kind of chip away at the entitlement to be part of the conversation when it comes to our racialized society.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    And I, I do I hear the sleights about being smart and being good at math and playing the violin, and it's just not funny. And I think people think they're being humorous. But there is this deep seated, there's some deep seated beliefs about who we are as Asian-Americans.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    And of course, you know, you've heard of the term micro aggressions. And so as those daily slights and insults come out, that that kind of treat me as if I'm inferior or that I'm other. If it happened once, that's one thing. Right. But when you continue, like they say, to get a papercut after papercut in the same place, that cumulative effect, what does it do?

    - Tara VanderWoude

    And I think all of that kind of contributes to me perhaps not wanting to raise my hand and put my own experience out there. And I think I've learned with whom I can do that and with whom I cannot, based perhaps on their previous previous ways of receiving me or dismissing me. I yeah, we all have that felt safety with certain people. And when it comes to racial matters, time and experiences have have informed who I go to when when I'm hurting about something related to to race.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yes. I want to want to press more into that.

    - Liesel Mertes

    I you know, as you were sharing a gave me a moment of reflection, even two sessions that I have led where I will talk about the experiences of black and brown Americans and how they're being highlighted right now. And I realize the implicit exclusion there.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And I I think, at least in my own mind, as I consider it, I think, well, I feel like yellow is a very offensive sort of a term, you know, and not descriptive. What sort of language when people are talking about the the Asian experience, you know, is it is is to say the experience of Asian-American like, do do we want to steer away from any sort of descriptor about skin color? Because I imagine there's a lot of offensive baggage.

    - Liesel Mertes

    How how have conversations about color felt toward you when they felt best? Like how have people referenced the Asian experience? Sure, sure.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    I think one of it is just when they mentioned that we are a part of the human population, when it's not simply a black white conversation and they're willing to talk about those who might be indigenous or who are Latino or who are Asian, it is OK to name those things because actually, yes, we do exist. And I know on one hand people are thinking, well, we can't possibly mention every group and we'll exclude someone. And I have grace for people.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    So it's not that I'm watching and policing every word, it's more that it's this cumulative norm of way of talking about our racialized society. So. Yeah, yellow, you know, I don't I don't know many Asians who like to be called yellow and and really, like you mentioned to me before this call, the continent of Asia is quite vast and it has upwards of 50 different countries and ethnicities. And so we think of we think of just the vast array of the hue of one's skin.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    And that's just I think that kind of goes into this social construction of race in which, you know, White became legalized, so to speak.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    So conversations about color, about race, so, so complicated. I feel like, because I know, too, that when we come to the table to talk about it, that different people at the table are using words and descriptors and language and operating with different definitions of such so much that we don't have the shared vocabulary or understanding even among families sometimes or even among colleagues.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    So it's it's it's it's complicated.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Well, but exactly what you said, I mean, just when to take that away, the acknowledgement that our story needs space in the room, the proverbial room and exactly what you said.

    - Liesel Mertes

    I mean, Asia is huge. You know, even the term Asian-American is reducing a very complex reality of your lumping together someone from the Philippines with someone from China. And those are very different lived experiences.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    We will return, in just a moment, to Tara and her insights. Which have been so, so good. But I want to take a moment to acknowledge our sponsor, Handle with Care Consulting. Employee care is essential to every area of your business, and it is really complex this year. Are you doing what you can to keep your people engaged? Are you helping them build the skills to navigate tough conversations, avoid offense, and build a more equitable culture of care for all people? If you don’t know, let Handle with Care Consulting help. With keynote offerings, certificate programs, and executive coaching, we help you live out empathy and care when it matters most.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah, you mentioned friends or colleagues that, you know, they're safe people to be able to go to and express. What are some of the things that they are doing? Well, they let you know that they are safe people.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    Sure. So, you know, I could start this in a number of different ways. But throughout my life, I have had experiences of hatred, discrimination, verbal assaults. I've had those experiences as it relates to me being Asian, being Korean, American. And so, you know, when you're close friends with someone, you want to share those things that hurt you or those things that stop you in your tracks. And so I think you quickly learn that when you share something, the way that that person responds, it tells you a lot.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    And so there are some people who want to quickly dismiss and make it all better because it's uncomfortable for them. Perhaps it could be uncomfortable for them because they don't know how to respond. And I get that a lot of us struggle with how to respond to people who are in crisis or people who are hurting. Some people are uncomfortable with it because maybe they don't think that I should be as upset about it as I am. And they think, you know, we've come a long ways.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    Would you rather live in the 1900s, you know, so be thankful. I think some people are uncomfortable with it because they maybe have thought some of those very things that I'm now bringing to their attention as being hurtful to me so I can I can kind of read the level of someone's comfort and entering into my pain with me or staying with me and being curious to ask questions that help me understand, help them understand.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    And then I know that when I bring things to some people, they just laugh because they don't know what else to say or do.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    And then there are people that I tell them these things and they say, well, that must really hurt or that sounds really hard. Or they say, you know what, I don't even know what to say, but I know that that was wrong and I love you and they just name it, validate my experience. They don't make an excuse for the person or the incident that's happened and they go there with me. And so I think that's just very it's just the skills of having empathy and being really being willing to be with someone in their pain or to bear witness to someone's experiences, even if it's uncomfortable for you as a friend or as the here.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    And so even now, this past week, different friends have extended themselves so beautifully. And, you know, there's a friend that comes to mind and she just said, I don't know how exactly to be the friend that you need right now, but I want to and I want to learn more. And I love you. And that's meaningful because she's not afraid to name that some of this is her internal. I don't even know and. Yeah, I just that's kind of what comes to mind when I think of when I think of those those friends,

    - Tara VanderWoude

    You know, this past week there was one colleague who just she had known I had had some great sleep. And some of it is just due to this heaviness. And some of my Asian friends that were in contact quite a bit more this week checking in on each other. And I've had some friends who've experienced some some racial hatred. And so as I carry that with them, it obviously affects me emotionally. And one colleague, I think, just heard me say I haven't gotten much sleep and I found a Starbucks card in my inbox the next morning. And it was just like, you know what, when you need your next caffeine, it's on me.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    That was extremely meaningful to me. A five dollar gift card. Wow. It's just that you thought of me last week. Friday, I came home and it was it turned out to be an interesting evening. And I came home. I was so excited to be home from the week. And there were flowers on my table that had been delivered and it just said to a beautiful family. And that's that's all it said. And again, that was really that was really meaningful.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    And just people even texting. I know that it can be on one hand, it can be exhausting because you feel like you have to respond to all of them. And I think some of that's on me. I just need to let myself off the hook because I know they don't all expect a response. Right. But just people just saying, hey, I'm thinking of you. I imagine it might have been a hard week for you and that the news is quite much.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    And so I'm thinking about you and I care about you. That's that's that's really meaningful to me.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Those are beautiful expressions and thank you for the time and reflection, you know, even as you as you described some of the ways that people miss you. I was reminded of some of the language that I use in some of my my trainings, you know, like, oh, that's that's a Buck-Up Bobby.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Sort of a response floating through or that's a that's a Cheer-Up Cheryl who just so ready for you to look on the bright side or the Joking Julie who just wants to make, you know, a joke or try to get through that uncomfortable moment. And it sounds like you have had encounters with many of those types and probably more as you've gone through this.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And, you know, I hear I hear also the the beauty of intention when it comes to empathy, you know, even even if you don't know exactly what to say.

    - Liesel Mertes

    There are always, you know, gestures of things you can do. Also, you know, a note to Starbucks card flowers. They're so meaningful. Yeah. Yeah.

    - Liesel Mertes

    What are some of the most hurtful things that have come your way, either in work settings or social circles?

    - Tara VanderWoude

    Sure. So, you know, being an Asian and predominantly white and or black majority areas, I feel like I'm often seen as the other. And people are just not used to seeing my face. They're just not used to seeing Asians were a small sample size, so to speak.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    And so I, I receive I receive comments from people of various races and various ethnic groups. Some of the most hurtful things I think have to do with the erasure that I talked of, the just the dismissal and the erasure of of our experience.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    And then I talked about I talk about this sometimes on my some of the consulting and education I do for for adoption, race and identity. But when you're raising an Asian female in particular, there is this objectification and exotic vacation of Asians, females, and at least I know it's uncomfortable to talk about, but I feel like it's vital, especially in light of the events of last week in Atlanta, but that it happened early on for me in high school, just starting to receive comments from men regarding who I am as as a female, but more importantly, as an Asian female.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    And so different comments about that are very uncomfortable from strangers and then also from from people that might be in my in my neighborhood or in my circle, a community. I remember some uncomfortable conversations with with someone that I would see regularly and he would comment on my body. And I'm sure that's why you would decided to adopt so you could just keep that body and then not wanting ever to be in his presence. I remember being in a social setting and someone saying, hey, you know, a guy saying to me, hey, can you bring all your sisters along with you?

    - Tara VanderWoude

    We want all of your sisters to be here, too, because he assumed I had I had many, many Korean beauties. Right. To take with me to offer to him. So comments like that. And then there have been some situations I've been followed out of places before. Men follow me and ask me if I work at a massage parlor, ask me if I do nails, tell me that I have a body as they use a description.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    Men, a man, I should say. Told me I look like someone in his porn magazines. That was my actually my awakening back when I was a teenager, a man coming up to me and saying that to me. And you can imagine even back then, the Internet was not what it is now. Right. So he's talking about his his paper magazines.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    And then there have been a few times in which some men have exposed themselves to me and have and I was with my kids when that happened.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    And so a lot of them really would have to do with without being particularly in Asian female, I think about safety because of the comments and even such actions that that I've experienced. And it's so interesting because you're just going about your day like you're just going about your day. And just like that, it's like it's hijacked from you.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    You know, I remember going for a run with my daughter and she was on her scooter. We're having so much fun together and a man starts screaming things out at me.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    And then he had to stop at the stoplight. And I knew that if we kept running that we would be there right next to him. And so taking my daughter and hiding behind a building with her downtown just so he could not see us and her knowing that something was up and her just hugging me and just saying it's going to be OK, you know? And I I said to her that man, just what he said to us and how he's looking at us, it's just not OK.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    And she and I had already started this conversation, but her kind of comforting me in that moment, you know, as a mother, that's that's both a beautiful thing and really a tragic thing, too, when our kids are confronted with with some of the ugliness, like I said, a beautiful thing and something that she was empowered to do, I think. But also this tragic loss of of that that say safety in that moment.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    So that's what comes to mind when I think of the really harmful and hurtful experiences that I've that I've had.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah. Thank you for giving voice to that. It's so it's so ugly and angering.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    Yeah, it it is. And, you know, my kids have experienced it now and they've been called covid and coronavirus and they've been screamed at to go back to China. My son had an experience in which it was a whole group of people screaming at him and he thought it could get physical and just trying to talk with him and process with him how he should respond, what he wants to say versus what he should say if he's thinking about his personal safety. It's a lot to kind of.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    To talk through, because there's so many different scenarios and then just that that feeling of, wow, we shouldn't have to do this, we shouldn't have to walk through all of these scenarios in order to come out emotionally intact and physically intact. But that is the experience that we have.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    And most recently, right before the shooting, my son was spit at by a stranger. And I, I that was really and it still is a really hard one for me. Obviously, he's had those verbal experiences. But just for him to to explain to me what I got off my bike, I had to make sure that I didn't have any spit on me. And he had just bought, like, a can of soda or something with a buddy somewhere. And I had to make sure it wasn't on my drink. And that's just awful to experience as a mother. Yes, I know that physically he came home in one piece, but the degrading nature of such an act and then to know that your kid got that a million times over, I would rather that person spit at me.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    But that that's been a hard one. And then also then for people, on the other hand, to be saying Asians have everything great crazy rich Asians, you know, you don't have it as bad as this group. So those experiences of having them and then people maybe not believing you, that's tough.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Mhm. Yeah. Well and I imagine that the toll that that can take in your body and your psyche when you feel like there's this mountain, you know, stress and horror and especially embodying it, you know, as a mother and then, and then feeling like I don't I don't even have a socially, you know, sanctioned outlet to give voice to this. I imagine I could feel very disempowering.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    Yeah, and you know what's interesting is, you know, I hadn't shared verbally with many people that most recent experience with my son because when you speak it into existence, it's just it's going through it all over again.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    And what's so fascinating, too, and I'm sure you know this, but there's so much embarrassment and shame that has even come from that experience. For me, even though I did nothing wrong, my son did nothing wrong. But just having to even share that you were the recipient of something like that, for whatever reason, it's it's just really hard. I know it doesn't mean that we are weak or that we did something wrong. But I think to kind of what we've been talking about throughout this conversation is when we do need to share it with someone, because I did share it with some of his parents, his friends, parents, as an FYI, because I know they'll be spending time together riding bikes.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    I know that I'll have to also, so to speak, manage other people's responses to me sharing that, and so that can also feel like another task, so to speak. And I'll say that all of his friends, parents were great. And I've learned to kind of how to share things and to even say, you know what, I'm not in a place where I can talk about this much more. But I did want you to know this particular incident happens.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    And I wanted to provide that context since our kids are buddies. And that's what I did in this this incident just over over a text because sharing it, speaking it it's it's been it's tough.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah. That makes me think of something that. Some some of my black colleagues have given voice to, which is to say it's hard enough to live the experience, then I'm asked to interpret it and educate people who are well-meaning. You know, I have to, like, go deeply into it. And I'm struck, you know, in a sideways way. That is part of what you're even doing and being a guest on this podcast. So I am grateful for that.

    - Liesel Mertes

    How have you do you feel that pressure sometimes socially, to to not only live through the experience, but then have to educate and inform people and contextualize the experience on their behalf?

    - Tara VanderWoude

    Sure. You know, it's interesting what you said, that the the interpreting that you have to do. Yes. When I share, you know, sometimes I get this pushback. Are you sure that's what they meant or what was he wearing or how old was he or this or that? And I understand so much that people want to create a framework for their own understanding. At the same time. The impact of that can be, I don't believe you or you have to prove yourself or you really have to give me every detail so I can say, yep, that was a bad thing that they didn't.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    You and I want to be real clear and knowing I know that that might not be people's intention, but just seeing the difference between the impact of their questions and maybe what their intention was.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    So there is that piece and then there is this piece of I get requests all the time of what should I read or where should I go or what would be my next book that I should read. And on one hand, I totally get it. I've devoted some of my life to this, to this education and consulting.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    And so when we're in a relationship and we're friends, I don't mind doing that at all because that's what friends do. We share our gifts. We share. You know, when you're my safe person and we have this relationship, we share with one another when it's a situation in which maybe we don't have that intimate of a relationship or you're just looking to me for for that knowledge and for me to do the work for you. Yes, it can feel it can feel like pressure.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    And, you know, I joke around at some of the education sessions I do about really making sure that you you don't expect that people of color are your learning libraries, that you can just check in and out as you wish for your for your good. And is is it at all a reciprocal relationship or are you just just expecting that person to do the work for you? And, you know, you've probably heard this and said this maybe yourself, but we do live in 2021 and we have Google and we have an extensive there are resources.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    Now, you have really no reason that you can't perhaps find yourself a book to read,

    - Liesel Mertes

    Maybe an article or a podcast or video simply they've been curated with whatever medium of choice, you know,

    - Tara VanderWoude

    So many curated lists that I my head's even spinning because there so much out there.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    So on one hand, I get it. And again, I don't want to attribute wrong intention. And I am glad whenever someone wants to learn and reaches out and I will help. But yes, if you can also maybe be mindful of that when we do this. Yes, it takes our time. And then sometimes when we're sharing situations, it might also be an emotional toll on us to relive the experience that we are sharing with you, to relive it, to answer the questions.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    And again, I want to be talking about some of these things. But let's let's make sure that we check the relationship that we have with that person. Do we have the right, even, so to speak, to ask such personal, intimate questions? Or are we expecting that simply because we expect that person to be the educator without without that intimate friendship already in place?

    - Liesel Mertes

    Well, and what I hear throughout, you know, throughout those reflections is just the importance of paying attention to the humanity of the person that you're interacting with in a social context. You know, I talk about just radical attention to someone who's gone through something hard and even just concentrating on the social cues and actually thinking like what what impact could my words have? You were describing some of the the questions and the barrage. That's a type I talk about Interrogating Edward, who, you know, at their best, they they like getting to the bottom of things and they're great at research and understanding, and that's a high value.

    - Liesel Mertes

    But when that's deployed in a social situation where you're just tone deaf to the emotion of the person in front of you and you're just focused on learning or getting to the bottom of things like. Rarely feels good to the person on the receiving end of it, you know, they feel like they're being dissected by that person instead of paid attention to in that moment and how it feels.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    Yeah, I love that Interrogating Edward. I'm afraid that, you know of any of those Cheer-Up Cheryls and all of those that you just just shared throughout our conversation.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    I might lean toward being an Interrogating Edward myself. So I'm glad I have a name for that.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And, frankly, the more I teach the stuff, like when, you know, over the course of now, almost three years, I began and I was like, I'm just a few of these types. Like, I tend to be a Fix-It Frank or a Commiserating Candace, but the more I teach it, I'm like, oh, I can go to all of these trouble when under stress I can speak in multiple tongues of empathy misses, especially when I'm under my own stress.

    - Liesel Mertes

    So it's just the importance of attention.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Wow. I don't care if I want to be cognizant of your time.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Is there anything that you would like to add that I didn't ask you?

    - Tara VanderWoude

    I don't know that there is anything that that I that I want to add other than, you know, knowing that we have the support of other people who are not Asian during this time, that is really, really meaningful as well. That other people will talk about it will call out the hate depending on if you're a social media user or if you're someone who uses it regularly.

    - Tara VanderWoude

    Is this going to be part of what you're talking about online? Obviously, there are some people who don't step foot online. And so we would I wouldn't expect that of that person. But if you're an avid social media user and you use that to talk about the things that matter to you, are you willing to incorporate this?

    - Tara VanderWoude

    Are you willing to send that text to your friends, to the to the people that you know, to say, hey, I imagine it could have been a hard week that has been that has been so supportive of me, is just knowing that I'm not in it alone, not alone individually, but then not even alone as as a Korean American, as an Asian-American, but that there are others cross ethnic, cross racial who who care about this and who want to learn, grow and who want to take action when necessary toward toward the this hatred and this anti Asian sentiment of this past year plus.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Thank you. That's really good.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    Here are three key take-aways from my conversation with Tara.

    The Asian American experience is all too often overlooked and underacknowledged.How is your language compounding this sense of exclusion? As you talk about equity in the workplace and in culture, are you remembering to include the marginalization of Asian Americans? This was a personal take-away for me and I am going to be adjusting my language, moving forwards, to incorporate the Asian experience when I talk about excluded groups. It really is THAT bad.If you are a member of a majority White culture, you have probably had the privilege of not thinking about the Asian American experience. As I listened to Tara, to the MANY stories she had of sexual predation and harassment, to the stories of threat and humiliation that her children have experienced, I realize there is so much going on that I have no idea about…and that is in addition to the awful violence populating our news page. Tara encouraged us, if you have a social media presence where you talk about things you care about, give voice to this reality. Help build awareness that Anti-Asian hate is not OK. I have linked resources in the show notes because remember, the Internet has a TON of helpful resources and you should not make your Asian friend the equivalent of a good Google search. As a friend or coworker, work to pay radical attention to your Asian friend or colleague as they express feelings of pain.Allow them to express their feelings without forcing them to justify them (like an Interrogating Edward). Send a text, or a Starbucks card. And if you don’t know what to say, that is OK too. You can say something like, “I don’t even know what to say, but I want you to know that I hate this for you and I am here with you.”

    OUTRO

    Resources

    Stop AAPI Hate: The center tracks and responds to incident of hate, violence, harassment, discrimination, shunning, and child bullying against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the United States. https://stopaapihate.org/about/

    Anti-Asian Violence Resources: https://anti-asianviolenceresources.carrd.co

  • Jon Tesser

    Do I have value? Do I have skills? Am I ever going to get a job again? Is am I worthy? Am I worthy? I mean, it gets down to this idea of shame and worthiness. It gets really deep, right? This idea that I'm not worthy because I don't have a job.

    INTRO In today’s episode, we are talking about the trauma of lay-offs. And this is a rich conversation. We are going to talk about how to fire someone with empathy, what it looks (and sounds like) when employers pile on the shame, and the emotional PTSD that can occur when you lose your job. We are talking male expectations, class differences, and how lay-offs can actually make us better, more empathetic people.

    My guest is Jon Tesser. Jon is a husband, the father of two boys, and he doesn’t have much time for hobbies these days.

    - Jon Tesser

    I'm a dad with two kids home during the pandemic. I watch them all the time. So hobbies don't really come by. Most of the stuff that I do for mastery is just ways to relax. So I'll play like an online video game on my iPod and try and master that. But is that something that I care to talk too much about or that I think is interesting?

    - Jon Tesser

    Not necessarily. It's something that I do so that I can maintain a sense of sanity in a world where I'm constantly bombarded by people. Stimuli is the way that I put it. So, I mean, mastery for me is is is this it's this idea of human to human interaction and how can I how can I handle that? And what does it mean? And what is my place in the world? That's actually what I do for fun.

    Jon is a student and translator of human interaction. His LinkedIn account has thousands of followers and his daily posts generate lots and lots of likes and comments. - Liesel Mertes

    You you share on LinkedIn, you share on Medium. How would you define the content that you share?

    - Jon Tesser

    Oh, it's a I have a great way of describing it, it's my crazy thoughts vomited onto a piece of paper essentially is what I say it is. I'm like, I'm thinking something and I have to write it down. And for some crazy reason, I also have to share it with the public, which includes my one hundred seven thousand followers on LinkedIn and on my blog.

    - Jon Tesser

    And depending on what the content is and how I describe what it is, is it's just my thoughts and subjective opinions about the world and how I feel within my place, within that world.

    - Jon Tesser

    So, for instance, I just put out a post that said, you know what, being in the spotlight in social media and interacting with people has made me paranoid because I believe that no matter that, that who's the next person who's going to trash me?

    - Jon Tesser

    Right. I literally just put a post out about that. And I said very candidly, I'm actually quite paranoid that if I talk to somebody, they're going to be the next one who's going to spew some hate. Right. And this is actually coloring the way that I chat with people and has put me on guard.

    - Jon Tesser

    It's content like that you don't see very often on on on social media where I'm putting it out there about how I feel. And you may or may not respond well to it, but I'm not putting a sheen of code over it. Right. It is. It's purely how I feel. And there's that's that's what I think people connect to.

    Jon is also a career whisperer for early processionals, helping them grow in self-awareness and clarify next steps in their vocational journey. This capacity for insight and care is borne out of living through some really hard stuff. In the language that I use in my consulting, Jon has lived through disruptive life events.

    - Jon Tesser

    I think the biggest disruptive life event was getting laid off three times within a period of five years while having children daycare to pay for a mortgage to pay for. That was a real sort of critical moment where I needed to essentially redefine my identity.

    - Jon Tesser

    Life had been fairly easy up until that point. I'd done all the right things. I got my MBA, I bought a house, I got married, I had the right careers.

    - Jon Tesser

    I was making a lot of money and everything was very easy and very upper middle class. And I never really had major adversity in my life. When you get an MBA, you go to MBA school, you are trained to believe that your career is your life, that your identity is wrapped up in what you do and how much money you make and the things that you buy.

    - Jon Tesser

    And this was this was my my idea, right, Liesel? That that life was about, you know, career and finding meaning in work and treating that as what you're supposed to do in life and the disruptive major event where all of that could be taken away and it's literally a snap of fingers and say, nope, that's that's your livelihood taken away and not just your livelihood, but your identity and your self-esteem that really that forced me to become the person that I am today, which is someone who has sort of decided that careers and companies are temporary and are not something to get wrapped up in.

    - Jon Tesser

    That's a lot of where my content on LinkedIn was forged because of these. I don't want to call it PTSD, but in some ways it is. There is some traumatic stress disorder that comes from losing your livelihood so often in such a short period of time.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Can I can I ask you a little bit more about that? What what surprised you about the emotional journey in the path of getting off?

    - Liesel Mertes

    I think the shows like that, there's a lot of emotions that underpin, like the receiving of the news, all of the logistics. So I'd love to hear more about that.

    - Jon Tesser

    I think it's the shock that I could actually lose my job, that I was considered to not be valuable enough to stay at a company. I mean, you're talking to someone in me who's always been a star performer. It's always outperformed at every job I had. And then all of a sudden I'm being told by a company that you're not a star performer. In fact, you're not even useful here. You're not like this is this is the self-esteem hit, right?

    - Jon Tesser

    When you think of yourself as one way as the person who's needed. Right. As the person who's always succeeded because they're so smart and they're so ambitious and they're so hard working that they make things happen.

    - Jon Tesser

    And all of a sudden, when you are told that you don't matter, that you don't exist here, that the work you do isn't needed and that your livelihood is now taken away, you're not making money, you're forced to reassess. This idea is like, am I valuable?

    Right. These are the you talk about the emotional process. What am I do I have value? Do I have skills? Am I ever going to get a job again? Is am I worthy? Am I worthy? I mean, it gets down to this idea of shame and worthiness. It gets really deep, right? This idea that I'm not worthy because I don't have a job. And we're told in America that if you don't have a job, you're a loser, you're you're a pariah.

    - Jon Tesser

    You're not you're not a good person. Right. And we we the unemployed in this country, they they they internalize this. And a lot of ways because our culture says that you are where you work. And so, again, a lot of great things came out of this, which for me was to reject the societal understanding that we are where we work. To me, that is literally no longer the case. I am not tied into my identity at work.

    - Jon Tesser

    Work is a place where I do something that I am quite capable of doing and I get paid money to do it. Otherwise I'm living my life. And if they take away like if I get if I get laid off right, then my identity is not wrapped up in my job. So it's not that big a deal. Right. I'm going to get laid off and that just means that I'm just not making money now. So all I need to do now that I've been laid off is go find a way to make money.

    - Jon Tesser

    It becomes much more of a practical thing when. You when you use you disorient yourself away from your identity, being your job and your title and the number of people who report to you and your place in the hierarchy to a job is a place I earn money, which is essentially my mantra right now, and something that I try and teach to the younger generation as well.

    - Liesel Mertes

    As you as you say that, you know, until the arc of that story I'm struck, that there was, as you noted, some of this loss of.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Identity, in some ways, the questioning of who am I? I'm struck that in many companies, especially Pre-COVID, we're spending more time with our co-workers of our waking hours than we are at home. What was it like? Did you feel like you had lost a significant community of people in getting laid off? Like was that part of some of the sense of loss?

    - Jon Tesser

    It's interesting you say that because ever since I started getting laid off so often, I would become friendly with people at work. But it was never I. Maybe there it's really interesting that you mention this. There might have been a guardedness for me to get too close to people because I didn't want to create that community because I knew that it was is temporary. Right. So I never really felt too much like I lost that sense of community because I put the guard off and didn't allow it to be created.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah, I can I can think of a friend and colleague of mine, and I was listening to her speak recently and she had gotten laid off and hired back into a much larger company. And she said, you know, for me in the past, I've always been like the community builder. You know, I want to talk. I want to hear from people. And she said, I don't know if I'll ever be that way again. I'm just so happy to walk in and clock out.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And I'm just tired and I don't even know. It's not even a question of right or wrong. As much as I hear how that could happen for her. And I hear dynamics of that in your story,

    - Jon Tesser

    It's literally the same for me to me, even at my job. Now, I've created a bit of separation between myself and my coworkers, not on purpose just because for me, work is work. It's not a place where I meet people to be friends with and to get to know them outside of work. It's a place for me to work with them as colleagues to clock out and then live my life outside of that with my friends, family and others.

    - Jon Tesser

    So I absolutely identify with that idea that creating this community at work is is not worth it for me. And it's not something that I seek out because again, then you're tying more of your identity into your job. So there's there's a sense of defensiveness and protection that happens when you when you are in this situation so often where you just start to think that this is going to be temporary and there's no there's no real reason to build up these sort of more intimate bonds with the people that you're surrounded by.

    - Liesel Mertes

    I am. That sounds so understandable, and I can imagine a number of listeners are relating to that, I'd like to I'd like to just kind of like peer under the edges of that statement a little bit more, because on the one hand, I really like the emphasis of you're much more than your job clocking in and clocking out. I think there is something that, you know, I and others are trying to build right now in talking about things like empathy at work to say we want work actually to be a more human place where people could expect that they could have some level of support, a resonance that we're not just the jobs that we do.

    - Liesel Mertes

    How does a statement like that sit with you if you as you think about, you know, how you're kind of poised to engage with work right now, saying you get less?

    - Jon Tesser

    Yeah, where I come when you make a statement like that is this is not going to surprise you at all, it sounds to me a bit Pollyanna ish that we can create a workplace of empathy. To me, there's workplaces. Our God is going to sound so awful, but it does feel this way. They're their war zones and a lot of ways because the goal of the goal of the workplace isn't to excel. The goal of the workplace is to make sure that you wake up every day and you have a paycheck so that your kids don't go hungry or you have a roof over your head.

    - Jon Tesser

    When you think of it in that stripped down manner, it becomes like if you think about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, work can even fulfill safety. You don't feel safe in that way. And this could just be me and my PTSD speaking. But if you don't feel safe in an environment, then how are you going to use a job to self actualize? You have to be safe before you can come to before you can use mature human emotions such as wisdom, empathy and compassion.

    - Jon Tesser

    There's and it's almost impossible to feel safe knowing that your head is on the chopping block every day. The wrong move means you're gone. Right. And so then if you think that way, how are you going to be able to empathize, empathize with people and create a nurturing environment in a workplace that's literally like, I win, you lose and you get cut out and I get the promotion. How do you bring in mature human emotions when most workplaces operate in this fashion?

    - Liesel Mertes

    Right. Well, and, you know, it's never about judging someone else's experience, I hear how that perspective is really congruent with what you've experienced, you know, and that uncertainty and that feeling of being disposable and not being safe. And I agree with that. If there is not a sense of safety, it's it's difficult to bring more than just survival instincts to the workplace. And it's interesting for that, because that is something that oftentimes I hear people from less privileged communities at work talking about, like women in the workplace can feel that way because of marginalization or people from racialized communities, especially saying, you know, I'm not safe.

    - Liesel Mertes

    So, yeah, that's that's in line with what I think a number of people are articulating and definitely what I'm wanting to help do and help skill people up to say, from the top down, what does it mean to actually prioritize safety and care and not just have that be things on your website or a cheap catchphrases, but actually things that you embed in your policies and your procedures and your daily interactions?

    - Jon Tesser

    It's tough, right? Because at the end of the day, the employer and your boss can fire you. And that is a sector that's always sitting over your head. Right. And so, again, like it's it's a philosophical debate. But knowing that, is it really possible to bring those really those true emotions to a place where you are disposable at will? It's in your contract. It's called at will employment. Right. The employer can do whatever they want.

    - Jon Tesser

    And there are very few protections in the US for workers in the private sphere. You know, it's not like you have tenure at a university or that you're working in a government job where you have certain levels of safety. Or my wife, for instance, who works for the Board of Education and has a union, these people are protected. So you can bring in some of those work environments, more things like empathy. But when you're in the private sphere and it's it's all about, you know, am I being seen as somebody who's productive?

    - Jon Tesser

    And if I'm not being seen as somebody who's productive, I'm basically on the chopping block. It's really hard to get out of that survival mechanism.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    We will return to Jon’s interview in just a moment. But first, I want to take a moment to recognize our sponsor: Handle with Care Consulting. Employee engagement matters. And especially in the midst of COVID, disruptive life events and compassion fatigue are taking their toll. We can help you create a culture of not only safety but care. Through keynotes, coaching, and certificate programs, let’s build empathy at work, together.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    - Liesel Mertes

    I talk with employers about even to the point of when you let someone go, there is a more or less empathetic way of engaging in that process. Does that statement, as you reflect on being let go three different times? Do you think this company did it better? This one was worse.

    - Jon Tesser

    Like, ah, there there was definitely there is definitely better and worse. Well, we wish them well.

    - Jon Tesser

    Two of them were absolute nightmares. One and one of them I actually talked about on LinkedIn. And it was probably the most terrifying post I ever put out. And it was one of the most awful experiences one could go through. The person who laid me off from one of the companies told me specifically to my face that I was the wrong person for the job and that when they asked everybody around my company whether I was worth keeping on board or added any value, no one stood up for me.

    - Jon Tesser

    And he told me this as I was getting laid off to my face. And it was first of

    - Liesel Mertes

    Talk about the shame and judgment.

    - Jon Tesser

    Yeah. So he's bringing the she's bringing the shame and judgment to the forefront and saying you should be ashamed and judged and you are you are useless and you are worthless and you don't belong here. And I'm going to make sure you know that and I'm going to make sure that you leave here. You're done. Yeah. And it was and all for no reason.

    - Jon Tesser

    And that was handled absolutely terribly. The first time I got laid off was very similar. The person sat me down and said, you haven't been performing here. You're you're gone, essentially. And I was shocked by that. But, yeah, those situations were absolutely horrible. Third time was at a larger company and it was handled fairly well. This is a company that lays people all the time and it's in media entertainment.

    - Jon Tesser

    They had a clear process in mind. They made it. It was very I didn't feel alone. I think that day there, like 30 percent of the workforce was laid off. So I felt like I was part of a people who were getting laid off. The the the severance package was extremely generous. And so I wasn't too upset by it. I kind of saw it coming. Right. Like, when you're getting laid off so often, you're always see it coming. But this one, I actually kind of saw it coming.

    - Jon Tesser

    So it wasn't it wasn't so it was bad, but it was it was actually the third one was the moment where I was like I literally said to myself, I am done working because any job I'm going to get is just a ticking time bomb for when they're going to. Right. And yet it was at that moment where I was really pursuing my own business and doing getting my own independent consulting so that if I lost something, it was going to be on me, it wasn't going to be on a company.

    - Jon Tesser

    And so I went through that process after the third layoffs.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah, I hear that one you you you've used the phrase a few times, but just some of that PTSD of thinking. Yeah, what's the impending sense of danger that is now feels implicit in what I do? I, I imagine, you know, it's hard it's hard for anyone to be laid off. There are still like prevailing social narratives about what a man needs to be a man with a family, a man as a breadwinner.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Did you feel like you're suddenly thrown on like reckoning with those narratives internally in ways that felt hard or even from external people? Did you have people in your community who kind of amped up the pressure with some of those narratives?

    - Jon Tesser

    Yeah, I mean, it's a good question, those those prevailing narratives of the man as the breadwinner, the man who earns the money, the man takes care of the house, are still ingrained in me, even though as much as I want to deny them, they're still there.

    - Jon Tesser

    It's still my responsibility to have a job that makes enough money so that everybody can eat. Right. And so I've always put that pressure on myself. Now that you mention it, it's more explicit that it exists. And so when you lose the job, you lose that role and you lose the value that you think you have in society. I think it's a very accurate statement to say that men are expected to be, quote unquote, breadwinners. And when they are not breadwinners, what is their value?

    - Jon Tesser

    This is a huge societal problem in the US, particularly among lower class and lower middle class men who are finding themselves out of work more and more. But it's still prevalent with folks like myself.

    - Jon Tesser

    Now, what makes it harder and I'm not saying I feel bad for myself, but what makes it harder for the sort of upper middle class, well educated folks like myself is that you're expected to be working right, that you're expected and you're surrounded by everybody in your community who is working and who does have a job and who is successful and is who is supporting their family.

    - Jon Tesser

    And when you're laid off and you're one of me, you don't feel like you fit into that community. So there's a lot of dynamics here. And you can probably have an entire conversation just about societal expectations around this. But, yeah, for sure it does. It does wear on you. Yeah,

    - Liesel Mertes

    What were what were some of the most helpful things, whether it was within your professional network or your personal network that people did to come alongside you in the aftermath of these layoffs?

    - Jon Tesser

    Oh, that's a great question. It was really the individual people. I have a very close friend from college who was really there for me the first time I got laid off. And I would just go over and hang out at her house with her baby at the time and just feel connected to people, really get out and be around people and talk and interact like a normal person. Obviously, this was not during the pandemic. So you could do things like that.

    - Jon Tesser

    Having those people who supported you through that and who were made sure that they were there and set up the time to listen to you and talk to those people. Well, I'll keep around for life. As I said in a post recently, when you go through stuff, you find out who your real friends are. And each time I was laid off, I definitely found out who my real friends are, the ones who are going to be there when the chips are down.

    - Jon Tesser

    It's one of the positive things about getting laid off is really knowing that you have to rely on people. You can't be doing it yourself and finding those people you can rely on and realize that they're there for you is very it's one of the triumphs of the human spirit. Honestly.

    - Liesel Mertes

    It sounds like there were those people who showed up. Were there any people that you would have expected to show up and be supportive? That faded into the background?

    - Jon Tesser

    It was always the bosses that were surprising. The people who I had reported to just were not there universally across all three jobs. People that I have reported into kind of shirked away from their responsibility to help out. And I think that gets back to this idea of empathy, empathetic layoffs. Right. I believe that it's your duty as a manager to make sure that if somebody is laid off, you do your damnedest to help them land back on their feet.

    - Jon Tesser

    That's the least that you can do to help them, because they're a human being, deserves dignity and deserve support. Those people who did not have my back during those situations, I hate to say it, but I haven't forgotten that. And it's not something that you raise because you expect a boss to be there for you to make sure that you're going to land on your feet. And in none of my situations where they there.

    - Jon Tesser

    So is there a sense of bitterness? No, I think there's more of a sense of a little bit of sadness around that truth that people who you would expect to be there for you aren't. But it's definitely was the case that I did expect some sort of help or put me in touch with their network, this that they just didn't want to do it.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah, as you as you look back, you know, and not that it's the person who has not been supported their responsibility, but as you reflect on it, you did a couple of times what what would have really meant something to you from those bosses? Like what would you have hoped for?

    - Jon Tesser

    John, here's a group of people I'd like you to talk to, I'm going to make some introductions. I think that that would be really well fit for for talking to them, getting to know them. I know how good you are, John, and your job, your super valuable. And I think that by talking to these people, you'll show your value. Do you see what's done there? Do you see what happens there?

    - Jon Tesser

    That's what I did for my analysts when she was laid off and this post went viral. I don't show off much on LinkedIn, but this was kind of a show off post where I had a laid off analyst and I got her a job right away. And I introduced her to my network and I made sure that it happened and I made sure to introduce her as the best analyst that ever worked for me. Right.

    - Jon Tesser

    So I took the lessons that I learned from my bosses and said, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to support my employees, how they need to be supported. It comes back to the idea of an empathetic workplace. Right. So just being just knowing that they that your boss can say can vouch for what you do and repair your dignity would mean a lot.

    - Jon Tesser

    It's not a very big thing that you're asking for a little bit of recognition as a human who's worthy and somebody who needs a little bit of help.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Well, and what you're saying has alignment with what I've experienced, as I have done as I've gone in and done communication coaching for downsizing with companies, which is that the people who are doing the reduction in force or the layoffs, that the whole event is its own workplace trauma for everyone involved.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And that doesn't mean that it affects people with the same degree of like force all the way through. But for the people who are doing it, I, I sense this like very prevailing sentiment. Oftentimes they just want to get past it like they hate they don't want to have to fire people. They don't want to have to have this and they just want to like put it, you know, in the rearview mirror and be thinking about the next thing, the next way they can reduce, you know, the next strategic goal and how that disconnect.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah, it can really be painful both for those who are laid off and also for their coworkers who might be fearful for their own job loss or missing their coworkers. And when the posture of management and leadership is just like we just want to move on and pretend like this never happened, it really does widespread damage.

    - Jon Tesser

    Yeah. Yeah, I agree.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Did did anyone say or do anything that was immensely unhelpful that you would say like when somebody who's gotten laid off like this is just dumb?Don't do or say this.

    - Jon Tesser

    I mean, I think I walked you through an example earlier come to mind. No, it really is.

    - Jon Tesser

    It is this idea that you don't add fuel to the fire, that it's already a shameful enough activity, that you don't have to then say and you suck to there. You don't have to remind somebody of that. I think that this idea of empathy and understanding that somebody's going through a traumatic life, events such as this doesn't need to be piled on in any way.

    - Jon Tesser

    And it's not something that you'll ever forget. Right. Like these are indelible moments that are imprinted in my mind that I recall them so clearly because they are trauma events. And you don't want to add to that. You're probably not thinking of that as you're laying somebody off, that you're creating an indelible trauma moment. It's not like your thought process, but you are healing and you're handling of that is is is crucial and critical to this person being able to recover.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Hmm, yeah. Is there anything else, John, that you would like to say about? The disruption of getting laid off that I didn't get a chance to you, yeah,

    - Jon Tesser

    I mean, I do want to talk. You know, we've talked mostly about the negatives, and I don't want everybody here to, like, run away because it's such a negative conversation. But I think the positives out of this is the incredible adversity and the ability to deal with adversity.

    - Jon Tesser

    And resilience, and that leads to the cultivation of mature human traits, right? If I hadn't been laid off three times in five years and been treated so poorly, would I have had the wherewithal to treat my employees so well when she got laid off? Probably not. Right, I would not have thought of it that way, I would have been like, well, she's gone like whatever she's got to deal with it, right? It would have been very like like it's on her very unsympathetic and very non emotional intelligence derives.

    - Jon Tesser

    but I think because of this experience, I have a preternatural empathy to understand the experience of the jobless rate. And so the positive that's come out of it is this.

    - Jon Tesser

    I've created an entire community on LinkedIn around being supportive of people who are scared and anxious and insecure in their job situation. And I'm that person who offers them a bright, optimistic support mechanism. That's an incredible positive thing that's come out of it, that's come out of the adversity of this.

    - Jon Tesser

    You know what I'm saying? Where, like, I wouldn't have had that if I hadn't dealt with these traumatic events. And if you hear the way that I'm talking about it, I was forced to come to a reckoning on my identity and who I am as a person. And I've come out as a better person because of it.

    - Jon Tesser

    And I think a lot of people who've been laid off would agree with that statement that as you get over the hump, as you deal with the adversity and as you become more resilient, you become a better person because of it.

    - Jon Tesser

    And I would definitely agree with that statement. I like who I am now more than I was, more than I like who I was prior to getting laid off.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah. Yeah, I appreciate that, and I think that that's true, it's not that it's not that hard things always lead to resiliency or an increased capacity, but they can be that invitation. If you go through the work to getting to that point, I, I recognize that there is an element of choosing and work to bring that spirit of positivity and not just trauma.

    - Liesel Mertes

    What are some of the things that were important for you to do or engage in in the aftermath of your third firing?

    - Jon Tesser

    Yeah, it's a it's the best question you can ask. The coping mechanisms are to allow yourself to feel what you feel as one thing and then to also say to yourself, you know, how much of this unhealthy feeling can I deal with? So I'm going to get real. I'm going to get real vulnerable here for a second. I've been I'm not I don't have clinical depression, but I did have situational depression for obvious reasons. So each time I would get laid off, I'd be like, OK, you know what?

    - Jon Tesser

    I don't want to feel so anxious and sad and not able to deal with my situation. I'm going to go on antidepressants, right. To deal with the temporary situation I'm on here so that I can have a clear head for interviews and get a job. Right. It's these kinds of coping mechanisms that that you learn about and that help you get through through the situations. Right.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Well, thank you for sharing that, because, yeah, it's it is it's own trauma and to be able to take the steps to purposefully rebuild, sometimes feeling your feelings feels really crappy. What did you do when those moments of feeling, your feelings just felt overwhelming?

    - Jon Tesser

    I had drugs and I'm not talking about opiate or cocaine. I'm talking about antianxiety antidepressants. If things got to be too overwhelming, I dealt with it and I said, you know what? I'm not strong enough to deal with this. This is too traumatic. This has happened too much. I need to take things to help me physically deal with this because I life what life just dealt me too much and life wins, right? It's like you that is not a sign of weakness is actually a sign of strength to say I need something to help me.

    - Jon Tesser

    I'm going to I'm not going to be ashamed to do it, do it because I need it, because this is a situation way too much for my humans, for me as a human being to to deal with. So I'm going to take those things that can help and realize that it's temporary. Yeah.

    - Liesel Mertes

    I know that you are a man who also makes space for meditation and contemplation, was that part of some of that recent train journey as well at that time?

    - Jon Tesser

    Yeah, absolutely. You know, taking walks to clear your head, being outside, seeing people, like I mentioned, a very an intense meditation practice was also very important. I believe at those times that I was laid off, I would do one half hour in the morning and one half hour at night of of breath meditation to really, really center and just try and deal with the fact that the emotions and the thoughts are coming at you in ways that are hard to deal with.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Right. Well, John, thank you for sharing with listeners today and today's podcast. I know that you also share regularly on some of your channels of influence if people want to hear more from you, where the best places to find you.

    - Jon Tesser

    Sure. Search for me on LinkedIn. I'm under https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-tesser- even though I call myself Jon here. And if you want to read a little bit more of the content, that's probably closer to the stuff that we talked about here on the podcast. I do have a blog as well. It's mahler101.medium.com Möller, and they are one to one medium dot com. And that's where I offer sort of more of my or deeper meditations on things and on life. Those are the two areas where you can really learn a lot about me if you're so inclined.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    Here are three key take-aways from my conversation with Jon

    Lay-offs are a life trauma for the men and women that are being let go.As an employer, consider how you can have these conversations with care, eliminating unnecessary shame on top of the transition. Do you have a clear plan? A severance package? As a boss, can you use your network to help someone find their next role? And, consider this a point 1b. There is an emotional toll to how you do layoffs. Jon is a man who wants to be empathetic, but he has found himself less and less willing to give of himself, in a deep way, to his working environment. Are your policies and practices towards lay-off contributing to this workplace disconnect? Because it will affect both those that leave as well as those that stay. And creativity and collaboration can suffer when people are more guarded and less connected at work. The cost of the trauma is high. Medications can help in the process of coping with loss.Jon tells how going on anti-depressants was an essential part of navigating his job loss. You can get more information and resources from your doctor. “When you go through stuff, you find out who your real friends are.”Jon found great comfort in relying on those around him. The friends that invited him over to play with their baby, the friends that were just available to talk. If you know someone who has been laid off, make that call, send that text or email. Your support matters. And finally, as a bonus take-away.Remember, you are not your work. You are who you are and work is what you do. This is deep wisdom for all of us.

    OUTRO

  • Jill Harding

    Whenever I share those stories, people like you look so, so optimistic and you're so bubbly on life with what you've been through. And I said because at the end of the day, my kiddos fortunate, they have taught me a lot about life in ways that I don't know if we didn't go through those experiences, one, I could have taught them as a parent. And secondly, I learned a lot by their endurance, resilience and what they all went through.

    INTRO

    Sometimes in life, one disruptive life event falls fast on the heels of another. This can be hard in your personal life…but it can feel especially devastating when the pain affects your children. And that is what we are going to be talking about today. My guest is Jill Harding. She is many things, which I will tell you more about in a second, but she has parented two children through some really hard stuff. Her oldest child, Grant, was diagnosed with leukemia and her middle child, Berkley, had a life-threatening bout of E.coli. You will get a behind the scenes look at the challenges and even joy along the journey and learn how to be a better manager, coworker, or friend to people living through similar situations.

    Jill lives with her husband and three children in small-town Indiana, in Morgantown. She has known her husband since the mid-90s and they always said that they would never live in Morgantown or own minivan or live in a log cabin. But things change.

    Jill Harding

    We live in a little town which we love and adore Morgantown. But I laugh when people ask that question because my husband and I have known each other since the late 90s and we always said no log cabin, no minivan and no Morgantown. And guess what?

    Jill Harding

    We have a minivan and we live in Morgantown and we pass a log cabin to get to our house every day just on the irony of those early and that we don't even think of at our place like it's perfect.

    Liesel Mertes

    All of the cup holders, the door is right, minivan, they're great.

    Jill Harding

    And I love it. You go out and you're grabbing food on the go and they ask you if you need a cup holder. I'm like, Are you kidding me? I got a million in here.

    Jill is a marketer, a high school basketball coach, an entrepreneur, and a small business owner. She is raising three children with her husband. And when it snows, Jill and her family love to ski and would do it all day, every day if she had the chance.

    Liesel Mertes

    When you and I realize at this stage of life, it can be a precious commodity, especially with COVID. But when you have time to yourself, do you have any hobbies or like ways that you really like to fill your discretionary time?

    Jill Harding

    And we do and I actually my husband and I, we like to just chill out and we have a pretty heavily wooded area that we live in. So we just like to take hikes. And and I like to do them by myself or my husband or even the kiddos. But I really feel like that just rejuvenates all of us.

    Jill is also an avid reader; she loves books on leadership and entrepreneurship, but she also makes time for other genres.

    Jill Harding

    And then I also my son is a huge, huge, avid reader, breaking school records, even with his reading accounts while he was in elementary. So he and I kind of share books, too, with his love for reading. In The Land of Stories is a new book series that we started getting into. So reading is another obsession of ours.

    Liesel Mertes

    Ada, my eldest, loves Land of Stories and I know what that is like. It's its own kind of distinct pleasure.

    Liesel Mertes

    I also love to read but a track with one's children. And so Ada and I are just reading together right now.

    Liesel Mertes

    Oh, it's it's a keeper of the Lost Cities, which is a fantasy sort of romp into the land of elves, ogres, et cetera, et cetera, that it's like they're big like 350 page books and there's like eight in the series.

    Liesel Mertes

    So I was reading far too much heavy non-fiction and I took a divergence over the last month and a half. And now just reading elves now at see that.

    Jill Harding

    But I fact that you can talk about it like my sons always like where are you at in the book? And, you know, I asked him the same thing and it's cool to kind of chit chat back and forth on where we're at and live that dream happy together for sure.

    Liesel Mertes

    Well, and I also resonate with I, I feel like I say often that our family is everybody's at their best when we're like outside in the woods.

    Liesel Mertes

    Sometimes it can be a battle to get there with fussing, but it's always so I don't have any gloves or, you know, what have you. What an amazing. But once we get out there, it's so amazing.

    Jill Harding

    We're fortunate to we have a little creek that runs in the bottom of our woods. And just to sit there, I mean, obviously right now it's kind of cold and frozen, but it's still cool just to watch it because, you know, natural beauty for sure.

    Liesel Mertes

    There's something about the just the movement of water and what it brings also, which is its own goodness.

    Liesel Mertes

    Well, you know, children and life with children. That's some of what brings us to this conversation. And I know that you have familiarity with the good people and staff at Riley Hospital, much like I do within my own story.

    Liesel Mertes

    What brought you to Riley when you were pregnant with your second child?

    Jill Harding

    So basically our journey with our son, Grant, he I was telling you before he actually was diagnosed with leukemia at the age of two and a half, and originally our pediatrician was, you know, just running bloodwork, doing this on the other.

    Jill Harding

    And at one point, I guess that that motherly instinct just kicked in and like, no, this isn't good enough. I feel like I know my son. Yes, Grant was our first child, but I feel like I know that this son well enough to know something's just not right.

    Jill Harding

    So I push back to the pediatrician probably more aggressively than they were expecting and just said we get a fine results today because I can't see my son in suffering any longer and they won't ask him,

    Liesel Mertes

    What were you in, what sorts of symptoms was he manifesting?

    Jill Harding

    Yeah, so it was shortly after Christmas and he would not even he got a train table. And if anyone's been around toddlers, two year old toddlers, once they start walking, they don't stop. They run in the raster and they're crazier than ever. And he got to a point where he got a train table for Christmas and he wouldn't even stand up to play at the train table at a little over two. And I was like, someone just doesn't make sense.

    Grant continued to languish. He got strep throat. There were misdiagnoses by the team of pediatricians. No meaningful answers. Which was when the doctors send Grant to Riley Children’s Hospital in the state capitol, Indianapolis. This was mid-January in 2013. Grant was put on the 7th floor for infectious disease.

    Jill Harding

    They said we're going to not let you guys leave until we figure out what it is. And we were OK with that because as you mentioned, I was pregnant with our second child.

    Jill Harding

    So we're like, OK, we're going to figure this out because. Obviously, our son means the world to us, and so we stayed there for a couple of days. This was the twenty second, twenty fifth they finally figured out what was going on. And we were so fortunate at the time because the chief of basically the leukemia society are basically our doctor.

    Jill Harding

    He was actually the one that was there doing rounds that day that was diagnosed, which is really mind blowing if you think about it, because Dr. Thallon was actually there and he's the chief and he was one doing rounds.

    Jill Harding

    And he's the one that came in such a compassionate, humble doctor. I mean, more so than I think I've ever been around in my entire life. But he just came in, let us have our moments. He did a spinal tap right in the room with us just to confirm that we were dealing with leukemia, because then once you determine it's leukemia, there's various different types of leukemia that you can have.

    Jill Harding

    And in this case, Grant had what they call HLL, which is if you're going to have the leukemia at two and a half, it was best that he had the HLL as opposed to the AML. So we were fortunate there in that regards. You see a silver lining. It was hard at the time, of course, but once we found that out, then we basically, you know, had a moment. They moved us to the fifth floor and treatment started.

    Jill Harding

    And it was, again, pretty amazing that we had the chief there within the hospital setting that new leukemia very well and was able to walk us through the steps and such a truly compassionate individual. And he had grandchildren himself. So he had kids, my and David's age, which was nice because he knew how to talk to us and help cope with the situation.

    Liesel Mertes

    Well, and as I hear you say in those parts of the story, I feel like it's helpful just to to color around the edges, because there are a couple of things that are going on, right. Like you're seven months pregnant. Also, you guys are not from Indianapolis, but you're in Indianapolis, you know, doing tests at Riley. Are you guys staying at the Ronald McDonald House? Are you in a nearby hotel? Because there's this painful thing that happens with your young child that they're suddenly in the hospital and you're having to recalibrate life to be able to be present. What was that stress like for you guys?

    Jill Harding

    Yeah, that's actually a great question, because we are so fortunate to have family and friends that just basically helped us, people that just came out the woodworks really just to really help be a support system. We actually have a daycare and we our youngest still goes to that daycare today that we have a daycare where they just were showered us with love and ways to support us, to help us with our other just home and just things at home that we need to help with.

    Jill Harding

    And my parents and David's parents both live close by to so grandparents, two sets of grandparents living close by. But thankfully, it's about a forty five minute drive for us. We basically, again, being very pregnant, it was uncomfortable, I'll forget that.

    Jill Harding

    But it still was worth every moment to stay there with great Dave and I. Basically, I was considered basically I was a freelancer at the time and so I had my own business. So flexibility and that I mean, if I had a computer, I could pretty much do my work anywhere.

    Jill Harding

    So that was nice. And then David worked for Indiana Farm Bureau insurance and they were extremely flexible with him working remote. So Dave and I kind of know how to work remote before our even what we're going to do current day is we were able to basically just be there.

    Jill Harding

    We had our computers and thankfully I was still pregnant with our middle child. So it was just Dave and myself and Grant. So we basically just lived in that hospital. They kept us just in the actual in his floor on the fifth floor.

    Jill Harding

    We didn't have to access the Ronald McDonald House other than like sometimes we would go just to get a break from the hospital room itself, take turns and so forth, and utilize the services that they do provide, like meals and so forth that they do provide through that service. And we also have since then paid it back a little, too, just because we know the importance of families who are driving in much more than what we are.

    Liesel Mertes

    Yeah, I remember as as we have gotten care at Riley, just even sitting close by to a Check-In desk and, you know, like, where are you coming from today?

    Liesel Mertes

    And people being like Louisville, all of which is a regional hub of people coming from all over.

    Jill Harding

    Yeah. And we were actually I mean. Forty five minutes. It was it's not a big deal to us, honestly, because we were so fortunate that we had in the care and we would drive farther if we had to. But we're used to driving a half hour really pretty much anywhere. So ready for that we do so.

    Liesel Mertes

    And it was so treatment begins for leukemia. How long was he in the hospital? And then when you coming back for continued treatment beyond that initial hospitalization time?

    Jill Harding

    Yeah. So leukemia is one of those. The cure rate is high. Last I knew when we were looking at the numbers, it's ninety four percent. But the same token, it's a pretty long process.

    Grant was placed into a trial program where he would come in for chemotherapy treatments over a course of three years.

    Jill Harding

    So Grant was diagnosed at the age of two and a half. So January of 2013, he was diagnosed. So basically from that January 2013, he basically had three and a half years that we were in and out of Riley during that course of time, and we still actually go to Riley.

    Jill Harding

    We're coming up on so through to have your process pretty aggressive. Aggressive in regards to the chemotherapy. I don't know if you've ever been around anyone that's had it, but to see a young child,

    Jill Harding

    we would laugh because we can laugh about it now because I was very pregnant, right, with my Berkely, my middle child, and I was always hungry.

    Jill Harding

    And then Grant had to be on steroids for 30 days. So he was always really hungry. So we're eating at ungodly hours like 2:00 a.m. He wants chili all of a sudden. But the challenging thing would be on chemotherapy. It kills the good and bad cells. So his body, basically his ANC, which is your ability to fight off infection, was oftentimes next to zero or zero. And so he couldn't need stuff that was leftovers from the night before that we put in refrigerator.

    Jill Harding

    He couldn't eat stuff out in restaurants because it is speck of germ that he could potentially good could cause him to get really sick and can't afford to get sick because his body would have a hard time hearing being sick on top of what he was going through. So I would be out and I tell that story because it makes me laugh now so I could think I was pregnant. I said I would be making chili like two a.m. in the morning and I had to make it from scratch because he could eat with food.

    Liesel Mertes

    Was it was that was that your reality for the duration of the three and a half years of needing to have a certain level of hyper vigilance?

    Jill Harding

    Yes, it definitely was. And I think that we got told and I kudos to our support system and my husband, too, that they were really surprised, the social worker that we dealt with and then obviously his nurses and doctors, that we weren't more hospitalized with Grant, that he was had the fewest hospitalizations with what he was going through because of just our diligence and just awareness when someone we had so many people that wanted to bring us groceries, for instance, and when they would bring us groceries, David and I would be wiping them down with bleach wipes before we even brought it up in the house.

    Jill Harding

    I mean, we were. To a degree, we got such a pretty Cold War, you did, we did, and we always laughed, too, because it was cold, right? It was about this time of year when we were in the thick of it and we laughed because we have we have a big picture window in our dining room. And so we would have all the blinds open and people would come visit Grant through the actual and talk back and forth with walkie talkies to the glass on one side outside.

    Jill Harding

    We'd be on the inside and they so speak to some people would bring over toys and they would bring double the toys again. We'd walk them down with bleach, Grant play with the ones inside and they would be playing the same ones outside. So it was kind of cool. Just some of those things, like you said, we we did just out of we had to get super creative because obviously this is a child. We don't want to take away his childhood.

    Jill Harding

    We have good memories. But this is challenging to go through for him and for us to see him go through it. And I think the beginning to his once we had Berkeley, it was nice because obviously, you know, given the new baby from getting sick was a little easier, too, because she was always in the house with us doing the routine we have with grandma.

    Liesel Mertes

    So you really think as a child, as a baby baby, anyway, I not just the just the innovative kindness of people, you know, coming over with with double the toys and playing, you know, some time has passed as you go back and think about that time I'm struck that you're doing so many things like you're a business person, you are mothering an infant, you're managing the elevated health risks of a child with leukemia.

    Liesel Mertes

    What were some of the what did like a dark day look like for you? What did your feelings of overwhelm like? When would they come up with they catch you off guard?

    Jill Harding

    Yeah, because, again, Grant was our first child, right, so we didn't know, we still don't know where does parenting right. You just kind of learn as you go along. This is the knack of being a parent. But I think the moment when it was challenging the most is, you know, having Berkeley, having a brand new baby, baby infant, trying to nurse her and do all the right things that, you know, the pressures of just raising a child and then making sure that I give her the attention needed, even though she's she still has needs and attention that she needs.

    Jill Harding

    Right. From a mother and father, but not letting that distract from even our care from Grant. I feel like sometimes it was kind of that emotional head game that we played because we know Grant needs extra special attention. We had to make sure we got medicines a certain time. We had doctors appointments on a regular basis, balancing those elements that we know him well, but yet not neglecting or not giving the attention that Berkely needed as a young baby.

    Jill Harding

    I think those things then obviously sleep deprived from it all.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    Back to Jill’s story in a moment, because there is still so much more ahead. But I want to take a moment to thank our sponsor, Handle with Care Consulting. We know that this year is full of all kinds of stress, and it is hard to know if you are giving your people what they need to survive, stabilize, and thrive in this constantly changing environment. In all of the confusion, empathy is the skill that your leaders and your team need to build a thriving culture. And Handle with Care Consulting can help. With keynotes, workshops, and executive coaching options, we give you the tools to put empathy to work.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    Liesel Mertes

    I know within my own story, there's our daughter Mercy died and then it was.

    Liesel Mertes

    Maybe three years later for where we got the news that our son, Moses, had a really profound heart condition, that he was going to need lots of open heart surgeries, all that to say going through one hard thing with your children is not a guarantee that you won't go through other hard things later on down the path. I know that that has congruence with your own story. What happened with E. coli and your family?

    Jill Harding

    When you hit the nail on the head, it's hard and I'm sorry you had to go through that, too, but I know in the end it all happens in places that much stronger when you come out on the other side, whatever that result may be. But so Berkely birthdays is our we call our spitfire. She's always been she's a lot like personality wise. And I tell her sorry a the time like me. So but this same time I think I know it helped her just that.

    Jill Harding

    That sassiness, that determination, that that drive she has even at a young age, so I remember vividly because my husband actually went back to nursing school through everything we've been through with Grandma. And he actually became a nurse roughly three years ago. Just everything that we've been through with our son every time he go to hospital because we were there a lot, as you probably could imagine. My husband is just like, I need to be here. I need to be helping people.

    Jill Harding

    And so my husband, kudos to him getting a nursing degree while having three kids at the time. And now he works at the medical ICU in downtown Indy at University Hospital. Kudos to you as well. To partner.

    Jill Harding

    Oh, yeah. I was the bad guy, so supercooled to see him do that, but with that hope man. So he was working at the hospital. It was crazy because it was Sunday and I was not any Sunday. It was the Indy 500. The biggest tackler in the world was happening on this Sunday in May.

    Jill Harding

    And I, I just tell these details because you got to kind of laugh about it, because if you don't laugh about it, then you cry about it and you don't.

    Jill Harding

    But my son, I was so I was home with three kids by myself, right, and Berkley was five when all this happened and my son comes running into I think I was in the kitchen and he said, Mom, I was like, yes, he's like Berkley just pooped.

    Jill Harding

    I'm like, OK, good for like, did you wash your hands? Right. And he's like, no, you don't understand. I'm like, what are you trying to tell me? Then he goes, There's blood in.

    Jill Harding

    And I think I'm like, no, there's probably not blood in his pocket or something. Right. So I'd let it just go. And I just played it off like that because I was like, you know, Grea does not know that there's blood in there because it would have been the same.

    Jill Harding

    He would have been a, Berkeley's by just being kids. Right. Right.

    Jill Harding

    So I just kind of blew it off and she pooped again. And it's like, Mom, no, I'm not kidding. She's got poop in her blood, our blood in her poop. I'm like, are you sure? So me as a mom, like, OK, I'm going to humor them and go look. And I did. And I was just like, well, Grant, thanks for telling me. And this is the eight a little boy telling me this.

    Jill Harding

    Right. And I was like, thank you, buddy, for telling me. He's like, what does it mean? I'm like, I don't know. So I'm basically trying to get a hold of my husband again. I told you, he is a nurse. So very tough to get a hold of him, especially in a medical ICU.

    Jill is finally able to get a hold of David, who is working his shift. Thankfully, a coworker offers to cover his shift so he can rush to Riley to meet Jill. Jill’s brother came over to be with Grant. And they arrive, back at Riley, which is familiar but surreal.

    Jill Harding

    We actually went to the E.R. and they immediately didn't mess around. They did bloodwork, urine samples, stool samples, everything you can imagine to run tests on her little body. And they they couldn't figure out what was going on. So lo and behold, they it was so deja vu. They put us on the seventh floor infectious disease floor again.

    Jill Harding

    And still, we have no idea what's going on other than we know there's blood in her stool

    Liesel Mertes

    And are you finding yourself, like, completely emotionally flooded right now, like, oh, I did like some some people kind of like detach almost from the situation. Some people are right in it. Like what's going on for you as a mom?

    Jill Harding

    As a mom, I was Dave and I were like we were so distraught because we have a good friend who's an E.R. doc. And as a dissertation, she actually did a full report. And like leukemia and how leukemia, is it hereditary? If you have multiple children, siblings, would they get it? And so we're like just went through this and there's no way. So we're thinking maybe it's leukemia again because of what we were experiencing. Right.

    Jill Harding

    Similar types of experiences. So, I mean, we were just like almost so surreal that I was it wasn't really even overwhelming. It was just like. OK, we got this we've been here before, we got this we're going to be OK. What a good place. Let's just keep asking the right questions. David the nurse now so he knows more questions to ask. At the time I was back at Cook Medical, so I was in the medical device realm.

    Jill Harding

    So I knew there's products to help from a device perspective. So we just need more questions to ask in this scenario than what we did before, because we obviously have been through life a little bit different than what we were expecting.

    Jill Harding

    So anyways, fast forward, we talk to the doctors. They finally said we don't know what's going on. Too much test. They kept us another night like they did with grea type thing. And they finally figured out, OK, she's dealing with E. coli.

    Jill Harding

    So E. coli, there is a 50 percent chance at her age and being female that she can get something called at us, which is hemolytic uremic syndrome. And in layman's terms, that basically means her renals can go into renal failure. Renals are what feed your kidneys, basically. It started making sense because her urine output started going down, so she had no urine for at least 24 hours at this point and she was drinking.

    Jill Harding

    So we know she's got the fluids coming in, but the fluids aren't going out. And her stomach was getting real distended where it just stuck out, you know, just looked at her. She's a really petite, small little lady. So we knew something just wasn't right. And then they finally figured out that,

    Jill Harding

    OK, she's got E. coli. The strain of E. coli she has could potentially cause her to have HUS. So they monitor, monitor and unfortunately, unfortunately, see how you will. They put us on the fifth floor again.

    Jill Harding

    So we're like, wait a second. The floor is leukemia. We know that floor all too well. We've lived for so many days and hours and they're like, well, we put you on that floor because that's also our transplant floor and it's also our floor that we do dialysis if we need to do dialysis.

    Jill Harding

    And then at this point, two more challenges, because we have two children back home. We have an older and a younger siblings of Berkeley at home. I mean, I know they're in good care, but still I mean, they're scared because I don't know what's going on. They got a lot of questions. And if my brother does, too, because he wants to be able to give them answers when they become available.

    So there's well, and I'm free.

    Liesel Mertes

    But that sense of like the limited resources of yourself as a parent to like you physically can't be in two places at once. Yeah, definitely.

    Jill Harding

    And I know, Grant, I mean, obviously, with what he's been through, his heart is pure gold. And, you know, he's cutting my warrior of the three kids. And so he just wanted to be there with us. And it's hard to understand that we got to be here. We'll be there when we can together. Just give us some time.

    Berkley is retaining fluid, getting puffier and puffier so the doctors decide to start hemodialysis.

    Jill Harding

    But hemodialysis is basically where they take out. And it's phenomenally crazy to me. If you just think about what I'm about to tell you, the machine is huge. It's about the size of it, like a refrigerator. Basically, the machines are big and they take 10 percent of your blood out and cycle it, filter it through this machine.

    Liesel Mertes

    Wow.

    Jill Harding

    And so they filter it through the machine. So 10 percent of your blood at any given moment in time is in this machine being filtered and then cycled back into your system. So while the things that we learned along the way, she had to have ended up having six different hemodialysis treatments and it just I mean, it was exhausting for her to go through that and.

    Liesel Mertes

    I just want to ask you about, like I can imagine that scene, you're like these are these are not easy procedures.

    Liesel Mertes

    You know, they're involving needles, they're involving discomfort. They're involving multiple checks by nurses. Was there a sense of, like, overwhelm or powerlessness, like just as you're watching your child go through unnecessary pain?

    Jill Harding

    Well, I will say it probably helps in our scenario, David, one being a nurse and then me having a background in medical devices because we knew that these there's great products that the companies that we worked for offered. And then obviously David knew more what was going on than I did.

    Jill Harding

    So he was able to kind of walk me through it. But there's still something we hit the nail on the head to be said about seeing your own child. Right. It's not to dismiss it if it's someone else lying there or if it's even me right there. But to see your own physical child and someone feeling helpless in regards to pain, I will say with Berkely in particular and Grant to adjust their personalities are really different.

    Jill Harding

    Berkley was pretty much she would tell the nurses what to do and she was not messing around. She even during her painful moments, she has grit. We called her tough as nails because she just has this, I don't know, something embedded in her personality that she's a fighter.

    Jill Harding

    She uses a lot of humor to get her through tough times right now at the nurses, she would ask them for things that she knew she can have, like Skittles. But just to keep them on their toes, they'd be like, wait a sec.

    Jill Harding

    You can't have that.

    Liesel Mertes

    A sense of agency. Yep.

    Jill Harding

    And again, she's a little petite, five year old little girl. She's real small. I think she weighed maybe thirty eight pounds at the most during all this. And so she would be on they would weigh her before and after each treatment. And sometimes she lost five, six pounds and hemodialysis treatment because of the fluid that her body was keeping.

    Jill Harding

    Well but during all this she actually got C. diff too. I'm not sure you're familiar with this, but yeah. See that during it all.

    Liesel Mertes

    As you think about those times in the hospital for those who are listening who have not had to be with a child long term in the hospital. What are some things that you wish people knew about what that reality is like?

    Jill Harding

    Hmmm, that's a really tough question. I think that. It gives you a lot of humility, I mean, regards to humble, because David and I have always been very independent individuals, we don't really ask for help.

    Jill Harding

    We just kind of just make it happen because we're strong willed individuals and we'll just find a way.

    Jill Harding

    But I think I know from our experience personally that it's OK. People want to genuinely help others. I mean, that's just human nature. And I think once we put our pride aside and our guard down, it helped us as parents to really do what we needed to do.

    Jill Harding

    And it took away from the challenges of us not being 100 percent present for at the time, Grant. And then that time later, Berkeley.

    Jill Harding

    So I think with those scenarios and in and of itself, it's just. Be compassionate. Ask for help, but if someone doesn't immediately want your help, it's OK because they've got to do it in their own way, right. Because everything is unique to that family, that circumstance, that situation.

    Liesel Mertes

    Yeah, I talked in my trainings that it's not about you as the person who is offering help, like almost never. Is it about, like, judgment on your relationship.

    Liesel Mertes

    It's just even stuff like is messy and so often help. And if the person says, yes, be willing to follow through and if they say no, they don't take it personally yet.

    Jill Harding

    And exactly, because I think what we're going through right now in our world. Right. I mean, like in our situation, we never been through that. And many of our friends have never been to that. Right. So you just got to go with what your instincts. And we rely heavily on our faith because we are people of faith. But at the same token, you know, we never been through that. So, you know, maybe grace to those folks and like you said, get to meet them where they're at because at the same time, we didn't know what we needed or didn't need.

    Right.

    Liesel Mertes

    Yeah, that's another thing I say that that the let me know how I can help. Question isn't as helpful as you would think.

    Liesel Mertes

    It would be like finding clean underwear.

    Liesel Mertes

    But I don't know what were some of the best ways that people helped your family?

    Jill Harding

    I think it's just the, um. Just to know that we had the support, right, just a phone call, just even if it's just listen to me cry or David cry or just listen to us in silence, if you will. I think just knowing we had people behind the scenes, I also know that I have since he's passed on. So it hurts my heart to even say this.

    Jill Harding

    But my best buddy and Andrea, we've been best buddies since third grade. Her father wanted to help so bad he's retired. So he had the abilities and means to help them. At the same token, like he would bring us groceries, like unexpectedly. And he kept on like what we liked at Kroger and he would just randomly draw stuff off because he knew he'd done it before. So he kept he was so sweet. He kept a list of our favorite bars or snacks or what have you.

    Jill Harding

    And we just make sure he kept us knocked up that and it's just simple because it wasn't anything like, you know, they put him out too much. It was just kind. Bars are David's favorite potato chips, what have you. Just simple things. But it's still so just like what people are thinking about us.

    Jill Harding

    So just randomly dropping those off our

    Liesel Mertes

    And what beautiful intention also, like, you take time and ask what you liked. And then he wanted to remember it and he didn't have to. It sounds like hassle. You do this, you just realize like these are staples they're always going to enjoy receiving. I'm just going to bring them. I love that.

    Jill Harding

    I was really cool. And and I think that.

    Jill Harding

    Just the the window time we call it window time, where I would actually sit on his window and look out and play with folks, I think just being mindful, even though people have to be guarded in those scenarios that we were in and have to be more inside in their own space and not exposed to other germs outside of their home, just putting that like being creative, I think how we communicated and still played, but yet did it through a different means.

    Liesel Mertes

    Well, I'm thinking about I mean, there's support of you, right, as the parent. There's also the support of your child who has had their world turned upside down. And I imagine it felt meaningful to receive support.

    Jill Harding

    Well and the cool thing about the window, time was allowed to play, like with his his papi. We call David's dad Papi, with his papi outside the window while Grant was inside the window, but allowed David to kick our feet up for a minute and let that Grant was entertained and happy. And we did that for a little while, too, when she came home because she was still her ability to fight off. Infection was still pretty low at some point, too.

    Jill Harding

    So we did the same thing with her as well. But I think just showing folks that you're you've got that support system, whether you tap into it. Again, like you said, you get to meet those individuals where they're at and let them. Like you said, I don't know what I need right now, I just need right. I just need like I don't have one iota of extra creative energy right now.

    Liesel Mertes

    OK, so on the other side, was there anything you don't have to name names, but was there anything that you were on the receiving end of that you would say this is this is just not helpful? Don't do these things.

    Jill Harding

    I think so, yes. The constant like. What's around I'm looking for the constant sharing of, like, knickknack little things like that, either we can only have so much in the hospital and I say this because people just don't know, like birthday was on the transplant floor.

    Jill Harding

    So she couldn't have anything in life. So people would try to send her flowers. Well, she never got to enjoy those because she wasn't able to have those in her room because the thing was soil on it, for instance, anything like breathing, she can I could plants. You can actually have those in her room. So. Yeah, and people didn't know that.

    Jill Harding

    But I think I almost wonder if sometimes that that's the staff at the hospital too.

    Jill Harding

    But I think it's just maybe doing a little bit of homework before you do that kind gesture, because I hated that for the individuals that sent her stuff like that because. You know, that they spent now. Now, great, we said make sure it gets to a nurse's station or it gets to someplace where someone can enjoy it but still going to enjoy it.

    Jill Harding

    And then she saw it from the window and she's like, oh, good. Then we had to talk her off a cliff for a little bit because she thought that she could have was in her room. Right. And I think just if someone says, I don't know what I need right now, don't cry, because they will come and you'll know, but don't force it. Let it be.

    Liesel Mertes

    Yeah, that's a great point.

    Liesel Mertes

    Jill, is there anything that you would like to add that I didn't ask you in our time together?

    Jill Harding

    Um, yeah, I think so.

    Jill Harding

    I think just when we go throughout our days, just know regardless big or small or whatever it is, we all have a story and we just got to be mindful we're all human. Right. And there's no like rulebook on how to be the best human ever. Technically speaking. Right.

    Jill Harding

    So just have compassion for other people and just be realistic in that everyone's got a story. Everyone's weathering something, whether it's big or small, and just realize that, you know, words do hurt more than people realize.

    Jill Harding

    And I think also, too, like back to my kiddos specifically both Grant and Berkeley, they've been Tindley because she's been through all this with us as well. With regards to Berkeley, just let those moments happen. Do the best you can to weather through those moments that make sure you come out on the other end as strong as you can by what you've learned through that moment. And what I mean by that is like

    Jill Harding

    Grant and Berkeley both, like I think that they have learned some things and their characters have been shaped in ways that I feel like would have been really tough for David and I to have instilled in them if they didn't go through the experiences they went through.

    Jill Harding

    Right now, both of them have scars from their great how to put a catheter in Berkeley, had some catheters in her jugular area. So they both have scars. And I tell them all the time and they tell me now to because I've told them so many times. But those are like, that's part of you and that's OK. That's what makes you grant unique. That's what makes you unique. Like everybody else as well. We all have something that's unique to us, kind of like a snowflake in that regard dry.

    Jill Harding

    We're all unique in our own way and don't be ashamed of that. In fact, be proud of that, because those scars have shown that you're still here with us today.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    Here are three key takeaways from my conversation with Jill…

    There are many restrictions for an individual living with cancer.Hearing all of the challenges with just eating (the concerns about leftovers, the need to clean food etc) gave me a deeper appreciation of how tenuous life and infection can be. With that in mind, learning a little more before giving gifts (like flowers) is important. Consider what creative engagement with a child who is immuno-compromised (or battling COVID) looks like.I loved the story of play dates through a window with walkie talkies (plus there was the added benefit of giving parents a chance to rest). Remember that “Tell me how I can help” oftentimes is an unhelpful question to people who are already living through something hard.Many times, people don’t know in the moment what they need and they might feel tentative following up with a request afterwards. Instead, know what you can offer (perhaps a grocery drop-off, a Door Dash certificate, or doing some yard work) and extend a specific offer of help.

    OUTRO

  • - Mike Thibideau

    But it's been. A really meaningful way to to change a lot of things about myself that were the underlying cause of like kind of what I went back to before, like I didn't I I didn't know why people would like to be sober and the reality is, is because they don't hate themselves. If you don't if you don't hate who you are, then just existing in your own skin isn't a miserable state of existence and finally learning to come to peace with those things. Is what really navigating recovery has been all about.

    INTRO Today, we are talking about addiction: its roots, the challenge of staying sober, and how workplaces can support their people as they struggle to manage their addictions. My guest in Mike Thibideau, he is the Director of Indiana Workforce Recovery.

    Indiana Workforce Recovery is a partnership of the Indiana Wellness Council and the Indiana Chamber and I will let Mike tell you a little bit more about it in his own words

    - Mike Thibideau

    Indiana Workforce Recovery is a program of the Wellness Council, operated in partnership with the chamber and the administration of Governor Holcomb here in Indiana that really works to mitigate the impact of addiction on employer environments by equipping them to support recovery.

    - Mike Thibideau

    And I think that that's an important distinction. There are not a lot of initiatives. Well, there are a lot more now than when I started. Not a lot of initiatives out there really focused on recovery in the workplace.

    But Mike doesn’t just work in Recovery. He is also a man in recovery himself. He has been sober for five years. Yet, you know that I want my guests to be more than just their story of hardship, so let me introduce you a little more fully to Mike.

    Mike is the father of a little girl, Hazel, and he and his wife have another little one on the way.

    - Mike Thibideau

    And we're we're just really excited to have her kind of join our team, as it were. It's all healthy. All good. I don't know. Unfortunately, I don't know too much about her yet. That's kind of, I think, a good thing at this point. But we're yeah, we're just really excited to have that addition to the family.

    Mike has lived in Indy for the last eight years, he considers himself a Hoosier and roots for the Colts but he was born in metro Detroit. He and his wife met through a mutual friend, post-college.

    - Liesel Mertes

    But this story, you know, did you know, like right off the bat that you guys would be a good fit? Was it a chemistry from the start or did you have to both come to that realization, kind of like in your own time manner?

    - Mike Thibideau

    We definitely had some chemistry kind of to kick things off. And we actually started hanging out the year that in the last time Indianapolis was hosting the Final Four and we were watching. Those those basketball games, and coincidentally enough, that first month together was the time that Michigan State and Duke faced off in that Final Four game.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Wow, you're going to have to confront that one early.

    - Mike Thibideau

    But but we definitely knew there was some. Some chemistry early on, and I think that that actually fully manifested itself when she became aware of of the struggles I was having in life and still kind of stuck it out because she hasn't only been around for the. The good parts of the last few years, she she saw. When we got together, slowly but surely, she got to the veil, became lifted and she got to see some of me at my worst.

    - Mike Thibideau

    So I think that that chemistry kind of spoke to. Her ability to be resilient in those times and. Support an individual who clearly was in need of some help.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah, you know, that's a that's a very appropriate segue into, you know, some of what we want to discuss in today's podcast. You talk about yourself.

    - Liesel Mertes

    You know, when you sent me your bio as a person in long term recovery, you unpack that a little bit for me. What does that mean to you? And then I'd love to go deeper into some of your story.

    - Mike Thibideau

    Yeah, sure.

    - Mike Thibideau

    So, yeah, I, I, I now publicly before privately identify myself as a person in long term recovery from substance use disorder. And that means that I have not used a drink or mind altering drug aside from those prescribed by a doctor as prescribed in what for me is now over five years. And so I also I think within that is the dedication to living my life in a certain way that betters the world around me and consistently endeavours to be better.

    - Mike Thibideau

    I wouldn't say I am better, but I you know, we all we all fail. But I think the difference is as a person in recovery for me, I can identify those moments of failure or recognize them as such. Name them and use them to grow and try to be better.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah, I feel like in the public eye and consciousness, there's almost like these two polarities in which we see substance abuse and addiction. It's either like we see representations of the addict, you know, someone who is just their whole life has been wrecked by, you know, their relationship with this substance or, you know, someone who's doing well in recovery. And it's a triumphant story.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And I'm struck that, you know, for for many people, it's much more of a spectrum of their relationship with, you know, whatever substance that is beginning to take up more and more space in their life and in their consciousness. I imagine that there are elements of that within your own story.

    - Liesel Mertes

    You know, you don't just start drinking like, you know, tons of hard liquor as a 15 year old, as you chart, you know, kind of your progression.

    - Liesel Mertes

    What is your origin story of your relationship with substances that would later become really damaging in your life?

    - Mike Thibideau

    Yeah, I mean, absolutely. So for me, it all goes back to really grade school, even where I experienced a lot of trauma related to bullying and insecurity. I I was a very I was a very small kid until about eighth grade when suddenly I grew like a foot or more in a short very short period.

    - Mike Thibideau

    But I remember distinctly, you know, being in sixth grade and getting picked on by fourth grade girls who were also bigger than me, you know, kids calling me Simon Birch and which in hindsight as adults, should have been a compliment because that dude ended up being a hero in that movie.

    - Mike Thibideau

    But but as a as a kid, you know, hurt and a lot of just kind of traumatic bullying experiences as a younger individual. The that kind of led to me having a self narrative of I'm not cool, I'm not good enough.

    - Mike Thibideau

    And I think that was also reinforced to an extent academically as well by my ADHD and the presence of that in my life. I never got bad grades, but I had to do a decent amount of work to get decent grades and really, what I found was when I started doing drugs and using using drugs and alcohol, it felt like a hole had been filled and suddenly I felt accepted by others like I wasn't some square kid who followed all the rules and did everything right.

    - Mike Thibideau

    I was able to be a little bit more than that. And it's really funny because, you know, in hindsight and as an adult, I'm the kind of guy who, like, loves clear expectations and rules. And I think that that same thing was true for me as an adolescent.

    - Mike Thibideau

    But it wasn't cool to be a kid who followed all the rules and did and did those things right that that you think is expected of you. And so there was kind of that like that always that pull on me as somebody who, like I think really in the end wanted to follow the rules and be a good kid, but also saw felt that that identity was one of social isolation and outcast.

    - Mike Thibideau

    And so really, I mean, at in high school, my identity was a lot of things. But one of that and among at least certain social circles was a kid who, you know, smoked a lot of pot and and would drink. And I don't know how much others perceived that as being my identity, but it definitely, for me, was a key part of my identity. And I think that that's. What a lot of people who struggle with addiction have in their lives is the.

    - Mike Thibideau

    The inability to accurately assess how others view us and have a really false internal narrative of our own identity. And at a point that became what it meant to feel normal.

    - Mike Thibideau

    I remember as early as college saying to friends, why are people sober? Like, why would you ever just choose to be sober? Like, who likes that? And that's not a normal thing, apparently, for people to think about life. So it took.

    - Mike Thibideau

    College was a very tumultuous time where I would kind of my horse, my old tale of the least adult addiction is one of being able to successfully navigate crises. And in doing so, enable my own continued use,

    - Liesel Mertes

    Tell me tell me a little bit more about that like crises that are brought about by, like forgetting important tests or dropping the ball or what did that look like for you?

    - Mike Thibideau

    Well, for me, like a whole semester at a time in college back then, I would I'd get like a one point six and then I'd have to buckle down. In the next semester, I'd get a 4.0. I even had at one point, I think my junior year, I had a 4.0 and a three point nine five, and then the following year I followed that up with like a two point one and a and like a two point three.

    - Mike Thibideau

    And none of it related to, like, how hard my classes were or anything like that. I just couldn't. My disease psychologist would kind of become more active and less active based on systems and supports that I would put in my life, which at least at that time were able to temporarily help me navigate things.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Could you unpack that for me? Because I'm struck that that's an evocative term that listeners might not understand. Tell me a little bit about your particular disease cycle and how it was affected by the presence or absence of the supports that you're talking about.

    - Mike Thibideau

    So for me, a lot of what it looked like was just habits and ritual that I used specifically with the conscious thought of managing my drinking. And by managing my drinking, I mean, not drinking less, but managing the impact that drinking was having on my life.

    - Mike Thibideau

    when I would be at school and I would be drinking really hard, but it's still doing well at school, what I would basically do is I would get a paper assigned to me and like I would write it that day. Knowing that if I do this work now, I can party harder later.

    - Mike Thibideau

    I would do all my studying for tests well in advance and I would do everything I could to kind of build in a. Immediate sense of accomplishment that I would then follow up with. You know, reckless behavior, frankly, and what would really happen is that that would only be sustainable for a certain amount of time before the the rails would come off and I'd spend a whole semester.

    - Mike Thibideau

    Hardly doing anything or at least doing the bare minimum. And once you get in kind of both of those cycles, I think that that's a thing that is often the case with both individuals. I know and it was especially the case for myself, is that at a certain point you become like the boulder from Raiders of the Lost Ark, where you're just like you're just going down a path and it's going to end somewhere. And that's going to be really the time when you can make a choice and arrest the behavior, at least temporarily and survive or not.

    - Mike Thibideau

    For some people, that ends in death. And fortunately, it didn't. And there were just kind of a lot of those periods in my life where I was just rolling down that hill and.

    - Mike Thibideau

    There would have to be something there that would stop me, and it really was never a person or, you know, it wasn't a place where somebody could just say, like, you know, we love you, right? And then be like, oh, OK, cool.

    - Mike Thibideau

    Like, I'll just stop drinking. It would have to be running out of money, becoming homeless. Changing jobs, moving to a new city.

    - Liesel Mertes

    So during this time, you know, you talk about it wasn't enough just for someone to have, like, the verbal affirmation, we love you, we want you to stop.

    - Liesel Mertes

    I'm struck. Did you have people in your life that were seeing this decline and were trying to intervene? And a follow up to that, if it.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yes. Is were they doing like what were some good things they were doing? Did it even matter? What were some things that were terrible? I'd love to hear more about what people were trying to do to come alongside you.

    - Mike Thibideau

    So as a disclaimer, my use during that time and really through most of my really hard addiction for about 18 through twenty five, I can't really remember very much. I was drinking somewhere between a fifth and a half gallon of hard liquor a day for most of that, and that along with doing drugs. And so to an extent that just really damages your ability to remember things. So I really can't tell you on my own perspective a story of somebody.

    - Mike Thibideau

    Yeah. Trying to do something. I do know I heard years later that some of my fraternity brothers at some point did come out to me and say, like, hey, like, don't you think you're you're kind of drinking a little hard and. I thought that was one that was during, unfortunately, kind of for them, I think a little bit for me that was during one of the good times. And I just pulled up my transcripts and showed them all that I had a 4.0.

    - Mike Thibideau

    And they were like, all right. You know, like it's look, it's Goutman. You know, like if you're if what you're doing isn't causing problems, then it's probably not a problem, you know, like live your life. And I think there were.

    - Mike Thibideau

    My family, actually, I will say I was the one who kind of initiated that conversation as an adult during high school and things like that, they would have we would have conversations and consequences about my use.

    - Mike Thibideau

    But as an adult, I remember about two years or three years before I got sober, even I told my I told my parents that I was an alcoholic and that I was going to eventually need to just stop drinking. And fortunately for me, that's what led to them eventually having an intervention for me years later, but. There were a lot of people like both them, I think, to an extent, and then also, you know, my then girlfriend, now wife, where I would tell them things like that and they'd be like, no, you're not like me.

    - Mike Thibideau

    You know, that's and they wouldn't say that as much as they would vocalize to me later on in life that they were thinking it. And a lot of that was because I still had a job until the end, had a car and, you know, while I wasn't, I would say navigating life, well, I wasn't the stereotype of. What an addict or an alcoholic is, and so. And we just didn't know we as a family didn't have very much of it in our genetics and weren't exposed to it in that way.

    - Mike Thibideau

    So it's a long way of saying that.

    - Mike Thibideau

    I really don't have a whole lot of examples in my life of people who said, like, let's try to get you help or because. Because in general. I was able to hold it together enough that. The signs weren't there unless I let them be seen or unless you caught me in a specific moment.

    - Mike Thibideau

    I also, you know, I moved I moved here eight years ago, so and I and before I lived in Indianapolis, I spent over two years living in, I think it was seven different cities around the country.

    - Mike Thibideau

    So I wasn't really around family in a way that they saw much of my life.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah. I'd like to just ask a question about something that you mentioned. You talked about. I don't fit the stereotype of how we picture an addict, especially in the work that you do. You know, you. You go deep into probably as you build awareness, as you help recovering addicts, tell me what that stereotype looks like and how it can be damaging and how it steers us wrong. Yeah, in realizing the scope of how many people actually struggle with addiction issues.

    - Mike Thibideau

    So I think definitely one part of it is I'm a straight white man that definitely doesn't hurt me as far as perception, obviously bias is real, but I also, you know, dressed fairly well and am a fairly eloquent individual and have been for really as long as I can really remember, that's only increased.

    - Mike Thibideau

    So I was always a person who was able to clearly and clearly and concisely put together my thoughts and express myself in a very effective manner and even professionally, I.

    - Mike Thibideau

    I think the best way to say it was I was always somebody who excelled until I was almost failing, meaning that I would be able to get a job or do something new in life and be very successful at it. Until my addiction would catch up with me, the routines would fall apart, the wheels would come off the wagon, and suddenly I was barely meeting expectations.

    - Mike Thibideau

    And that's something I tell employers to look for all the time, is really that change in behavior, because I know that my boss, who I was working on, the the organization I was working for when I got into recovery and when I went through treatment, he told me he thought that I just didn't care anymore. He didn't. He knew something was going on.

    - Mike Thibideau

    But he thought really it was just that I didn't give a crap and. That couldn't get any further from the truth, I love that job, but but at the same time, I was I was in crisis and my life was kind of starting to fall apart around me.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    - Mike Thibideau

    When I actually realized that I had a problem, I was in a training for something called the Alcohol Skills Training Program back when I worked for my fraternity. And it's a workshop to teach young people how to responsibly navigate. Drinking and social behaviors. And they went through a little mini assessment of like how to talk to somebody about potentially having a problem with drugs or alcohol. And they were like, oh, yeah, if you like, checked like five of these 30 boxes, you might have a problem.

    - Mike Thibideau

    And I checked like twenty nine of the 30. And it was just like, oh, OK. So this, this might be real. I kind of put it off for a little while after that.

    - Mike Thibideau

    But but then really what I think started to make it strike home was when my memory loss started to interfere with my ability to remember things that I was doing sober. So I wouldn't I wouldn't be able to remember whether like so I wouldn't at that time I wasn't you know, I wasn't using or intoxicated at work or anything like that.

    - Mike Thibideau

    But I was having trouble remembering things that I'd done the last day, even if I had been sober while doing them. And that was really having ramifications on my life where, like, I wouldn't be able to remember people that I met. I wouldn't be able to remember tasks that I had accomplished cause that I'd had or things that I checked in with my boss on. And so. Kind of that led to me realizing that, like something is happening here.

    - Mike Thibideau

    That I have to be concerned about before I go insane. And that was very striking at the time.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah, and where where did you go from that realization?

    - Mike Thibideau

    Well, I went right back to drinking, but that was that was a problem for Mike to deal with when the the ball finally hit the end.

    Mike was drinking more and more. He began in the morning and was even getting behind the wheel. So his family staged an intervention.

    - Liesel Mertes

    When when you say that, you know, they had an intervention, they directed me to services, you know, that's it's not like a quick flyover, but I imagine that there's like a pretty emotional scene, potentially, like, do you remember feeling angry? Were you ready to go when they told you you needed to go? Like, unpack that a little bit for me?

    - Mike Thibideau

    I would say scared and excited was how I felt. I didn't realize how ready for it I was until the moment it was put in front of me. The moment they and I will say I'm like, I'm so I've I have done a number of these and been part of. Helping people get into treatment, and it does not often go as smooth as my we all kind of I guess luck got lucky, I don't know what it was. We were blessed by the fact that at that moment I was I was ready for it and able to engage.

    - Mike Thibideau

    And it wasn't a hesitation or anything. It was just, yes, let's go.

    - Mike Thibideau

    And we went. And it was it was a jarring experience. You know, going through detox and and then I did for forty five days of residential treatment and a couple of months of outpatient, and I've really especially that early period in detox and early residential was a very emotional time in my life. And one that. Was among the more difficult things I've been through.

    - Mike Thibideau

    So. When people are struggling with addiction and in my own experience, when I was struggling with addiction, like I was pretty severe, you know, use. I was not a mentally like, well, person, so. Especially when you took away my crutch. It was a very emotional time, and part of that is the emotion centers in my brain that have been numbed for years were just starting to kind of open back up.

    - Mike Thibideau

    And my brain was even early on starting the process of healing. There was a lot of crying and a lot of. Just trying to figure out what to do, and I remember even early on, one of my biggest barriers was, you know, people would be telling me about 12 step recovery, Alcoholics Anonymous or other such programs. And everybody was talking about God all the time. And I was a hardcore atheist at that point, you know.

    - Mike Thibideau

    And that was a big barrier for me, was that people kept talking in that way. Fortunately, I got through my counselors and professional help is exposed to some parts of of that 12 step program, but then also just other cognitive behavioral therapy and supports that didn't rely on that narrative quite so much and really talked about how to build that into your own narrative and allowed me to successfully navigate that system.

    - Mike Thibideau

    But I think one of the things that's really hard to do is, you know, when we when we put people into detox, you know, I I had pretty severe alcohol use disorder and I had done and I was doing some drugs here and there, but I had never even met anyone who had done meth or heroin prior to engaging in treatment.

    - Mike Thibideau

    And suddenly I'm surrounded by individuals who have been using meth and heroin. And, you know, we can while ah, what's going on in our brains is very similar culturally, that's a very different type of individual than I had previously been engaged with. And so I kind of had to learn to. Have this new peer group, almost of people who have had very different life experiences than I did for the most part, and it was definitely like a culture shock going in there and seeing that and being around that for the first time.

    - Mike Thibideau

    But I luckily I got really plugged in to some really great supports and. Found some good examples in my life of people who were doing the right things and followed that example for myself. That's 12 step recovery.

    - Mike Thibideau

    But it's been. A really meaningful way to to change a lot of things about myself that were the underlying cause of like kind of what I went back to before, like I didn't I I didn't know why people would like to be sober and the reality is, is because they don't hate themselves. If you don't if you don't hate who you are, then just existing in your own skin isn't a miserable state of existence and finally learning to come to peace with those things. Is what really navigating recovery has been all about.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Hmm, what did you and what do you continue to discover that you really like about the shober version of yourself?

    - Mike Thibideau

    So. I like remembering things that's that's pretty cool, being able to know what you did yesterday. It might sound like a strange thing to take for granted, but to not take for granted.

    - Mike Thibideau

    But I really don't. I would also say my ability to be present for those around me is a constant blessing and the relationships I have in my life are so deep and have so much meaning, and the vulnerability I'm able to possess on a constant basis is a is a huge, huge blessing.

    - Mike Thibideau

    I know professionally, even one of the things that's been so great about being a person in long term recovery and really learning to navigate this life, I will say I fall short of this ideal all the time myself. But when you really work.

    - Mike Thibideau

    When you really work on yourself and you learn to embrace serenity in your life, meaning knowing what you can control and what you can't, a lot of the most common workplace struggles kind of go out the door.

    - Mike Thibideau

    If you live your life professionally, not obsessing about other people's actions, behaviors and thoughts, it frees up a lot of space to really do some pretty amazing things yourself.

    - Mike Thibideau

    And it's something I didn't realize until I had been in recovery for a number of years and really. Practicing those principles is how much of people's workplace stress comes from what they can't control about others behaviors. And so that's been a beautiful thing for me, is just being able to be a little bit more in the moment, but then also just present to.

    - Mike Thibideau

    Plan and and do the good work, I fall short of that all the time and still have problems, but I'm at least able to name them and process through it and and move on rather than obsess.

    - Liesel Mertes

    What kinds of supports did you find that you needed in that immediate year or even in an ongoing way, like just the. For someone who has not gone through the process of moving towards sobriety?

    - Liesel Mertes

    Give me give me more of like a perspective and what that journey has looked like for you post interventional treatment.

    - Mike Thibideau

    So. I think that a lot of it for me has come down to really just leaning on my networks and my supports, so when I when I started off, I, I kind of just you have to accept I do accept that there was no such thing in early recovery as balance.

    - Mike Thibideau

    You're not going to, like, spend an equal amount of time with your family and your work and your recovery and all these things. Kind of like recovery has to come first because it's the if without it, none of this other stuff is going to continue to exist.

    - Mike Thibideau

    And I, I know my my workplace was really great about making sure that I was participating in treatment at the recommended amount by my medical professionals and really encouraging me to do that. They paid for me my salary through part of my medical leave to help with the bills. They helped me with reduced hours and slowing down my travel when I was engaged in outpatient programming and kind of took that stress away from me in the interim.

    - Mike Thibideau

    But I leaned I leaned hard on my supports, I went to 12 step meetings pretty much every day for. Six, eight months, something like that, and and that meant I wasn't home to be with my girlfriend and invest time in that relationship quite as much.

    - Mike Thibideau

    There were times at work where I would be really struggling and I would just kind of over lunch, go to a meeting and and take some time for myself. And I really worked hard to just stay engaged in systems and do the work.

    - Mike Thibideau

    A big thing for me was recognizing. I'll be frank, I've been very blessed in that I haven't had very many times in recovery where I have had serious thoughts of drinking, I was ready for this change and I was doing the work. There have been limited times where that was not where that was present in my life. But I've been able to kind of.

    - Mike Thibideau

    Get that in check real quick and a big reason for that is I've worked really hard on myself to recognize the symptoms of behavioral change that are getting me back to an emotional state where I would think about drinking.

    - Mike Thibideau

    So me in my current state, as I'm sitting here today, is not going to have a thought today about alcohol, at least not in an unhealthy manner. I might literally think about alcohol as a concept or something like that because of my job, but the thought of drinking is not something that I'm worried about is a danger today.

    - Mike Thibideau

    But my manipulation, my control issues, my insecurities, all of these things that are part of the me that would have that thought might come back into my life today in some form or fashion. And so my ability to recognize those in that moment and arrest that thought as unhealthy and process it is what leads me to be in a place where I don't have those thoughts and behaviors on a regular basis.

    - Mike Thibideau

    The most helpful thing for me also, I will say, if anybody wants to figure out how to if you're working a 12 step program and you want to figure out how to translate that to work, I recommend to everybody that you read the Carnegie book, How to Win Friends and Influence People.

    - Mike Thibideau

    I remember being in addiction and reading it and thinking this book isn't teaching me how to control anybody and make them my friend and not liking it, but in recovery, man, there are some principles in that book that have been jewels for me in navigating the workplace, most notably the futility of criticism, something I have to remind myself of all the time.

    - Mike Thibideau

    But that that principle is a. Is a wonderful thing for learning how to think a little bit less about what you deserve and a little bit more about what to be grateful for.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Hmm. Thank you for that recommendation. I found myself mentally cataloging and being like, I know I have a copy of that somewhere. Where is it? So that's a good resource.

    - Liesel Mertes

    You have this depth of personal experience, which I'm sure you know, feeds daily into what you get to do professionally, which is thinking a lot about how you structurally equip workplaces to look at, you know, addiction issues that their people are going through.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Individual stories are powerful, also, like high level data has its own impact, what is some of the scope of the challenge that is facing just at the statewide level, like if someone's thinking like her addiction and recovery in the workplace, I don't know, is that a problem here in Indiana?

    - Liesel Mertes

    What are some data points that help illuminate that?

    - Mike Thibideau

    The most important data set behind what we do. Is that employers being equipped to help individuals in the workplace can directly save lives, people who are referred to care via their employer have the highest levels of outcomes at one year and five year recovery measures.

    - Mike Thibideau

    They have the strongest length of engagement with the treatment system, which is across multiple papers and studies shown as the primary indicator of success. And they have the most pressure to enter treatment, despite being the group that has the lowest self perceived need for care.

    - Mike Thibideau

    And so what that means, as many people who are referred to treatment or to some type of education by their employer would not have gone if referred by friends, family or a doctor. And yet, despite that, they have the highest levels of outcomes.

    - Mike Thibideau

    And a big part of that is what we know of as recovery capital. Social, which is social capital, is a very common concept. But when people get care while employed, they're more likely to have adequate insurance. They're more likely to have housing, transportation, healthier social networks and community supports that an unemployed individual just generally does not because employment is a key social determinants of health. So we know that by us equipping employers to intervene and assist, we can help individuals get help earlier in their disease cycle and in doing so, directly save lives and that.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And what does well-equipped place of employment, what does that look like? How are individuals equipped like that, the management or high level? What what does what you're looking to build look like?

    - Mike Thibideau

    So the most basic foundation is a sound second chance system, and that means that when an individual fails their first drug screen, they're not terminated. And that's at its most basic at its most basic level. That being with that being the defining characteristic, we've actually helped lower that number of employers in Indiana by twenty five percent in two years, which is remarkable that we've seen so swift behavioral change that a lowering of twenty five percent of the number of employers that terminate after a first failed drug test, correct?

    - Mike Thibideau

    Yep. And then kind of on top of that very basic foundation, what we look for is the ability to support, refer individuals to appropriate treatment or care and have a basic system that allows you to retain them or at least the framework for attention. Relapse management is a key component of that. And what that really looks like from a best practice policy is that you're set up to where any time that an employee asks you for help, they are directly referred to care.

    - Mike Thibideau

    Whether that's that could be their second time asking for help, their third time asking about their fourth time asking for help.

    - Mike Thibideau

    You send them to help. But if they fail a second drug test, they're gone. And there's and there's no ifs, ands or buts kind of around that. Or if they if they have a workplace incident that you take appropriate disciplinary action based on that incident or behavior.

    - Mike Thibideau

    But really leave the door open for and actively encourage individuals to still come forward and ask for help. So it's kind of one of those one of those mechanisms where the first time that you need help, whether it's through a request or a drug test or an incident, whatever it may be, certain certain types of things notwithstanding, if you're in your view, the employees still need to be held accountable for their behaviors and your environment.

    - Mike Thibideau

    If somebody is violent in the workplace, it doesn't really matter whether they're intoxicated or not. They have to be held accountable for their violent behavior. But if they are an employee in good standing and they and they fail a drug screen or have an accident or something like that, you help them get well and get directed towards recovery. And then as things go on, you help mitigate the severity of relapse by encouraging by building systems that encourage them to come forward and ask for help any time that they need assistance.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Right. I love what you do and what you're building, it's it's obviously there's a lot of alignment with empathy in the workplace and coming alongside people.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    We will return to my conversation with Mike in just a moment. First, I want to thank our sponsor, Handle with Care Consulting. With all of the stress and chaos of the year, promoting mental health and building cultures of care has never been more important. Let Handle with Care help. With keynotes, certificiate sessions, and executive coaching, we have offerings to fit your needs.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    - Mike Thibideau

    I mean, so before I did this role, I was the executive director of a construction association doing workforce development work on behalf of the state's construction industry. I had no professional background in addiction at all. I was I was doing workforce development work, largely an employer education. So. Even in that work, I would constantly see employers who would have 50 percent retention in three months, and those are the exact same kinds of employers that have engaged with us to try to increase those metrics and increase the amount of support that they're providing to get more people involved, because it costs employers a lot of money to train new talent.

    - Mike Thibideau

    And for them to lose that talent so swiftly is is expensive. And so let alone the impact that it has on culture and people. But so far, so good, I guess. Right.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Well, I'm glad to hear it. And I think that it's true what you said, that the people who are coming are people who realize.

    - Liesel Mertes

    At least the beginning scope of the problem and are wanting to make those changes, we we talk on, you know, each episode of the Handle with Care podcast about like some really practical these are some these are some important things to do if you know someone who is going through something like this. And here are some things not to do as you think about.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Let's start with the, you know, avoid these behaviors sort of thing,

    - Liesel Mertes

    whether it's within your own story or just as you've worked with people who are in recovery, what are some of the least helpful things that whether it's a workplace community or a family or social context can do that, you know, inhibit someone's journey towards becoming healthier?

    - Mike Thibideau

    So I think. My parameters that I try to set with people is. To both have the attitude of never give up while also setting clear boundaries, No. Individuals who are struggling with this are not mentally well, they're not easy to be around, they're not going to be largely cooperative with what you want them to do or make the immediate changes on first act that you think they should. And that's because they are sick. This is a disease, these are sick people, but they also, in many cases don't have a lot of trust in their lives and they're very suspicious and they believe that everybody's out to get them and that nothing is going to go well.

    - Mike Thibideau

    So when you think about how to provide support. The best way is to just be there and be ready to help them do the right thing at any time.

    - Mike Thibideau

    There's a lot of nuance involved in that and the the conversation of whether you're enabling or assisting or is a very complicated one that we could probably spend a whole podcast on. But I think that never losing the compassion is an important part of staying engaged and involved. And aside from that. It's also important to make sure that, you know. Especially as a workplace, at what point and having having it be clearly defined and not amorphous, when is enough enough?

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah, there's clear boundaries that are there. You touched on this, but just to give you a chance to say it more fully.

    - Liesel Mertes

    What are some of the the best things that people, whether as your wife or that you first employer or just best practices of people you work with, what comes to mind when you think these are some of the best things you can do to support someone who is dealing with severe steps?

    - Liesel Mertes

    Well, not even severe with substance abuse issues, so.

    - Mike Thibideau

    My wife, to her great credit, gives me the ability to self identify a need for self care in my life and to take care of those needs, whether it's you going out and playing golf with buddies in recovery, taking time to go to a 12 step meeting, working with as a working as a volunteer to stay engaged in the community. And that meeting that she has to stay home with our daughter or whatever it may be. She's very good about recognizing that.

    - Mike Thibideau

    That's an important part of me being able to take care of myself so I can then be present for others. And I think that within the workplace, that can look very different.

    - Mike Thibideau

    So this current job is the only one I've ever had outside of the one where I got treatment at where I've ever been public about the fact that I like. And in recovery and struggled with addiction in my past roles, I would just tell people things like I don't drink, it cause problems for me in the past and that would be enough.

    - Mike Thibideau

    Nobody ever cared. Nobody ever really questioned it. I would be at networking events that had alcohol, most of which I put together.

    - Mike Thibideau

    And I never really had a problem with that because God knows those things were terrible for me when I was actually drinking.

    - Liesel Mertes

    There are a lot easier when you're not to be drunk and remember the person that you made that great contact with.

    - Mike Thibideau

    Oh, my gosh. Talk about gratitude. That was like one of the weirdest things I know. And it's I should not be too flippant about this. I know a lot of people really struggle with being around alcohol in those professional settings. But I know for me that was a source of gratitude because, boy, I, I was miserable at those when I was actually drinking because I never could drink how I wanted to.

    - Mike Thibideau

    And all I could think about was how soon I could leave to get to go somewhere and really Taiwan or do it. How I really wanted to. But yeah, now those are huge moments of gratitude, but so the other thing is, just so I like to think of.

    - Mike Thibideau

    All of my employers have always been very good about giving me the ability to be vulnerable, about the need for self care, and that's, I will say, even outside of the environment of like reasonable accommodation and disclosure of an actual, like, disability, like, I've never I don't think needed to say, like, you know, I'm starting my recovery.

    - Mike Thibideau

    I need to go do X, Y or Z. I've just said things like, you know, like, hey, I'm having a really tough day and I need to go take some time for myself over like a longer lunch. And people are like, yeah, go. Do you I think that that's how people should treat everybody. If you're if you allow your employees to be vulnerable, you allow them to take care of themselves and stay at their best.

    - Mike Thibideau

    And while the old school mentality may be that people would quote unquote, take advantage of that, for the most part, people have so much gratitude for it that they end up working harder and doing better work.

    - Mike Thibideau

    And I think on the whole, that that's like a really key thing to do is just to believe in people, be vulnerable about your struggles and put in an appropriate manner.

    - Mike Thibideau

    I I am very vocal about the fact that I do not believe that everybody needs to be open about their recovery and their addiction story within their workplace. For me here, it makes sense and it's something that is very powerful for me to insert into my professional role because my professional role deals with addiction.

    - Mike Thibideau

    But. Your employer does not need to know that in the same way that your employer doesn't need to know if you have diabetes, if you have depression, if you have sleep issues, if you have any other chronic disease that you're successfully managing,

    - Mike Thibideau

    it's when you're not successfully managing it and you require accommodation that people should feel safe coming forward and requesting it to help take care of themselves prior to needing an intervention or a relapse or being failing a drug test or any of those things.

    - Liesel Mertes

    I'd like that turn of phrase. Going to ponder that, yeah, just even framing what it means to have the space, but also to have, you know. Protections in place for a successful management of that, I appreciate that. Is there anything else that you feel like would be important for people to know that I didn't ask you or that you didn't get a chance to say?

    - Mike Thibideau

    I think that one place where I I don't think get into as fully as I would love is especially as it relates to empathy, is just the the effect that this has on our own family members of those who are struggling and how different it's handled within especially the workplace from like adult caregiving and other types of health based issues that our employees encounter with those that they love.

    - Mike Thibideau

    I mean, I remember very distinctly, and I tell this story a lot about my my my mom's mother and her struggle with cancer and aging as she got further on in years. And I know that my mom talked about that stuff at work. I see people in my own workplace talking about their what they have to do to take care of their parents as they age and being very vocal and vulnerable with others about that struggle. And I can guarantee that none of that same kind of support existed for my mom when I was dealing with my addiction or that people feel comfortable coming forward about when their loved ones are struggling.

    - Mike Thibideau

    And this is an area where I think leadership has an ability to lead through vulnerability. And if you are a person who is in a company and you know somebody yourself who's struggling with addiction and it's affecting your life, I encourage you to be very vocal about that with your employees and then through that, discuss the support mechanisms that the workplace has to offer and just let them know that you're available for them to talk to if they ever just need a shoulder.

    - Mike Thibideau

    Because. I mean, I know people who drop their son or son or daughter off in treatment and then went back to work like that day or the next hour and. That would be so hard and I would also venture to say would be something that if they actually talk to their boss about their boss would be like, no, like take care of yourself. You know, take the take the rest of the day off at least,

    - Liesel Mertes

    and I imagine, you know, you've you've thought more on this, but I can imagine that is because there's there's a lot of levels of perhaps shame and protection built in that if people knew that I had a loved one who is going through this, like, how would they view me?

    - Liesel Mertes

    And also, you know, a sense. You know, with whatever judgment of whether it's right or wrong, of wanting to protect that individual, like I don't want to expose my adult son to people knowing that he's struggling with this, what would they think is, is that. I don't know if accurate is the right term, do you find that those levels of kind of perception and protective impulses are like baked into why people feel uncomfortable talking about these things?

    - Mike Thibideau

    Yeah, I think that that's that's a huge part of it, is that sense of stigma and shame and wanting to protect their loved ones. I know the probably a big part of it is they they they're worried to an extent about how it reflect on them. I know my own mom and early on especially would constantly say things like what could we have done differently? What could I have done differently? And the answer was like, nothing like your you were great.

    - Mike Thibideau

    Like you killed it, you know, and that was totally outside of their control. But I don't know that it would have been viewed that way by other people if she had been more public about that. And that might. And I think that's fair.

    - Mike Thibideau

    But I also know that that narrative has evolved in the last five years. I've seen just how this narrative has evolved just even in the last two or three and. Even in my own workplace, I can say, granted, I had been vulnerable even during my interview about my personal recovery, and I introduced myself as a person in recovery, my first day and my first staff meeting.

    - Mike Thibideau

    But even along with that, within a day of that disclosure, I think I had maybe was five people within my own workplace come forward to me and talk to me about the struggles and loved ones of theirs that had. Which is kind of really a showcase to me, the power that that vulnerability can have,

    - Liesel Mertes

    Absolutely I I resonate with that in my own in my own areas of loss. You know, it is the power of, like, giving voice to that. And it's amazing exactly what you said, whether, you know, from the leadership level on down, how that gives other people the space to think. I can give voice to this to.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Mike, I'm going to link information about workforce recovery in the show notes is the best way for people to be in touch with you via your website or via the phone that, you know, if there's an H.R. director or, you know, company leader who says, I really want to avail myself of these resources, how should they be in touch with you?

    - Mike Thibideau

    So right on the front page, the program page of our website, if you go to Wellness Indiana Douglas Recovery and you scroll down just a little bit below the slider, I think the first button you see says schedule a free conversation today or like start a conversation today. If you click on that, that my email pops up and I'm happy to talk with anybody about anything, and I can pretty much say fairly reliably, if I can't direct you, if I can't help you, I can direct you to somebody who can.

    - Mike Thibideau

    And I am happy to do so for any business or really anyone who just wants to talk. And do what do at least do what we can for them?

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah, well, thank you, Mike. Thank you for sharing not only about your work, but out of your own story today. Appreciate it. I'm I'm going to get ready to click stop recording unless. Is there anything else that you'd like to add before we officially stop recording?

    - Mike Thibideau

    I'm just really grateful for the ability to tell my story, I'm grateful for the life that I'm able to have and grateful that my daughter and soon to be daughters, you know, God willing, never have to know that old me.

    - Mike Thibideau

    And only get to have a dad that gets to be around and present for them. So thank you for the opportunity. And I'm I just want people to know that this is a great life to live if you let it be.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    Here are three key take-aways from my conversation with Mike

    Supportive workplaces matter.Mike talked about the impact of a boss and workplace that let him take the time he needed as he dealt with his addiction. And I am so glad to learn more about the supports that are available through Indiana Workforce Recovery. Check out their resources in the show notes. Providing support for caregivers and family members is also important.Mike talked about how his mom felt unable to share, like her struggle was cloaked in shame and judgment. Leaders, you are part of creating a safe space where people can talk and receive support, without fear of judgment. If you are someone that is struggling with addiction, or love someone that is, I want to remind you of the Mike’s closing words.There is a great life available to live and resources to help you get there. And as point 3b, you might want to pick up a copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People

    OUTRO

    Learn more about Indiana Workforce Recovery here: https://www.wellnessindiana.org/recovery/

  • Miscarriage and Meaning: an Interview with Danielle Ireland - Danielle Ireland

    It was four or five different nurses came in one at a time and just held my hand and looked me in the eye and told me her story of loss was a miscarriage. And and I don't remember I don't remember their faces. I don't remember their names. But I just remember each each time it was like this wave of relief. And I'm still feeling it now talking about it like hearing I lost two and then I had to. I had to and I lost one and I had two more. I lost three and I had just. It was just a different expression of you're not alone. You're not alone, you're not alone. And I couldn't have been more grateful and I didn't know that I needed that at the time. I just had no idea how much I needed that.

    INTRO

    My guest today is Danielle Ireland. She is a speaker, actress, ballroom dancer, licensed therapist, recovering perfectionist, a wife and a soon-to-be-mother with her second child, a little girl. And we spend time in this episode talking about her work, her pregnancy, and the miscarriage of her first child, a son, who would have turned one at the close of 2020. Danielle shares on the importance of empathy, how partners can grieve differently, and why it really bugged her when people kept telling her, “I’m sorry”.

    Danielle and I began our time together reminiscing about the toys of our childhood.

    - Liesel Mertes

    We are both children of the 80s, what was one of your favorite toys from that era?

    - Danielle Ireland

    Oh, this is a great question. Oh, my gosh. One of my favorite toys from that era. Well. Let's see, I was really big into my little ponies and I was really big into Care Bears and Jem and the holograms and also Barbie, I had the my favorite Barbie. There were two that were my favorites. One was the nineteen fifties Barbie. So she had like the Lucille Ball, like hair cut and bangs and have like this like old school 50 styles, black and white bathing suit.

    - Danielle Ireland

    I just loved her. And then there was also gymnastics Barbie and yes. So she had like bending working joints so I could make her do backflips and front flips and she was flipping everywhere. But actually a funny story about my Barbies. I loved playing with them, but I hate addressing them because I didn't have the patience for all of the little snaps. But I really loved all the shoes. So Barbies were always naked in high heels. And so that was my mom said she got some fun looks with me holding my naked Barbies with her.

    As a Barbie-loving child, Danielle thought she might want to be a marine biologist. Then an archeologist.

    - Danielle Ireland

    And so it was either like swimming with dolphins every day, digging up dinosaur bones. And then of course, once I got the first full length movie I ever watched, this is all through. My mom's telling of it, I don't actually remember was Cinderella. And so but I remember when I started getting into live action movies and when I started to understand the concept of, oh, like, those people are pretending, especially when things were really intense, I would get nervous.

    - Danielle Ireland

    My parents are really good about explaining. You know, this is a make believe world. These are the characters in this world and this is what the performers do. And I was like, that's a job. And so I, I that's I think when my obsession with film and performance started and because I realized, oh, I can pretend to do all the things I want to do, I don't even have to pick one thing. And so that kind of got me on the, I think the performing arts track at the young age potentially.

    Danielle studied theater in college and then worked teaching dance. She auditioned in places like Chicago and Louisville and Cincinnati.

    - Danielle Ireland

    But it it felt like a gamble. And I'm not a gambler at heart. I think that that's a large part why that wasn't you. I think you have to have that willingness to accept the risk when you when you pursue a career like that.

    - Danielle Ireland

    And I never fully took the plunge, but yeah, I still got some paid acting work up until I was, I think, twenty nine.

    When Danielle started dating the man that is now her husband, she began to think about what she really wanted in life.

    - Danielle Ireland

    And it was the first time that I started to think about future, my future beyond what what instantly gratified me, like I the the nature of the in order to to be a dance instructor and performer and the way that I like to do it, you had to rehearse before and after your teaching hours and your teaching hours were from one to ten.

    - Danielle Ireland

    And so my whole world there was I mean, it was just I don't want to say small and that I wasn't enjoying it. And then I didn't love the people I was with. But it it was a very insular.

    She began to ask herself different questions: what are my values? What do I really care about?

    - Danielle Ireland

    looking back, I think I spent a lot of time hiding as a dance instructor because it fulfilled a lot of ego. It took a lot of those boxes like I was still performing. So I didn't feel like I was wasting my college degree in the performing arts.

    - Danielle Ireland

    And it was fun to tell people that's what I did. It was fun. It was fun to wear costumes like it filled it. It was fulfilling in some respects, but it didn't force me to ask myself deeper questions is kind of like living your life on a cruise ship. It's like it was like living in a party atmosphere, which was it served a purpose.

    - Danielle Ireland

    But it wasn't until I started asking those harder hitting questions that I realized that, oh, if this part of my life wasn't here, I would have a lot of serious gaps, like a lot of big gaping holes in my identity, my purpose, how fulfilled I really was.

    So she began to ask herself what environments felt best? And moved throughout a series of jobs. She worked at a cosmetics counter, selling organic skin care, then was a store manager for a fashion brand. Then there was a day spa. Each stop made her wonder if she would ever find a place to land and led her to want to work for herself, which she started to do as a beauty consultant and blogger, helping women find clothes and cosmetics.

    - Danielle Ireland

    But what I realized really quickly was that after working with a woman, maybe twice, she found her, matched her foundation and she knew how to curl her hair. She started talking to me about much more intimate things, like we've had three kids and my husband and I are having sex anymore. I have gained weight over the last few years and they just don't feel right in my skin like that. It was those moments that I started to feel what I call just like electricity.

    - Danielle Ireland

    It just was like tingling in my body. And it was it was it may have hit me all in one moment. It certainly would make for a better story if it did, I don't honestly remember, but I just felt so struck each time some woman would open up her heart to me, share some vulnerability with me and just expose something deeper and richer. And I just wanted to dive into that question with everything that I had. But I felt kind of stunted by what I felt like was a lack of of training.

    - Danielle Ireland

    And so I felt like I had to keep censoring myself with all this. Has been my experience with this or my opinion would be this, but I wanted to offer more with that type of conversation.

    - Danielle Ireland

    And that was really the first time that I thought, oh, is that is this what therapy is? This is what counseling is, because I hadn't even received therapy or counseling up until that point in my life. And so the year my husband and I got married, I decided I wanted to go to graduate school and pursue this.

    Danielle began graduate school in counseling.

    - Danielle Ireland

    And so that's started around thirty, thirty years old.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah. And I met you like. Right as you were officially finishing up your degree. I think you. Just had a turning and a final paper.

    - Danielle Ireland

    That sounds right. Yeah, and what was that close at now that we're in pandemic time prior to it seems like a blur.

    - Liesel Mertes

    When did you finish up your degree?

    - Danielle Ireland

    So let me think. I graduated in May 2017. And I, I remember graduation was Mother's Day, so I think it was like, may I say something. But I remember graduation was on a Sunday and I began working in a private practice the very next day like I took no time off. I felt like once I understood and had a vision and what felt like not a track, but like a breadcrumb trail of, oh, this is going to get me where I want to be and I think I'm on the right path for myself.

    - Danielle Ireland

    And I felt that certainty and for the first time, probably who knows how long. I also felt and this is I think now insert the trigger for uprooting my anxiety and all my fears and self doubts and insecurities.

    - Danielle Ireland

    But it was I realized what I wanted to do at a time where I felt like, oh, my gosh, if I just wasted however many years trying to find this life, that's what I felt at the time. And so I attacked pursuing my degree and then jumping into work with such intensity because I felt like I was trying to catch up and and prove myself and also try to beat my biological clock because I you know, having children wasn't at the top of my mind at that time of my life, but I knew it was coming up in a couple of years.

    - Danielle Ireland

    It's funny being six months pregnant now. I have no idea how quickly that would how quickly those those things would come together. But I really felt like I was constantly racing the clock. And so when I met you. If it was right around the time I was finishing my degree, I, I felt like I was always trying to stay a couple of months ahead of where I really was. And yeah. So I that time feels like a blur to me too, because I think I was just living in my head for such a long time.

    - Liesel Mertes

    I am I have my own particular resonance within my own story of that. It's and I hear a little bit in you, but for me it was not even necessarily external voices telling me, like, you haven't achieved enough or you've wasted time or you need to be somewhere different. It was very much an inner voice that was just driving me of exactly. The anxious is the right sort of a word, like I thought I would have been somewhere different, but now I'm here.

    - Liesel Mertes

    But now I wish I was further along. And it's it's a mental game to be constantly churning within.

    - Danielle Ireland

    Oh, no, you're you're you're absolutely right, and you're you couldn't have I mean, because I could not have been more supported and encouraged by the people around me. There was no one in my life, no one in my corner looking over my shoulder saying, why didn't you figure this out sooner? Are you sure you shouldn't be further along?

    - Danielle Ireland

    That was one hundred thousand percent. My own internal critic and yeah, that that had chatter because I remember I remember the first day being an orientation for the graduate program and it was like it would pick new things to make me feel small about that voice, would pick new things to make me feel small about on a daily basis. But I remember the big one when I was in the program was I was probably one of two hundred and fifty graduate students in the program I was in.

    - Danielle Ireland

    I think 10 were over the age of twenty three that because they most people went directly from undergraduate school to graduate school. And so there were a handful of people like me who realized at some point later in their life that they wanted to go back to school. But I just felt so out of place.

    - Danielle Ireland

    And I remember this kind of orientation exercise where like, let's have everyone go around and say what your undergraduate degree was. And it was political science and social work, social work and psychology, sociology and psychology, family health and wellness and sociology.

    - Danielle Ireland

    And I was like theater. I just felt so oh God, I felt so out of place.

    - Liesel Mertes

    You also talked about, you know, the sense of like your biological clock and a built in and the sense of time horizons that also was at play when we first met. Would you tell me a little bit about your pregnancy that preceded this one?

    - Danielle Ireland

    Oh, of course. Of course. Yeah. So that was two years ago now, I think. Oh goodness. Yeah. So I have right around 2018, so about a year into my work at my first practice. My husband and I decided we wanted to start trying and trying to conceive a baby, and it's that that and I haven't revisited this in a while, but spending my entire adult sexual life trying to prevent pregnancy and then thinking that we're just going to lift the barrier and it's going to happen the first time, it even though logically I understood that, I think emotionally I thought, like, sure, we'll try it.

    - Danielle Ireland

    We'll have sex a couple of times, bing, bang, boom, we'll get pregnant. Easy peasy. And that just wasn't our journey. It took us about a year to get pregnant the first time. And I was about I was just like three days shy of entering my second trimester when I miscarried our first pregnancy. Our son and. Yeah, it was a crushing, crushing blow, and that's when Julie Kratz, I think was the one who suggested I meet with you and.

    - Danielle Ireland

    I'm so glad I did, but, yeah, we we met for coffee, and I didn't even know what we were going to meet about. I just I just said yes. Well, I'm really glad that I did. Yeah.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And I'm you know, even to hear you say that, I'm shocked that two months into your not two months into your second trimester, I mean, that's also like there's never an easy time to have a baby die. But that's also like you've you've spent, you know, a number of months at that point, like anticipating and thinking about it, not even to count, you know, the whole year of I imagine like you said, I think your term was easy peasy. Lemon, Sweezy, I'm thinking how did that year unfold prior to conceiving? And as I said, now it's just as the years go by and the more I get to hold stories of people with their journey towards building a family, the more I realize, like there's not just one on ramp and off ramp like people.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Stories are way more complex than we often get a chance to give voice to an emotional journey.

    - Liesel Mertes

    How did that year like how is that feeling for you in the midst of all of these new professional stresses as well?

    - Danielle Ireland

    Yeah, I was the first time in my life I was disappointed by my period, which was so strange because I have thought of I can remember more times in my life where I got my period and it was like, oh, thank God. You know, I guess we would kind of high five each other. Like, we're good, we're good. And it was such a different sensation. And I think that it. Over time, what I didn't realize was happening and I wasn't letting myself acknowledge that I was starting to feel disappointed by my body.

    - Danielle Ireland

    Each month I would get my period. I felt like I was letting us down and I was letting myself down and my body was letting me down in. What's interesting, even expressing it that way, is I have recently just been catching up with the girlfriend and I she asked me what my intention was for twenty, twenty one. And last year my intention was, was trust and just in everything, just how could I trust myself more deeply? How could I listen to myself more, how can I honor that that more.

    - Danielle Ireland

    But I think this year my word is pleasure because I think about my body and there's to kind of bring it back to this to the what you asked and my story a little bit. I think when I left dance and these other these other jobs that I did like once I stepped into. Kind of committing to graduate school. I didn't realize it, but I think I really splintered off from my body because I was so consumed with my mind and my own thoughts, like my anxiety, my fear, my insecurity became all consuming.

    - Danielle Ireland

    And I just I voted my body off the island and I lived in my head, which was so unlike what my experience has been basically performing and dance, it's a very kinetic it's a very connected mind body experience, and I lived in that world my entire life and I didn't know any different. And so I didn't even realize I wasn't self-aware enough to know, like, oh, what you're experiencing is anxiety or oh, what you're experiencing is depression, like in your depression is manifesting itself as anxiety.

    - Danielle Ireland

    I just didn't have the tools or the language or the any way of knowing that. And so with the miscarriage, the if it's. If I can be. Maybe bold enough to say it this way, I think the gift or the lesson. In. In light of that loss was that the pain was so acute and it was so it took such a hold of everything that it was the first time in however many years I'd been in that state where the head trash was gone, like the the chatter, like the silence.

    - Danielle Ireland

    And the grief was there was just there was silence in my head for the first time. And I just sat in the suck of all of that. And I don't know if I can't. No, that's not the case for me now, like the head trader, like it's returns, she's she's she's come back. So I didn't hold on to that forever, but I experienced it and I I felt like I recognized it. And I think that that helped me start to return to my body and return to myself.

    - Danielle Ireland

    And I just. Again, I'm really hesitant to say that I'm grateful because I don't want I don't mean in any way, so I'm grateful for the loss of that life, but I am grateful that I took a lesson from it that can inform my life forward, because otherwise, I think for me, if if there wasn't some meaning in it, it would have just felt like a terrible, awful, awful. Indescribable waste and giving that experience some purpose is helpful for me and my healing, but I just if anyone's listening that's going through an experience like that, I in no way, I don't think that's necessary or required.

    - Danielle Ireland

    It just that was what was helpful for me.

    - Danielle Ireland

    But as far as the conception journey leading up to that, I was so focused on my plan and my timeline that sex wasn't as fun. Yeah, it was more pressured. I know that my husband felt that, too, in his own ways.

    - Danielle Ireland

    And and it was hard. I was playing the comparison game a lot. It was really hard to not compare myself to friends who got pregnant by surprise or friends who said, yeah, I just tracked my period on an app for a couple of months and it happened on month three, like each month that ticked by that it wasn't happening.

    - Danielle Ireland

    I was feeling more and more lost and I ended up finding out that I was pregnant after I had scheduled an appointment to meet a fertility specialist. We were going to schedule a time to do some blood work. And my period was late. And I was I was already, I think, two weeks pregnant when I went to.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    We will return to Danielle’s story in a moment. I want to let you know about one of our sponsors, Handle with Care Consulting. 2021 meets us with new challenges. A new administration, the same epidemic, the same division, and the relentless winter. Maintaining mental health is challenging and it is hard to keep people engaged. Let Handle with Care help. With keynotes, certificate programs, and executive coaching options, our empathy training will help you create a culture of caring where people survive, stabilize, and thrive.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    - Liesel Mertes

    Again, as we noted, miscarriage, it's actually way more common than our public discourse would indicate, where the assumption is that, you know, every pregnancy is a healthy baby. And, you know, as soon as you get that test, you should start decorating the nursery and plan, which I think can oftentimes mean for people that go through miscarriage is that you end up giving the news to lots of people who have no idea like what do or say?

    - Liesel Mertes

    What were some of like the most tone deaf or hard responses that you absorbed after a miscarriage?

    - Danielle Ireland

    Yeah, what a great question. Well, I'll say that. I think part of the reason why I'm so open and willing to talk about this in general is that I was given the again, I don't even know if this is the right language for what this experience was, but I can't think of a different way to describe it. So the experience my husband and I had at the emergency room because I ended up delivering my son at home and we took him with us to the emergency room because I was hemorrhaging pretty bad and it was just really physically taxing experience.

    - Danielle Ireland

    And I think I probably also went into shock and just lots of those things. But I remember I'll just I'll never forget the grace and the kindness and the warmth and also, I mean, it's bringing tears to my eyes, thinking about it, too, because had this happen during COVID having to be there by myself, I just can't imagine. I thought about that when I thought about women who undoubtedly have experienced this during shutdown and have had to be separated during that time because my husband was with me every second and laid in the bed with me most of the time, but.

    - Danielle Ireland

    But the the hospital staff, in particular, the nurses that were working on that shift because it was around three o'clock in the morning, so it was third shift. Oh, my God, these women were like angels on Earth. And we were probably in the hospital, I think somewhere between seven and nine hours. And as I said, it was probably when there was like a shift change going on. I don't know when it was exactly, but it was towards the end of our stay, about four I can't remember.

    - Danielle Ireland

    It was four or five different nurses came in one at a time and just held my hand and looked me in the eye and told me her story of loss was a miscarriage. And and I don't remember I don't remember their faces. I don't remember their names. But I just remember each each time it was like this wave of relief. And I'm still feeling it now talking about it like hearing I lost two and then I had to. I had to and I lost one and I had two more.

    - Danielle Ireland

    I lost three and I had just. It was just a different expression of you're not alone. You're not alone, you're not alone. And I couldn't have been more grateful and I didn't know that I needed that at the time. I just had no idea how much I needed that.

    - Danielle Ireland

    But the gift of that experience for me. It just made it so clear that for me, my healing would it it didn't require silence that you really needed to come through my expression of that.

    - Danielle Ireland

    And so. And thankfully, thankfully, I didn't keep the news of finding out I was pregnant to myself, but my husband and I, we were told we were preparing to do like a photo shoot with the sonogram and we were going to do a gender reveal. We were in that planning stage. And so thankfully, and I know that this is such a personal thing for everyone to handle in their own way, but I'm grateful that I. That because people understood the joy and the excitement.

    - Danielle Ireland

    And the pregnancy, I didn't have to explain as much about the pain of loss. I didn't feel like I needed to play catch up with two different conversations at the same time.

    - Danielle Ireland

    And so when we got pregnant this current time, we got pregnant a second time. I remember my husband initially felt very differently than I did. I wanted to tell everybody, not announce it on social media, obviously, but I wanted to let all of our friends and family know because for me it was like, I need them to know that I'm in this experience because I just it's what I need to feel safe and secure.

    - Danielle Ireland

    And he he wasn't so sure. He was like, well, but what if what if we experienced the same thing again? And I just. My my perspective on it was that. Keeping my joy, like, stifled or trying to cut my joy back wouldn't prevent or protect me from the loss if it happened. So I needed to let myself fully feel the joy because. That was the only way forward from for me. And so he you know, but I also wanted to honor and respect his needs.

    - Danielle Ireland

    And so we started telling a few people at a time, a little at a time. But I would probably say for him, his stress level probably really didn't go down until the 20 week ultrasound. Yeah, he probably didn't feel I would say he didn't feel that confident until then, but. But yeah.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Well, and what you say there highlights something that is resonant with my own experience, which is that grief is such a profoundly isolating journey, like two people's two people's grief, even if they're even if it's like you and your partner and you both lost a child, can just manifest itself so differently in different moments. And those those conversations can feel hard when when both people are saying, like, I need or I want something different in the midst of that.

    - Danielle Ireland

    Well, and I don't even know if I can give us full credit for that. We we scheduled a session with so we have a therapist that we see individually, but have also seen maybe three or four times and four couples work and we just can't see eye to eye. And we scheduled an appointment the week. That following week after it happened, I don't remember the exact timeline, and it wasn't because there was a rift between us, but we both just we just somehow knew and or felt like we needed to check in with Brian.

    - Danielle Ireland

    And he said something that I am so grateful for. How can you give each other the permission to to need to walk through your grief differently,? And I didn't fully understand what that meant, but that, putting that conversation at our minds, like how can because, for example, I could handle one social interaction a day. So what would happen? So the first maybe eight days after it happened, I have one friend at a time. I don't remember managing it either.

    - Danielle Ireland

    It just seemed to happen that way. But like one girlfriend would reach out and she would want to come over and she'd either bring food or wine or whatever, and we would just sit around and talk or she would listen for a couple of hours. And that was it. That was all the energy I had.

    - Danielle Ireland

    And at the time, we had two weddings coming up. I think one was the weekend after it happened and another was the following weekend. And I needed to really withdraw and kind of cocoon up.

    - Danielle Ireland

    And my husband, he's actually more of an extrovert than I am. And and so. We were able to, I think, process in a healthier way with that supportive of our therapy session and also looking at what does it really mean for me to need to be by myself or to not want to show up at a wedding and not I couldn't I just couldn't handle the stimulation of being around people.

    - Danielle Ireland

    And I didn't want to see their faces and I didn't want to see the like. So I don't want to handle I just couldn't handle that. But I think my husband needed to be out and about and needed to be with people. But he was caught between not wanting to feel like he was abandoning me. Right. Or wanting to honor himself. And I was caught between not wanting to put him in a position where he felt trapped, but also needing to honor my own needs.

    - Danielle Ireland

    But I don't know if we would have had the language for that. Without, I think, the support of our therapist at the time and

    - Liesel Mertes

    And so what ended up happening?

    - Danielle Ireland

    You know, was that like. I couldn't commit I basically I just wasn't willing to commit to any plans until moments before because I was like the waves can hit at different moments and they're like, I may I suck. I just don't know how I'm going to feel. And so I went to one of the wedding receptions and I stayed until they served cake.

    - Danielle Ireland

    And then I was done and and it was OK, like we were we were able to to get through it. And I think that that lesson has been such a. It's really helped, I think, just transform the way we support one another and how we're able to hold space for the fact that our needs are different, which is so much easier said than done. But when when you're when you're knee deep in grief, it's it's hard not to want to hold other people responsible for your pain.

    - Danielle Ireland

    But in truth, I think what we both realized is like. It's a shared experience and we're supporting each other, but even in that we're not responsible for each other, which is. It's hard, but it was it was really helpful. And I find sometimes hand-in-hand with that is.

    - Liesel Mertes

    I don't know, there's kind of the romantic myth that your partner should be able to fulfill, like physical, emotional self actualization needs, which is, you know, kind of a bogus premise, even when things are completely stable, let alone when you're both deeply compromised.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And to be able to say, like I can, I can give you something and I don't want to pull back entirely. But really, like I, I find in my own story and in those that I've worked with, like you, you need people outside of your partner to be able to kind of hold some of that emotional ballast because it's a big ask, you know, to say to the other person, like, please be my everything in this time where so many important aspects of my world seem really unstable.

    - Danielle Ireland

    And it's just you're asking someone to fulfill an order that they just can't. It's kind of like emotional arrest. It's I want you to be responsible for fulfilling all of my sexual needs and fantasies. Know what I know what my needs are and something that I hear a lot in sessions and I'm sure with couples and I'm sure has come out of my mouth, too. But that sense of well, you know, I've told you this before or you know this about me.

    - Danielle Ireland

    So that that idea that like if I've told you something about myself once, you're now forever held accountable to not disappointing me in that way. And that's I think that's a really that's a fine line. And it's a tricky space because I think. And this is, I think, a big part of my own journey for the last couple of years, like I'm still in, I'm not far enough away from it to feel like I've got a really clear grasp on this.

    - Danielle Ireland

    But where when I become more when I take more ownership for my own experiences, my just the experiences of my life and the less accountable I make David to that happiness. It's more like I feel more of a freedom in a permission, like we're bearing witness to each other's lives and we're. Which is really what I think I want more than anything is to feel seen and heard, which is what validation really means.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    - Liesel Mertes

    As you think about your journey with miscarriage, what do you wish if you could just, like, plant a knowingness in like the general consciousness? What do you wish that people knew about the pain of. Yeah, and, you know, it sounds like very visceral and embodied your particular manifestation of miscarriage.

    - Liesel Mertes

    What would you say, gosh, what would I want someone to know?

    - Danielle Ireland

    Oh, when I realized I never answered the question of my tone deaf comments, but I would say.

    And I don't and you could probably navigate the how how this would actually look in action better than I can, because this is more, I think, your expertise.

    - Danielle Ireland

    But I would say that one of the things I felt. Often, which is probably why we're so selective of who I chose to see in those early stages was that I had to manage the other person's pain on my back. And so I went from it. So but I think thankfully, I either was self aware enough at the time or understood enough about that through other experiences of grief or my training, like I was able to kind of maybe shield myself a little bit.

    - Danielle Ireland

    But there were a handful of times even with close family. Where I felt like I had to continue to nurture them through their disappointment in my loss. And so it was more so than any one particular comment,

    - Danielle Ireland

    I think the one I probably heard a lot was, which makes sense. I mean, it would be very instinctive, which is like, I'm so sorry. But it was it was that was a tough one for me to receive because they they did nothing wrong.

    - Danielle Ireland

    And so I think there could be a difference between. I'm so sorry that this is your experience. I'm so sorry that this is what you and David are going through. I'm so sorry that you're in this pain. But I think what it felt like people were apologizing to me a lot and. That's. That was. Tricky and I think also probably the most tone deaf, which in the grand scheme of things really wasn't that bad.

    - Danielle Ireland

    But I remember my general practitioner saw her for a physical maybe six months after it happened.

    - Danielle Ireland

    I don't remember exactly. And she, having never been pregnant herself, in her own words, she she was very matter of fact, I think probably from like she's an expert in the body, therefore an expert in what happened with my body. But she said. You know, because I actually never blamed myself for the miscarriage, I'm grateful for that that wasn't that wasn't a manifestation of that particular grief for me. I didn't I didn't think that I had done anything wrong.

    - Danielle Ireland

    I mean, I felt like my body had let me down, but I didn't think like, oh, I shouldn't have jumped up and down that hard or I shouldn't have. I didn't I didn't, thankfully, have that part of it. But she said, you know what, I'm sure this is so tough, Danielle. And I'm sure no matter what I say, you're going to blame yourself anyway. But I just need you to know it's not your fault.

    - Danielle Ireland

    And it was just so I felt so brash and I felt like she was speaking on an assumption of what my experience was rather than ask me about it now. And that I remember kind of ruffled my feathers and rubs me the wrong way. But but thankfully, I don't think I experienced too too much in the other way. Yeah. I don't remember feeling disappointed by people very often, thankfully.

    - Liesel Mertes

    What has do you feel like there has been or what has been the carryover into this next pregnancy as you are now six months long? Have you? You know, it's you can't you can only live your own experience like you can't imagine, like, well, what would have been like to have a second pregnancy without that. But can you pull a thread through to say it has felt different because of this?

    - Danielle Ireland

    Oh, it has to. Without, without a doubt, I, I remember in the first couple of days, it may have been the second day after the miscarriage.

    - Danielle Ireland

    I remember thinking how remembering how caught up I was in my body changing and the bloating and my belly and my swollen boobs and like all of this, all of the stuff. And I remember sitting outside with a friend feeling just empty and saying I. God, just in a day like I would trade all of that for all of that discomfort, I would take it all back like I want all of that back. And but I couldn't have known I couldn't have known that without the loss.

    - Danielle Ireland

    Like, I. I don't know. And it's not to blame my myself prior to that miscarriage, because that was what I was experiencing at the time and that was what was true for me at the time. But I was. I think I was. Feeling caught up in the physical changes and feeling like home less attractive and this and this and then the loss just kind of snapped my focus after my priorities back.

    - Danielle Ireland

    And to be perfectly honest, I don't think I even knew how much I wanted to be a mother until I lost my first baby.

    - Danielle Ireland

    And not to say that I wouldn't. Love that boy, if he were here, has his first birthday would have been on December twenty third, so assuming he would have been born on his due date, but. I I've walked through the experiences of this pregnancy, still feeling them, I still have my moments where I've complained. It's not to say this is I don't I don't want to say like I have been an angel in this whole pregnancy.

    - Danielle Ireland

    It's been like a gift from the mother. And I was like, no, no, no. Like, I've still had plenty of, like, moments to kvetch and and and wine. But this ring of appreciation and this sort of Tuzer were like this thread that's pulled through is just massive, massive amounts of gratitude.

    - Danielle Ireland

    Like I can feel her kick right now. Every time I feel her move, it's just so exciting. And I know I have no doubt that being able to see her and hold her and touch her and smell her will be enriched because of what was informed from from the first experience.

    - Danielle Ireland

    Like, I think I was so focused on how my life was changing, what it might cost me and what I might be losing, that actually the whole experience, losing the whole experience, like losing the whole pregnancy, it just flipped the priorities.

    - Danielle Ireland

    And like this pregnancy because I didn't slow down. I didn't slow down on my production. My like the amount of clients I was scheduling, my expectations for myself. I didn't stop to rest. I just felt like I had to keep trucking along like life was normal.

    - Danielle Ireland

    And and so I needed to keep producing and doing and doing all the things I'm like I'm just going to do, like with a baby. It's no big deal. Like that's why they have baby born until just like the baby on and you get right back to life. And I think again, it was that old anxiety of I can't slow down, I can't stop because it'll all slip away.

    - Danielle Ireland

    But this this first trimester actually was a lot more uncomfortable than the first pregnancy. I was a lot more sick. What we're tired and knowing what I knew from before it was, I just gave myself a lot more grace, took a lot more naps, I reduced my my client schedule. I had breaks between clients, which I never did before. It was just I would just kind of knock out client, client, client, client, maybe get a little bit of time to eat client, client and then onto the next thing.

    - Danielle Ireland

    And I scaled way, way back. And what's incredible, too, I mean, my little daughter has already been such a powerful teacher for me and she's not even born yet.

    - Danielle Ireland

    But I've actually been able to do more by pushing less in specifically in my professional career. Like this has been a really, really remarkable year for me professionally in terms of what I've been able to put out and I've cut. At least my expectations and my schedule way, way back, way, way back.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Danielle, thank you for sharing so many aspects of that wisdom. I also want to be cognizant of your time. Is there anything else that you would really like to share that I didn't ask a question that led you into?

    Danielle Ireland

    Such a good question, I'm going to borrow some of these questions in my office because they're so good. Gosh, no, I can't think I can't think of anything. Other than.

    - Danielle Ireland

    I'm grateful to have this time to get to share with you and and your listeners and the people that you connect your material with.

    - Danielle Ireland

    And I'm just incredibly grateful that I was introduced to you at a time where I didn't even realize how much I needed to know you.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah, I am so glad to continue to watch both of our paths unfurl and I celebrate this new little one, I celebrate not only the birthing of a physical child, but you did. You gave birth to lots of things and initiatives in a pretty barren year. That is 2020.

    - Liesel Mertes

    So if people want to know more about you and your work, is your website the best place to go?

    - Danielle Ireland

    Yes. So danielleireland.com will show links to a guided journal called Treasured that I created this year. I'm also leading a workshop called the Unleashing New Relationship Workshop. And the link to participate or learn more about that is there. And then there's more information about me and blog content and my social media links are all housed there. So that's a nice, easy space for people. Or my podcast, if they want to read more.

    MUSICIAL TRANSITION

    Here are three helpful takeaways from my conversation with Danielle:

    There is power in sharing your story of loss.Miscarriage is often a private burden, unseen to a wider world unless the parent chooses to share. Danielle shared how meaningful it was to have multiple nurses come up to her in the recovery room to share that they too had lost a child in miscarriage. They spoke words of hope and camaraderie to her in the midst of a very dark time…and gave her confidence to know that her healing journey did not have to be silent. Partners grieve differently.As her therapist asked her, “Can you allow your partner to experience grief differently than you?” What does it look like to give the other person space and allowance? This is deeply resonant with my own experience of walking with my husband through our seasons of parental loss. “I’m sorry” can sometimes sound redundant or abstract to a person suffering.I often tell people that saying “I’m sorry that is happening to you” can be a really good go-to phrase, but this take-away is a good reminder that there is no one-size fits all approach to comfort. For Danielle, the “I’m sorry” felt hollow. Which brings me to the point 3b. Pay attention to the person you are communicating with. If they seem like they aren’t responding to your phrase, whether it is “I’m sorry” or something else, file that information away and try something different the next time you interact with them, like “I was thinking of you and how hard this must be.” The best comforters are those that pay attention and are consistently adapting to the person in front of them.

    OUTRO

    You can learn more about Danielle at https://danielleireland.com/

  • - Cari Hahn

    And I and I remember being on my hands and my knees rocking back and forth, screaming at the top of my lungs. I just was so devastated. And I think I was breathing all of it. I was breathing the fact that I had had cancer. I was grieving the fact that I had worked so hard and that I had left so little for myself

    INTRO

    My guest today is Cari Hahn, a breast-cancer survivor and the founder of Karma Candles. Cari talks about the challenges or breast cancer, the stupid things people say (like telling you all about their friends/relatives that died from cancer, losing her job after treatment, and the journey through darkness that has led her to create literal and figurative light for others.

    Cari and I recorded this conversation last fall, in the midst of breast cancer awareness week. Cari is warm and engaging, she talks with her whole person, leaning forward with the intensity of the story. And you will notice that there was a small problem with the recording, a bit of a hum in the background. I didn’t realize the hum until it was too late but decided that the content was so good and helpful that I wanted to run it anyways.

    Cari is married to Matt, a firefighter, and they have twin high school girls.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Well, here you are, married to a firefighter with firefighter when you met him. How did you guys meet?

    - Cari Hahn

    So he was he was a volunteer firefighter when I got home. So I was I was a senior in college. And I actually met him in Florida, of all places, at a wedding. And he came back from the wedding and our friends got married, sent him a postcard to call me.

    - Cari Hahn

    So he proceeds to start calling me and he has my phone number. And I'm like, why is he calling?

    But their relationship grew from that postcard and phone call…and Matt has been with the Indianapolis Fire Department for twenty plus years.

    - Cari Hahn

    Oh, so we have two identical twin girls that are seventeen years old. So they are doing years at Carmel High School this year. We have Carly and Grace. They are they are delayed drivers. So they will actually they will be driving in about a week thankfully. So they waited for that.

    - Cari Hahn

    And then we have a Great Dane named Ellie who was a rescue, and then we have a little dog that we had for oh gosh about Peekapoo. He he he's a little guy. It's hilarious to see the two of them next to each other and he's got a really bad underbite. And then we have Monkey, the cat that I referred to as my chemo cat because I got Monkey when I was going through cancer treatment.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Well, that's a great segue, Monkey.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah. And so it was 2016 at your initial diagnosis. Had you and you had a lump that you found or what led you to your. Diagnosis?

    - Cari Hahn

    My dad, so I I have the order, I have turned 40 that year, I have the order safely placed in a kitchen cabinet where I was going to where I kept forgetting about it. And but I just so happened to be sitting at the computer and my husband and I owned a business at that point.

    - Cari Hahn

    So I was doing some selling for him. And I just I had to get under my arm. And when I ate, like, I felt then something in my to outside of my breast. And I thought that that's very strange. So I proceeded to then go upstairs and I still felt it. I then thought I took my shirt off and to see what was happening. And as I did that, I saw something there. It looked like it looked like a grape.

    - Cari Hahn

    It was the size of a grape.

    And with this lump, Cari’s journey with breast cancer began. I

    - Liesel Mertes

    And for someone who has not walked through that sudden emergence into the world of tests and things like that, I mean, was what was the most overwhelming part of all of that?

    - Cari Hahn

    You know, I I think in the beginning it's extremely the amount of appointments. You couldn't you can't believe how many appointments. And I actually tried to total it the other day from the time I was frightened for my diagnosis when the diagnosis process started.

    - Cari Hahn

    So mid-March until the end of December, when I was done with treatment that year, I probably went to the hospital at least seventy five to one hundred times for tests, for treatment, for whatever, if a lot.

    - Cari Hahn

    So I think in the beginning, though, it is it's the weirdest feeling to know that you might have cancer in your body and you're just waiting for tests and schedules and but it's also life is going on around us too. So it's it's extremely overwhelming.

    - Cari Hahn

    And when you when you when you get the diagnosis, then you learn this whole new language. And if it is, it's it's very overwhelming. And the diagnosis part, I think, is one of the really hard part because there's so much waiting involved with it.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Tell me more about that.

    - Cari Hahn

    So initially I, I felt the cancer. So this is mid March. I then call after I felt it. I called the schedule, the mammogram the next day. And at that point they said, oh, no, we can't be. You need to go see your doctor, which you're like. And they're like, well, we're going to get you in actually sooner. And I was able to see my doctor right away.

    - Cari Hahn

    What's weird about this is I had had a breast exam, so not a mammogram.

    - Cari Hahn

    But she, she said she, she felt in December there was nothing sealable in December. So this is now mid March. And she basically is like that was not there when you were here in December. And it wasn't there was nothing there. And when when my breast cancer came out, when that when that particular cancer, my cancer ended up to the breast cancer, it was safe to do so. In six months. It grew from nothing available to phase two, which is mind blowing to me.

    - Cari Hahn

    But I you there are so many times to go on. And so then I go for the mammogram. I had an ultrasound at the ultrasound. They said if there's a problem biopsy. And so sure enough, the radiologist came in and he's like he referred to it as a lesion and he said, you're going to need a biopsy.

    - Cari Hahn

    And he said, you need questions.

    - Cari Hahn

    And I said, know? And I just really I didn't know what a lesion was, but I knew I didn't want to be in that room anymore. And I knew I could do it.

    - Cari Hahn

    So so I left very promptly and then I Googled. And as I got to my heart, what is the lesion in the tumor then that leads to the biopsy. And then, of course, that was when I got my diagnosis from that. But there's even more testing or more pathology then that goes on with the tumor.

    - Cari Hahn

    So at first I went to when I went and met with an on. He told me the probability of me meeting was very good, that I probably wouldn't need to know what they are doing, pathology on my team for the next month is how long the pathology took. So I thought of April 15th. My cancer did not come out until mid-June.

    - Liesel Mertes

    So you have this just when I imagine could be a very anxious in between waiting time. Yeah, that is dragging on.

    - Cari Hahn

    It's very anxious and also are very scared because I don't really trust my body either because I have cancer in it. And then so I have the main cancer which was which was the state stage two in my right. Well then during an MRI, which I ended up using three MRI during the diagnosis and having the biopsy on the other side and then come to find out, I had it looked like a stage zero breast cancer, which is ductal carcinoma in situ.

    - Cari Hahn

    It was then I have to wait here for on that side.

    - Cari Hahn

    But during the time you're waiting and you're scared and you're thinking rolling in and it's it's a really it's a really hard place to find peace during that time.

    - Liesel Mertes

    What sorts of things were you doing for yourself that were helpful and what sorts of other things were people doing for you that were helpful?

    You can take other questions we have now.

    - Cari Hahn

    So I just met with I have a lot of my clients now tend to be, gee, I went to deliver some things for the other day into a huge stack of cards and books and. You name it, gift cards and the response from people when you are diagnosed with cancer, I kind of would say it was almost kind of like a 10 year old in some ways. And I have I am from here. So I I have a lot of I know a lot of people.

    - Cari Hahn

    My husband is from from here. So we're we're pretty connected with the community.

    - Cari Hahn

    But the outpouring of love and support and and gift cards and cards and notes and all kinds of things, that the weekend that I was diagnosed, if it was at a party, you have people through the house the entire weekend. And it was actually it was a really fun weekend because I remember sitting on my porch for the weekend and drinking wine with friends and some of them I hadn't seen in a few years.

    - Cari Hahn

    And the outpouring of support that I got during this time was really, really helpful as far as things that I was trying to do for myself. At that point.

    I was I was trying to find books that maybe made less anxious for a long walk or just to kind of distract myself during that time, because it is it's a long way. And if it's just it feels like it goes on forever and ever and ever.

    Cari felt well-supported in the immediate aftermath and even throughout her initial treatments.

    - Cari Hahn

    So actually, during chemo, my work was actually my work was supportive during chemo, my my workplace. I actually I was by my employer during treatment. I was very supportive.

    - Liesel Mertes

    They what kinds of things were they doing that were particularly good?

    - Cari Hahn

    If I was at my coworkers ended up giving me six months of donated time, which was incredible. So they took their vacation days and donated them to me if I knew them, if I needed to take the time off, which was absolutely phenomenal.

    - Cari Hahn

    And then there was a firefighter that was retiring.

    - Cari Hahn

    And one of the conditions when he retired is, OK, I want to have my time and my vacation time lapse because I want her to have this during treatment. So my co-workers say they want to function with what we do in that time.

    - Cari Hahn

    So I was very loved and cared for by my co-workers during that time.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And when did things start to change? Well, let me let me take that back, because I forgot about this and I remember this today as I was kind of prepping, so as I was getting ready to go into surgery, they covered for me for about a week.

    - Cari Hahn

    And I remember sitting down with the person who covered for me and she said something that she was giving herself props for the fact that she was going to be covering for me to be gone. And I thought, this is a weird statement I have. Like, I'm not going to Aruba. I'm getting ready to have breast cancer removed from my body. So that that was a little strange. And I just took that away. But, you know, they were I got a bonus at the end of that year.

    - Cari Hahn

    So, again, they were still very supportive of me. The shift for me really started to happen as I was just a few months out of treatment is when I started to feel this shift from my employer. And in it it happened pretty quickly.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah, tell me tell me more.

    - Cari Hahn

    So I was this was now marked, so I'm done with active treatment, but breast cancer is this lifelong illness that 30 percent of us go on to be diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer after we've had early stage cancer.

    - Cari Hahn

    So for me. I was getting ready to start a new cancer drug regimen. I'm exhausted and I've only met three weeks of work for everything. So that was for surgery, chemo and radiation that lasted for six and a half weeks. So I was very, very, very tired and I was struggling.

    - Cari Hahn

    And I essentially, I went to my oncologist and I said, I'm really having a hard time. And I and I said, I need you to give me permission to do that, because I just I wanted someone to tell me it was OK, that I was tired and that I am the kind of person that if you tell me I'm doing a good job, I'm like, OK, I want to do the job.

    - Cari Hahn

    So my medical treatment people are like, you're so brave, so strong. And I wanted to be all of those things and I didn't want to disappoint anyone or inconvenience anyone. And but really at this point, I just I couldn't hold it together anymore because I was so exhausted. So I went to my employer and I said, this is the beginning of March. And I said, listen, I just I need to cut off just a couple of these.

    - Cari Hahn

    So for about three weeks, I worked 30 hours. And but it was interesting because at this time I am starting to feel a little bit about your chest and my my third week, essentially, I sat me down and they put their focus on unpaid leave or you need to go back to working full time, actually, to add to your your job, to actually add to the duties in another department. So with my job.

    - Cari Hahn

    And. I mean, I was floored and I am like, this is really this is I was really floored during the conversation and then you could start that leaves today.

    - Cari Hahn

    And I said, well, I said to him, I said, can I use any of any of my my from my coworkers? And at that point, it this was someone that I believe was my friend. And he looked at me and she said, no, I'm sorry, you don't have cancer anymore. You don't have donated time. And I said, oh, at least today your supervisor, your job role and your function. And I said, OK.

    - Cari Hahn

    And I went back down to my desk and I remember being super grateful that I had a really big purse that day. But I also wish that maybe I brought it with me because I knew I knew I was never going to walk out that door. And I started throwing all the things that I could that belonged to me and my birth. And I picked up the phone and I and I called H.R. She was up on on the second level and I said, you know, I want to talk about it today.

    - Cari Hahn

    And she said, OK. She said, I need you to bring your laptop and your cell phone. And I went upstairs and I took her my laptop and my cell phone. And I went ahead and gave her my my work credit card to never forget. And it was really it was hard. It was shocking. I'm walking out the door with the weirdest experience of my life. But what broke my heart even more was when I got in my car.

    - Cari Hahn

    I knew at this point I had to call my doctor to get the paperwork started for again, I'm trying to figure out now I'm never walking back in the door, but I had to figure out health insurance and those things. So when I called my oncologist.

    - Cari Hahn

    What, what really crushed me that day was I apologize to tell you this is unique or special, but we see this happen in probably 50 percent of our patients and that say it really crushed me.

    - Cari Hahn

    And I remember coming home and I cried probably the hardest I've ever played in my entire life that night. It was like a grieving. It was like it was like it was like a death when I was freezing.

    - Cari Hahn

    And I and I remember being on my hands and my knees rocking back and forth, screaming at the top of my lungs. I just was so devastated. And I think I was breathing all of it. I was breathing the fact that I had had cancer.

    I was grieving the fact that I had worked so hard and that I had left so little for myself and that I could have been on unpaid leave or unpaid leave from my for my co-workers. And and I was grieving if I had used it earlier and would have been fine. And I was also I was grieving the fact that I knew at that point I was going to have to spend the rest of my life fighting.

    - Liesel Mertes

    You know, your, your story has resonance with what I hear from a number of people who have gone through different disruptive life events, but it's this connection of like I go to work, I didn't go into this encounter thinking that I would quit, but it just became more that I would take whatever was offered. But it became so crystal clear to me in that moment, if you think back to like you stepping into that room, how I mean, there are many ways that the interaction could have been better, but like, what would you have hoped for in that's it?

    - Liesel Mertes

    Like what would have been you coming out and going, oh, man, I'm so glad I work to capture that sentiment that you had earlier on in your diagnosis.

    - Cari Hahn

    You know, you obviously at this point, I'll never know what really what really happened. My fears, my beliefs, my beliefs, because they talked a lot about insurance and how expensive the insurance was and how much their employee cost them and insurance. I was on their insurance if that wasn't my choice. My husband has felt so horrible I have to pay for insurance. Here's the thing about me. I am such a I. You can take the gloves off and I'll have any conversations with you if I would have sex.

    - Cari Hahn

    You cost us a lot on insurance. Can you can you work part time and work here and then we just don't have I mean, I have been like, that's great. I would love to work part time.

    - Cari Hahn

    Now, I don't know if that role if I could have done that, but I wish that whatever it was that caused that. But there had just been an honest conversation because I've spent the past three and a half years in my house.

    - Cari Hahn

    What was it me? Was I just. Is it because I'm defective now? Because I have cancer? Like you said, people just not like me anymore because like cancer. I mean, it's all these things are replayed in my head that, you know, I don't really know what caused that. And again, even if it hasn't been a conversation I like, I just wish the conversation would have occurred.

    - Cari Hahn

    The other thing is that I think if I'm being really honest, when you're going to reflect, you look like someone going through cancer. That's this where when I started, I, I have this long blonde hair. I have a fabulous personality. I'm happy I'm on these things and I love all of those things when I was going through cancer, because that's who I am. I, I, I like people. I have an outgoing personalities, but I also look fat because a lot of times I didn't wear a wig, I wore my hat.

    - Cari Hahn

    So, you know, if if cancer is scary to look at and I don't know if that played a role, I don't know if they were like, oh, just get her out of there. We don't we don't want to see that. I mean, like, I was Shrek or something, I, I don't know. But but cancer, it's not sparkly. It's not pretty. It's cancer and it's hard. And and I gained weight when I was in cancer treatment because I eat potatoes because that's all.

    - Cari Hahn

    But thank God I have this metallic taste in my mouth and you're tired and you're fatigued.

    - Cari Hahn

    And you know, like I said, I'll never know what, what caused it, but so all I can do is show and and make up things in my head. And sometimes probably the things that I make up are probably pretty harsh and I'm sure not accurate.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah, well, is that the challenge of those unanswered questions and even to just have in mind if if you're an organization who's dealing with someone who is in the midst of a lot of physical and emotional and mental upheaval, to think we've got a lot going on in their body and in their headspace, I want to communicate really like I want to over communicate.

    - Liesel Mertes

    I want to overcome it. That's a good message, too. Yeah.

    - Cari Hahn

    And when I was on this leave, as I'm trying to get my ducks in a row, I probably ended up being on leave for a couple of weeks. It was probably maybe a month or so.

    - Cari Hahn

    And part of it too, I didn't quite want to play golf because I also thought I want to keep on coming back because you don't want me back. And that was the only power I think I have at that time. And I remember call me, I think, walking out the oncologist office and into the you're so overwhelmed already. I mean, like badgering again to make sure that I'm not going to come back. And that was really hard. And when I finally I finally started to get insurance, I got all the ducks in a row and I made the decision that the notice I wasn't coming back.

    - Cari Hahn

    I went to pick up my things and that person met me down in the lobby. I had all my stuff. I mean, my brother said dumpster. I mean, just like they put me out there. But I remember her. She cried as if this is happening. And she's like, there's just some things that are not right and they're not fair. And she's crying. And I looked at her and I said, I'm going to do something about that.

    Cari Hahn

    That doesn't make her any less guilty because at some point she did the right thing would have been to stand with me. And, and that wasn't her choice. So here she is crying to me.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Right, which is the added pressure of then you needing to respond to the emotional need in the midst of your own sadness, right?

    - Cari Hahn

    So. Big mess in this season and a lot of pain from the work,

    - Liesel Mertes

    I'm sorry for that. It just sounds awful.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    We will return to Cari’s story in just a moment. 2021 finds us immersed in challenges. And it is hard to know if you are supporting the mental health of your people. This is where my company (and the podcast sponsor) Handle with Care Consulting can help. We offer workshops, coaching, and keyontes to help you build a culture of care. Because empathy isn’t a personality trait, it is a set of skills that can be learned. Let us help.

    MUSCIAL TRANSITON

    - Liesel Mertes

    As you think back on things that people said or did, and there are other things that you would say to people who are watching someone who has breast cancer like this is just dumb. Don't ever do this.

    - Cari Hahn

    Yeah, I mean, people tend to you know, it's funny because when you have cancer, you know, it's obviously opens up this communication and it never fails.

    - Cari Hahn

    How many people tell you that someone I know had cancer and they died? If it always goes to that? And it's almost comical because I like to say that. But people say that a lot. A lot more than you think they'll say. Oh, well, she be that the first. And then I came back and she died. So there's a lot of it, really. And you have to laugh about I mean, that's what I do.

    - Cari Hahn

    I have to laugh sometimes painful things, because that's how I get through them and deal with them. But a lot of people, surprisingly, will tell you about that.

    - Cari Hahn

    And actually, not long ago, my daughter was at the farmer's market with me for my business. And someone came up and she's like, oh, well, oh, well, my friend had cancer, but hers was back and it's Terminal four and she walked away. I looked at Grace, my daughter, and we both just felt we both were laughing because.

    - Cari Hahn

    Grace, why does everyone telling you about everyone who died? I don't know. And I said it's a really great thing for people to talk about.

    - Cari Hahn

    The other thing that I think that I think it's really insensitive when people talk about their loss not being a very big deal with hair loss. And, you know, at the time it was fine because I knew it was in an effort to save my life. When I lost my hair, but I just think sometimes that's a really good thing to bring up with people who are going through cancer.

    - Cari Hahn

    I think you can talk to them and say, how are you doing all of that? Like a person going through cancer talked about it. But I think when people minimize it and say it's just hair grow back. It is just hair and it will grow back, and I was taking my life, but unless you are me sitting in my shoes, you really don't deserve to have that conversation. Right.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Well, and would potentially forces you to have to stuff any unpleasant feelings that you might be having about your hand? I guess I can't mention that because.

    - Cari Hahn

    Yeah, it is just there now. Yeah. I mean, it's like I mean, I would say those two things are probably the things that I think a lot of people. Right. And I think sometimes too. And again, you probably realize this was what I think people in general don't like to talk about unpleasant things and they don't like to be uncomfortable.

    - Cari Hahn

    And so you can tell the people that come in the room that it's just it's so uncomfortable for them. It's not uncomfortable for me. I mean, I have a plane going off my car. I mean, that's just that's what it was. But there are people that it's so uncomfortable they don't know what to say or do. So they just kind of they kind of avoid, if you like, the play.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Right. Well, and I imagine there are very physical markers in some ways in a journey with cancer like surgery, there's chemo, then there is the landscape of like continuing monitoring appointments. What has this like? It's not the immediate stage of constant intervention, but some of the pervasive uncertainty of wait and see.

    I asked Cari about the on-going journey with cancer, the yearly scans to make sure that the cancer has not returned. She talked about the uncertainty and the waiting, and I wondered what has been helping her.

    - Cari Hahn

    If it's hard, if I do, I do a lot of yoga. And that has been a huge source of just helping you through this life that I have of uncertainty and waiting. And when I first it was shortly after the job when I reached out to my friend John, I called them and I'm like, Don, I'm I'm struggling with everything right now. And at that point, he said they say that women who try to do yoga really, really well in front of survivorship.

    - Cari Hahn

    And I have done a couple of years before that and it was hot yoga. And I remember I was miserable. My eyeballs were sweating. I'm like, this is terrible. I absolutely hated it. OK, so he's like, try yoga. And I am willing to try. So that day I now I want to yoga. I was not hot yoga practice one hundred plus degrees and it was an hour and a half. That's what I am not enough that I packed up because I really couldn't.

    - Cari Hahn

    But I loved every minute of it for me.

    - Cari Hahn

    I enjoy the last six of the toxins, all of it leaving my body with all that sweat and all of that I love because just to be able to be in a quiet room for me, do that.

    Cari Hahn

    And I recommend that for a lot of breast cancer patients that they would try this.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah, that's a great recommendation. Well, it's here in that I think sometimes there's an outpouring of support in the immediacy after diagnosis treatment, and it sounds like that was congruent with your story. But I'm reminded, even as you talk like it's I don't know if lifelong is the right word, but it's it's like a long game getting a lot of these inflection points of uncertainty and waiting and second guessing like the landscape has changed for you now and again, you know, people who are young that are destined to be more aggressive.

    - Cari Hahn

    So, know, I have I have a few friends right now that are that have stage four. They have metastatic breast cancer.

    - Cari Hahn

    And that's heartbreaking to have to see that and to know that every day they still are getting help and they are fighting and they are knowing that there is no cure for them and they're going to be in treatment the rest of the rest of their lives. And a lot of times they will get a metastatic diagnosis and typically live about two to three years.

    - Cari Hahn

    What I will say is that the advancements in breast cancer with metastatic, you're seeing that longer now, which is which is incredible.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Can I jump in? Because I realize I have heard that word. What does metastatic mean? Does it mean many locations?

    - Cari Hahn

    So metastatic basically means that it came back it came back in an area like so if it was breast, it then traveled to the lungs and maybe traveled to the brain itself, to the bone, the liver. So it basically it's a location away from the breast. But when that happens, there is no cure for stage four metastatic breast cancer there. It's not a cure. So, again, typically, they say say you usually live for two to three years, which are diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer.

    - Cari Hahn

    So and that that is the diagnosis that with early stage breast cancer, 30 percent of us are diagnosed with metastatic within a decade or two or three times.

    - Liesel Mertes

    That's sobering.

    - Cari Hahn

    It is. So what? For me, these animals are scary. But then there's also what I'll say is there's also the guilt that someone has to do the one in three. Right. And, you know, there when my scans come back clean, I I'm so relieved and I'm so I'm so grateful.

    - Cari Hahn

    But then I have friends that walk alongside me as cancer survivors and they're doing that. And that batho battle is really hard because there is survivor guilt is hard. And I have a very deep level of empathy from being a survivor.

    - Cari Hahn

    And so when that happens, I mean, it can I can cry for days because I'm just so heartbroken that it's not me, but it's.

    - Cari Hahn

    Then why? Why is why? Because, again, I haven't gotten used to this stuff, but I have to go through those scans and I know how scary those things are that.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Well, I I imagine that so much of these feelings in this connection with empathy and also, as you mentioned, your, your degree work as an undergraduate in some creative arts like you to Karma Candles. I would love for you to tell listeners about the work that you do.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah. Tell me about Karma candles.

    - Cari Hahn

    So when I when I finished my treatment, obviously, and then I, I didn't have a job and I'm like, what do I do? So I laid around in my bed and I cried for a few months and it was that didn't really serve me for obvious reasons. So I remember, you know, I finally learned that one day, look at me like Cari is like you're either going to be a victim of this or you're going to be a victor.

    - Cari Hahn

    And I know you're not a victim, is not you've never been who you are. And it's like, I cannot wait to get out of that bed, but I really I really strongly enough. And when I was getting up, I would get up on the floor, get home, and I would ask with things are fine, but I love you. But I would say gift for them. And then I get up again and it's all over.

    - Cari Hahn

    And so this is about four months, probably three months. And I I took the girls to the mall one day, and they really love the Anthropology candle and I bought him a candle.

    - Cari Hahn

    And then I thought to myself that I can make a candle because I've always been a creative person. So my my degree was in art therapy. My mother is an interior design assistant, interior design. And I come from a family of people that to like to create.

    - Cari Hahn

    And I started eating and Googling how to how to make candles.

    - Cari Hahn

    And I also want to create products around me, too. And when I started realizing what was in a lot of products that you buy from the store, I was trying to reduce the toxins that I use in my house and on my body. And so I started making the candles with the friends and it was just a hobby. And it was all so I, I then for a period of time, work for a hospital foundation, raising money for an infusion center.

    - Cari Hahn

    And I thought, well, that maybe would be really helpful and maybe that would be healing. And then I did it for almost a year, but it really wasn't because it was a hospital foundation. So I'm still in the hospital. I'm from the hospital is still kind of a scary place and overwhelming place.

    - Cari Hahn

    So it was last May the night that Matt and I decided that I had much help with the candles. And he's like, you know, why don't you make it full time? And so we decided to make it full time. And then all that I do like candles and candles when I when I make them that I am lighting up the dark, the dark places of life. And I and I do believe that.

    - Cari Hahn

    And then when I when I hear feedback from people, especially people who are going through a hard time and they tell me what happened to them during our time, I ever denied that I would be.

    - Cari Hahn

    And then I ended up designing some jewelry and certainly jewelry, because again, when I was in my battle, I never really found anything that I felt that I was going through. So there's a couple of words. I have I have warrior and I have faith and I have hope and I have that. And for me, I have worn my bad ass necklace this entire month of October of I fundraise because October is a big month that I read my work with a lot of nonprofit.

    - Cari Hahn

    And I hear some hard news and I see things that I do in my day to day anyway. I do those things, but especially in October, it's really tough and I love those. And I have women that are sitting there giving their chemotherapy and delivering and I'm so grateful that I get to be a part of that with them. And that that's kind of a badge of honor.

    - Cari Hahn

    Yeah, there there's some lovely pieces and I have been the beneficiary of receiving some of your candles and some we just burned through to the very end of the last one there in some beautiful.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Containers smell great. They do not give my people headaches, which oftentimes happens in Bodyworks candles. I will we'll have a link in the show notes. There are some physical places that they can get them here in central Indiana where some of those places.

    - Cari Hahn

    Yeah, so I have a handful of local retail defeat factories.

    - Cari Hahn

    So I am in Denver from Tucson, down from Carmel. I am coming in from all the sisters in Indianapolis.

    - Cari Hahn

    I am at Cloud9, which is a day spa. So I have a handful of retailers. Oh, I am for getting back to the studio here with my candles. They're phenomenal and a lot of a lot of the places that are Women-Owned too, and they're local. And I'm always about people going to support those places, which is great. So one of the things about the is that the headache. So they're laugh so as I can possibly make a film and then all of my fragrance with something called phthalate free.

    - Cari Hahn

    So we basically don't have any of the chemical plasticizers in them. So we're just going to burn their cotton because again, I want I want the face that people are and I want to be is clean and non-toxic.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah, they're they're lovely candles, you should check them out. Cari, I appreciate you opening up your story today. Was there anything that you would really like to add that you didn't get a chance to say?

    - Cari Hahn

    No, I thank you for one thing that I didn't probably say is a phenomenal book. When I was diagnosed with someone gave me a call. There is No place like Hope. You can get it on Amazon. I really, really recommend that it was written by someone. I think he was a prosecutor, but I love it. I love that. It's a really easy book to read that would fill my great name to vomit a little bit that that book still goes with me to appointments for sure.

    - Cari Hahn

    And when I'm going through, if it's if I have a scan, I grab that book and I always recommend that to people who are newly diagnosed. And I recommend to you that their family members have it. I think even regardless of what you know, in the beginning of this, I was so fearful of the diagnosis. But really, the treatment is not worse than the disease. You want to fight it regardless, even if it's even with terminal cancer.

    - Cari Hahn

    I really still believe there and I really still believe you can still fight. You know, you've got to do it in your mind. But I think you can do it. And that's why I love a book like that, because I think to read it and I have to surround yourself with positive things and positive people to make the outcomes better when you're going through. Thank you for that recommendation.

    - Liesel Mertes

    I will also link that in the show notes. Yes. Well, Cari, thank you so much for your time.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    Here are three key takeaways from my conversation with Cari:

    If you know someone that is living with cancer, resist the urge to tell them all about the people you know that have died of cancer.Cari heard these statements a lot. In my trainings, I talk about the empathy avatar of Commiserating Candace, she (or he) always has a sad story to share. This sharing hijacks the story of the person who is currently suffering. Don’t be a Commiserating Candace If you are an employer or a manager of someone who is living through cancer, what support systems do you have in place for once the chemo is done?Cari talked about being well-supported initially, pushing through all of the appoitnments etc. But her body was exhausted on the other side and, when she asked for flexibility, her workplace was unwilling to shift. Do you have policies in place for the long-game, designed to accommodate the aftermath of bodily stress that happens post-treatment? Breast continues to influence the lives of survivors.There is the stress of wondering if the cancer will manifest again, the bodily exhaustion, and the survivor’s guilt. If you are a friend or a coworker, continue to check-in with the survivors you know, especially once the chemo is done. They still need and will appreciate your support on this long journey.

    Learn more about Karma Candles at www.karmacandlesandkinds.com

  • - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    I have no problem having everybody know that I had COVID. I don't I don't feel I don't feel that that is a reason for shame. After all, we are literally in the midst of a global pandemic and tens of millions of people have this and often through no fault of their own.

    INTRO

    Today, we talk about leadership and COVID, how the virus gives us a chance to model a different openness and acceptance-without-judgment and how throw-away comments can trigger cycles of shame and judgment. My guest today is Arwen Widmer-Bobyk, She is Canadian, living in Los Angeles on assignment with the Canadian government as the Consul for Political, Economic, and Public Affairs at the Consulate General in Los Angeles.

    I first met Arwen in that most 2020 of ways: over a Zoom call. I was kicking off a year of intentional trainings, teaching about empathy in relation to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for the North American Candian MIssions. Arwen was part of an organizing task-force. She was a warm smile and lots of red hair on the other side of the screen. A few weeks later, Arwen was diagnosed with COVID, the first person in her consulate to get the virus.

    Her story is one of poor responses, missing email links, uncertainty, and ill-considered comfort. Yet, through it all, Arwen has seen the diagnosis as a tremendous leadership opportunity, to model a different way of engaging the virus. Her perspective has take-aways for leaders everywhere.

    But first, a little bit more about Arwen.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Tell me about the origins of your name and like the Arwen.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    Oh, so my name has become legendary even within my organization in which I work, which is Global Affairs Canada. So my name are when comes from the book The Lord of the Rings. When my mom was pregnant back in the mid 70s, she was reading The Lord of the Rings and she kind of had this feeling that she wanted to name her daughter after an elven princess.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    And so she chose ah. When the story at work, though, goes that there's a very, very senior manager in my organization who is actually now an adviser to the prime minister. And we were on a work together a few years ago. And he asked me he asked me, ah, when you know such an interesting name, do you have any siblings?

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    And I said, Yeah, I have a younger sister. And he's like, Oh, does she have an interesting name, too? And I said, Well, no, I think my parents kind of gave it all to me because her name is Rebecca Sarah. And he just thought that that was the funniest thing I've ever heard. And so he often tells that story like on national stages about how he had this colleague who had this great name and who was just Rebecca.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    And my my middle name actually has a very, very funny story, too. So my middle name is Ganessa and Ganessa is spelled G-A-N-E-S-S-A and my mom always said to me, well, you know, so we had an elven princess as your first date. And, you know, your middle name is is the name of a Greek goddess, the remover of obstacles and the goddess of wisdom. And I was like as a young child, I thought that this was just the greatest thing ever.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    And when I got older and the Internet became a thing, I kind of tried to, you know, look that up on Ask Jeeves and didn't I didn't come up with anything else. I was like just kind of weird. And then when, when I was a brand new mother. So, I had just given birth to my eldest daughter.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    And it was the first time I left the house without her kind of to go on my own after I think she was probably a month and a half old. I left her with my husband to go see a movie. And I saw Eat, Pray, Love. And I don't know if you remember in the movie, but it was really like quite an outsized role for the Hindu God, Ganesh and the remover of of the God of wisdom and the remover of obstacles.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    And I just had this, like, crazy epiphany in the movie that my mom just misspelled my middle name and got three completely wrong.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    And so I was like, oh, my goodness, that is a huge mistake.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    But I'm really glad my middle name isn't Ganesh. I like I'm kind of attached to Ganessa.

    - Liesel Mertes

    The the epiphany moment, and I like it because it's resonant with me, I remember using Ask Jeeves and you have to be of a certain age to remember what that was like a player before the ascendancy of Google.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    Yeah, I remember asking do use all the answers. Where do he go? Where did he know you?

    - Liesel Mertes

    He was the little guy that got smashed by the hegemon and just, you know, wandered off.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    He's probably in reformism, but I'm sure he is.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Well, he's in the hospitality industry, so maybe he's indefinitely furloughed.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    Good point.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Tell us a little bit. I think that you mentioned in your bio that you married your college sweetheart. Is that correct? Or did you meet in the in the consular affairs?

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    So my husband is also a foreign service officer.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    But indeed, we did meet the first day of class in our master's program, and it was a tiny little program for total international affairs nerds. We were studying international political economy, which is like, if you know, that has its origins in Marx or something like and there were eight of us in the class. And so I had moved from Vancouver to Ottawa. He had moved from Chicago to Ottawa to do this very niche program.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    And I looked across the seminar table at home and I was like, Harvard, you know, interesting guy. And then I saw him later in the tunnels. And Carleton University in Ottawa is famous for its underground tunnels because the the climate is just so inhospitable that they needed to connect all the all the classrooms and all of the buildings, underground tunnels. So I saw him in the tunnel and I was like, yep, that's the one.

    - Liesel Mertes

    So I knew really I knew that knowing this or did it take him awhile?

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    It took him about twenty-four hours, the longest twenty-four hours of my life.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    But no it was, it was so interesting because we were together and that was so that was twenty, twenty two years ago almost.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    And we were together within the first week and all of our classmates just assumed that we had like relocated from different sides of the continent to finally be together.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Well, you would get settled with one another.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    Yeah. So we have been ever since and we've been we've lived many different places in the world and and we continue to to be the ultimate partners.

    Arwen has worked for Global Affairs Canada for almost 14 years. Like the US Foreign Service, it is a very rotational job, with moves every few years. She started out in the Privy Council, supporting the Prime Minister, and is now in Los Angeles. She moved ahead of her family to the new posting, before COVID hit.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    For the first 10 months I was actually here on my own, given the kind of issues with travel in the pandemic and my daughter is finishing their their school year. And then we were separated for longer than we had planned. But finally, my family is here in Los Angeles with me.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    We've been working since March remotely. So I have a small team that manages some really key files, political relationship with our territory, which covers Southern California, Arizona and Nevada, economics, security, defense, climate change, environment.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    And then a big one for my team is all of our. Full cooperation with Hollywood and the connections between our cultural industries in Canada and and this mega media entertainment epicenter, so that's that's what I do.

    - Liesel Mertes

    That sounds fascinating. So are you. Is your office like being consulted as they are portraying Canadians in films? Are you fact checking or are you resourcing? I'm intrigued by this.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    So our role when it comes to cultural, cultural connections between the two countries is really to celebrate Canada's achievements in in the cultural industries. So everything from fine art to film to music to television and to make the connections and be a platform for making sure that Canadian artists and creators are able to access who they need to access in in Hollywood in particular.

    Arwen particularly looks at her role through the lens of diversity, equity, and inclusion. She has developed curriculum to incorporate women’s voices more robustly.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    And the cultural industries, of course, is a target rich environment for expanding access for diverse creators from Canada into Hollywood. And so we're really putting a huge emphasis on highlighting to American producers and buyers the kind of rich tapestry of talent in Canada, which is incredibly diverse and inclusive.

    - Liesel Mertes

    So I hear when you talk about what this last year has been, I hear a number of disruptive life events that in the language that I use within my consulting, you had a move, you had time without your family. This was all in the midst of being in a new city and in a new pandemic for everyone.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Tell me about how some of those stresses and upheavals were percolating leading up to what we're going to talk about a little bit later, which was your COVID diagnosis as well.

    - Liesel Mertes

    But even preceding that, it seemed like there were a lot of ups and downs in your year.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    Definitely. It's been it's been a year of of the sense that I've that I've had a lot of the time, both personally and professionally, is just pushing a big boulder up a hill.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    And the weight of the responsibility for me to to kind of manage getting my family here, eventually working through my department's H.R. processes and relocation processes and, you know, determining when it was safe to have them come from Ottawa to to Los Angeles and and, you know, trying to maintain connection with my two daughters who were also experiencing the stress of not being in school and going through kind of the newness of what this pandemic meant.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    And then, you know, also maintaining connection with my husband, who was single parenting for 10 months while I was here and managing the girls and their.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    Their stress and their worry about me being here by myself and, you know, the pandemic situation in Los Angeles has been not great from the very beginning. And so, you know that it was definitely a challenging year.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And I know you have a parent, two girls, who are know as the parent of my own children who are close to your ages. I have a 13 year old and an 11 year old. Yeah.

    - Liesel Mertes

    It can be kind of an all hands on deck time. And to be doing that from a distance and managing, you know, their schedules and people in their own uncertainty. I hear how that could feel really complex in the midst of just a new job and a new city.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    Absolutely. And also managing remotely a team for the first time and, you know, keeping their motivation up and transitioning from a very in person type of work that we do, which is creating relationships and networks to a fully virtual maintaining virtual relationships and networks and still having the the pressures to produce and perform and promote and protect Canadian interests, even amidst this pandemic.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    So when you put it that way, Liesel. Yeah, it's it's been a year. It's been a year.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Tell us a little bit about when you got your COVID diagnosis.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    Sure. So just for background, I'm the first person in the consulate to have a positive COVID diagnosis. So I was the the vanguard and the groundbreaker in that it happened the week of the election.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    And of course, you can imagine in my position, the election was kind of a big deal. So we had a lot of pressure to do reporting and analysis. And then there was also the the concern about the potential civil unrest, which has been going on really since George Floyd's murder here in Los Angeles on a major urban center.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    So that even more top of mind.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    Yeah, so it was that week and it was the Thursday. And I was having a meeting and, you know, typical Zoom meeting. I try to avoid looking at myself in those meetings because it's just so weird. I'm sure that, I'm sure the listeners can relate. It's just very strange to be having a meeting, but also seeing yourself talk. But I did notice out of the corner of my eye that I looked white as a sheet like I did not look well.

    Arwen made is through the next important meeting with the Canadian Olympic Committee. But when she shut her laptop, she was exhausted.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    And I thought, I hope I don't like the way this feels, just feels very strange, so I immediately texted my boss, the consul general, and I said, you know, I am not feeling well.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    I am going to schedule a COVID test. It's funny how my brain kind of seemed to just tell me that this was not, you know, just tiredness. This was not maybe I you know, I was like, I don't even think that this is like a cold or flu. I'm also a person who who almost never gets sick. So I hadn't taken a sick day before this in well over a year.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    So I, I told my family, you know, I'm not feeling great. I'm going to put myself in in my bedroom and have a rest. And then I had a COVID test the next day.

    She was feverish and nauseous through the night.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    So the two of us went to to get a COVID test at Dodgers Stadium. And I have to say that L.A. County really, really knows by this time how to manage large volumes of people getting tested. So is quite, quite efficient.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Can I interrupt for a second? Are you feeling anxious at this moment? Is there a sense of dread? Are you taking just taking the appropriate steps and kind of on autopilot or like what's what's the swirl for you?

    I think that. There was a, there was a sense of almost disbelief that this was happening to me at that time, you know, I had gone, what, nine months of the pandemic without getting sick? You know, we were starting to hear that the vaccine was going to be available relatively imminently. I had felt just maybe a few days prior to that, that, wow, we did it. Nobody in my family got sick. That's fantastic.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    And then and then to start getting sick, I was like, wow. So there was a little disbelief that there was concern. And really, right from the beginning, my biggest concern was not myself, but the health of my husband and my girls, particularly my daughters, because.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    My youngest daughter has a lot of food allergies, so her immune system is is kind of wonky to begin with, and then my older daughter has juvenile arthritis. So, again, an autoimmune disorder. And so I was very much mostly concerned about them.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    I'm relatively young, although I did refer to Ask Jeeves, but I'm quite healthy.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And and so I, too, am relatively young. And I know about ask, do you say you are relatively young.

    Exactly. And so and then and then, you know, as a as a parent you start thinking about and your mind goes down these rabbit holes of OK, well if I'm sick and my husband's also sick, who's going to take care of the girls? Actually, I came to the realization very quickly that the girls would be taking care of us and they're very, very OK with that.

    Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    But, you know, you do start to to go down those kind of anxiety holes of, you know, what happens if I get really sick. Right.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And so also the complexity of parents in the midst of a pandemic at whatever stage, I mean, you're both aware of your own health and how it affects your work. But there are these people that you're responsible for and it's it's it's it's own.

    - Liesel Mertes

    It's not easier, but it's a it's a luxury that parents don't really have to just focus singularly on their own, on their own health parents or just people with partners, other people in the house.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    Absolutely. So so that happened. I was pretty much kind of laid out physically and then so that was a Friday, Saturday morning. I get a text from L.A. County and it's actually my husband's results. And I click on the link and it says Negative. And I was like, wow, what an incredible relief. A few minutes later, I so so I guess I would talk to him and I said, you know, you're negative. This is really exciting.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    I'm sure I am, too. You know, I went into that phase of kind of denial, you know, I guess this isn't COVID. I guess I was just kind of jumping to conclusions and, you know, I'm sure I'm fine, too. So, you know, dodged that bullet, so to speak. And then I get another text about five minutes later and the link doesn't work.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    It's it's a broken link. And and so that was just incredibly frustrating to me. So, you know, I emailed their tech support ways to deal with tech support.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    Women's rights waited for hours. Finally, they sent me a new one and the result was positive. And at that moment, I remember like my stomach, my stomach just sank. It was when it was then when I was feeling sick and really tired and then realizing that this was not going to be a quick road to recovery, likely that, you know, it kind of just very much hit me. And so I kind of took a few minutes to to let it sink in a little bit.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    And then I went into, OK, now I have a whole bunch of things to do.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    Being of a foreign diplomat here, I had responsibilities that I had to execute in terms of informing my boss about my diagnosis, but also informing our mission security officer who who deals with all of the kind of emergency management stuff.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    And at that point, I was thinking solely about any potential exposure to my colleagues that I may have inadvertently perpetuated.

    Luckily, Arwen did most of her work remotely. She would only pop into the office occasionally. Colleagues were notified.

    - Liesel Mertes

    What what kinds of things were people saying or doing that made you feel well supported in the midst of all of this?

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    So it's very interesting because we plan and we plan and we plan for emergency situations and we think we know how we're going to respond and we know how we should respond.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    But the interesting thing for me was that when you have it all written down on paper, the first thing and no one is not kind of, my goodness, how are you feeling? You know, it is it is kind of going directly into the kind of duty of care. Mode, as I like to call it, and so it's the primary responsibility of duty of care is to make sure everybody is safe, so, so safe from a physical perspective rather than safe from an emotional perspective. For example.

    - Liesel Mertes

    So step one in the. That makes total sense of just this, the first step is process, not necessarily guidance in how to interact in this potentially very freighted, uncertain person on the other side who are dealing with a really complex, unknown disease. You don't really script out how to meet that person in that moment necessarily.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    Precisely, which I hope to change soon. But for me, it was very interesting. So. The first question is always, where do you think you got this, like that's the most important question ever, you know, and I think I read a statistic later on that I think somewhere north of 70 percent of people have no idea where they've actually contracted COVID. For me, I was extremely careful, have been for the previous 10 months all through wearing a mask at all times in public. And I still I still caught it probably in the elevator somewhere with somebody who wasn't wearing a mask, but.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    You know, for me, that question triggered and I and I received that question from almost every single person that I encountered and told the question, triggered shame, like the answer that that was expected was, oh, well, that that one time where I was just, you know, floating all of the rules and and, you know, in an indoor restaurant, breathing in as much virus as I could, you know.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Some Friday night where I said, screw it, I'm doing whatever I want.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    Exactly. You know, so so that was that was interesting. My work was excellent in in kind of putting together the steps that were needed to take to notify anyone who may have been in contact with me. Thankfully, everyone was negative.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    But then I learned a little later on after I talked to the contact tracers in L.A. County that really they're most concerned and really exclusively concerned with only the people who you had been in contact with 48 hours prior to the onset of symptoms.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    And for me, that was only my family. So it was kind of out of an abundance of caution that my workplace initially was told, but I very quickly realized that it was an incredible opportunity for leadership, for me to

    - Liesel Mertes

    Tell me more here.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    So to destigmatize this, I felt very, very severe stigma about this, this diagnosis, and I really wasn't expecting that.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    And so I asked my boss to...

    - Liesel Mertes

    Can I ask you a little bit more about that, because it seems it seems really important. So there, I imagine there's the the shame and the stigma of that first question, that sense of suspicion of like your irresponsibility or what you've done.

    - Liesel Mertes

    What are some other ways that that stigma was being expressed and perceived by you?

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    So on the personal level. My I. I soon found out that my daughter had my oldest daughter had told her friends at school that I was positive. So within the first 48 hours they all knew. And of course, as a mom of a teenager, we thought, you know, how quickly word can get can get around. So I received an email from the parent of one of one of the girls. And remember, these are very, very new relationships for our family.

    We had just moved to L.A. The girls had just started virtual school in September. And so very much brand new relationships and still establishing, you know, trust and and familiarity, I guess.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    And so the the email I received was just a visceral reaction to potentially having exposed. The family of this girl to COVID now, I had not been in contact with them for over two weeks and Grace hadn't been in contact with them for 10 days. And so it never even occurred to me to notify all of the families that, you know, I had seen in the previous three months, you know, but I really quickly learned that the reaction was very much based in fear, in the unknown of this disease, but also the unknown of the timeline.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    I mean, teenagers are not really precise when it comes to kind of delineating the exact timeline of, you know, when their parents get sick.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    And so I just remember feeling intense kind of sorrow and shame and regret for not having informed these families, even though I was very sick at the time, I felt. Regret for not having thought through all of the potential people who may be afraid of my diagnosis, which seems very strange to me to say now, but it was it was just kind of a gut punch, so to speak. The email had used words like betrayal of trust, of, you know, putting our lives in danger.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    And so it was quite dramatic email, to be totally honest. But but I knew that it was just all very much fear based. And so I put my my mind I put myself into her shoes. And I could very much imagine, you know, a mother's instinct to protect her family. And and so I repaired the relationship. I wrote back and I and I and I copied all of the parents of the the very small study pod of four girls.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    But I just kind of explained and I and the first sentence of my email, so you'd be proud of me was I can imagine how scary this is for you. Let me walk you through the timeline to reassure you.

    - Liesel Mertes

    I am proud of you, not my pride. You know, it is the delineating factor, but, you know, one of the reasons that I really wanted when I first heard your story and just the high level of it to have you as a guest, because I just want to step back.

    - Liesel Mertes

    That takes so much choosing towards empathy and choosing towards and I want to circle back. You began to say, you know, a leadership opportunity because, I mean, how how complex and hard is that like you were you're very sick at that moment. Like you feel terrible.

    - Liesel Mertes

    It's this new relationship like there you're you know, the parents of your daughter, you know, that's just complex of like it's not like things are well known relationships.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And you could feel attacked, you could feel defensive. You could feel like lashing out and saying, hey, you're not caring for me at all.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Like I'm feverish and in bed. But to be able to process those things and still respond in a way that sees another person's emotion. Yeah, there's a lot of steps to actually executing on that maturity. To get to that point.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    It was really valuable. And I kept thinking about it. And, you know, I'm I'm one of those cheer, Cheryl. So I guess you could say in that I always look for a silver lining and no one does that apply to more than the situations that I find myself in. So you'll never hear me saying, at least to anyone, except for maybe myself. And so I was looking for the silver linings to this. And personal growth has certainly been one of those intentionality as well in the relationships that I have professionally, personally.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    Another excellent silver lining. And keep going. Sorry. No, no, it's OK. So, you know, through through that very open, authentic and essentially raw message to to the other parents, I think that I, I there was leapfrogging happening. I was able to establish more trust than, you know, just 10 months of, you know, banal dialogue, you know, normal parental dialogue. Could have could have possibly established.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    We’ll return to Arwen’s interview in a moment. This episode is sponsored by Handle with Care Consulting, my company. The world went sideways in 2020 and it is hard to know if your people are feeling supported and engaged amidst all the challenges. Empathy is THE leadership skill for our times, and Handle with Care Consulting can help build this skill into your people and processes. Contact Handle with Care Consulting for coaching, keynotes, and certificate programs to create cultures of care. And now, back to Arwen…

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    I have no problem having everybody know that I had COVID. I don't I don't feel I don't feel that that is a reason for shame.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    After all, we are literally in the midst of a global pandemic and tens of millions of people have this and often through no fault of their own.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah, there's the shame and fear. Response cycles, though, are so powerful. You know, it just it puts us in such a defensive crouch. And you know what? What a true awareness that you're able to have of looking and seeing all these people are in their own fear cycle that is just causing them to act so defensively. And it's it's a good thing to tuck away to to be aware, like, oh, yes, I could suddenly be triggered to feel very concerned just about my own safety and things like that.

    - Liesel Mertes

    But how will that actually inhibit my response? And and that comes through to someone you're talking to, like, oh, you, you know, are only thinking about yourself right now instead of having any care for me, which I imagine, as you said, is a tremendous opportunity, as you were the first within your organization to get this diagnosis.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Tell me some about you mentioned using it as a leadership opportunity and wanting to cultivate and model something different. What things are you pulling forward that you're wanting to incorporate in kind of a different way of approaching people who get covered?

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    So I think like most large organizations, medical information, of course, is generally very confidential in a work setting. And so one of the initial first reactions of my organization was we must keep this super confidential. We have to keep your identity confidential. We can't tell anybody it was you.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    For me, that just felt totally wrong because I felt that that that lack of transparency, even if it was well-meaning and meant to protect me, would possibly lead to even more fear.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    For example, imagine I was one of the workers who who had been in the office and I was told that someone has COVID and that you may have been in contact with them and therefore you should get tested. I can imagine the amount of fear.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    That that would instill in someone, because you don't there's no certainty, right, you don't know if you don't know who this person was, maybe I actually only saw one person in the office when I went. And so the other 12 that or eight that would have been told to go get tested where I know we're at no risk whatsoever.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    And so I asked, I asked my my boss to include in his message to all staff that it was me that was diagnosed and that I felt provided an opportunity.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    To show that it is absolutely OK to disclose your diagnosis in the workplace in order to keep your colleagues safe in order, there's no reprisal. I wasn't sent home to Canada because I got COVID, which was something I was actually worried about.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    And we can talk about that as well. But for me, it was an opportunity to destigmatize the diagnosis, to take away the shame, to not hide something that really, really didn't need to be hidden. Right.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah, I hear that that that's a powerful signaling in that way. You mentioned an apprehension that you had. Tell me a little bit more about that.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    Sure. So, you know, on the back end of things, we have a giant organization of of 15,000 or so employees spread across the world. So the background is that about a thousand of them, I think, were repatriated home to Canada due to their own health risks or the particular health infrastructure of the countries to which they were accredited. So that happened in the spring.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    And when, when I was diagnosed, I texted a very, very dear colleague of mine who is still based in Ottawa and told him about my diagnosis. And he said he was somebody who still works in the in my former team in the North America Advocacy Division. And he said, ah, what can I tell the rest of the team? And I said, absolutely, 100 percent. And so he did. And then I got an email from my former director, so my former boss.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    And he said, OK, well, there are some official things we need to do now are when I need to inform officially the medical infrastructure of global affairs. And so he's very sweet. He said they're very well meaning are when they're there, they can be. I've heard that they can be a little intense, but they're extremely well meaning.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    And so I was I hadn't even really thought at that point. Of what the potential implications were for the duration of my posting, the duration of my assignment here is should I have gotten really sick? And so I kind of sat in that fear for. A little while, I would say about 15 minutes, talk to my husband, I was asking questions like, well, what if I recalled what if I get really, really sick? And, you know, health care here in the United States is very expensive.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    What if they'd rather treat me in Canada? What happens if I go home and you guys stay here? And so there are all of these questions in my mind as I waited for that official notification of of you have now been assigned a file, so to speak.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    And that notification came. A lot of people were copied on it. And the wonderful thing was that employee assistance program was copied on it. They reached out to me separately after and said, if you need any support, if your family needs any support, if you have questions, if you have concerns, reach out.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    But also the kind of the chief medical officer of global affairs was copied and he was the one who then continued to follow me and to be in dialogue with me on a daily basis for the for the next month and. That having that support and that expertise and that person who I could ask medical questions of was was very, very helpful. I'm kind of a medical nerd myself. So if it wasn't political science, I probably would have been a surgeon.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    And so I very quickly kind of got up to speed about what I needed to do to give him the information he needed to assess my condition. And so I ordered myself an oximeter the next day and started measuring my my my blood oxygen levels. And that's kind of key for COVID. And that was something that helped him monitor my situation. At one point, and COVID is, of course, different for everyone, and I know that some of your listeners are dealing with diagnoses themselves, perhaps, or those of their family or friends.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    And it's very different for everyone.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    For me, it really went in waves. And so. I would feel terrible for a few days and then I would rest and I would start to feel better and then I would overexert myself and then I would feel terrible again.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    And at one point, my my oxygen levels were really, really not good. And the chief medical officer said, you know, Arwen, if if you don't rest and if you don't really, really take this seriously, I'm going to be ordering a medevac for you and you're going to be coming home to Canada.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    And that was really the thing that scared me into. Resting, taking it seriously, and the realization that if I didn't, this could be a condition that I would have to deal with for a lot longer than I would have liked.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah, I hear I hear so many threads in the midst of that that are important, I hear the communication and the cooperation, whether that was from the medical staff or the EAP, of being able to really reach out to you on a couple of different fronts, to put it to deal with some of the fears that might come up to have information going back and forth here, the importance of rest.

    - Liesel Mertes

    I also hear just harkening back to as you're dealing with like emails from your daughter's friend group, I'm thinking there's always so much going on that we don't know, you know, behind the scenes. Like they don't know that you're not only sick, but you're dealing with apprehensions as to whether or not you're going to have to be taken back to a different country. And how is this going to affect the continuity of your posting and all of your family situation?

    - Liesel Mertes

    And that's just your particular complexity. But everybody's story has their own complexity as to how the diagnosis is playing out with their financial situation or their health care plan or their partner or their aging parents. And I I hope that it gives people more of a sense of pause before they just rush into an interaction. So there could be like there's the stress I know, which is a sickness. And then there are probably a dozen ancillary stresses that are attached to this that I don't know about.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And I want to tread graciously and carefully because there could be a lot going on that I have no idea about.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    Exactly. And it's just kind of layer upon layer. And then I have so much empathy for. People who are going through this and who are also, you know, high functioning professionals or in fact even, you know, like a grocery store clerk, the people who who can't take the time they need to get better because of financial considerations or professional considerations or family considerations. And I mean, you know, I'm very lucky that I had plenty of sick leave thanked.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    But at the same time, this is an incredibly busy time for my for my program. And so prioritizing my health over the hundreds of emails that were flooding my inbox on a daily basis was really, really, really hard. And I was my worst enemy. I mean, I had a lot of support from my boss to to to disconnect, but I you know, I don't have any backup at work either. So it's it is it is not easy.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    And and if you see someone who's just kind of. Struggling with it know that there are many, many angles of pressure happening at any given time.

    - Liesel Mertes

    You mentioned, you know, needing to quarantine within your house burns that loomed large about the health of your children or your husband.

    - Liesel Mertes

    What what is that like, the isolation or the uncertainty within your home? Are you having to have people bring you food? Like what is the life of quarantining within your house look like?

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    So absolutely. I was kind of at the at the whim of my my family to bring me food. Thankfully, they're very good at that after having been doing that for 10 months on their own anyway in Canada. But I was kind of isolated in my bedroom with a bathroom attached. I didn't leave that room at all. My husband generally would be the one to put the plate by the door. We'd all have masks on. He'd leave, I'd go get the plate, I'd eat, put the plate back.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    It was kind of like a bit like being in prison, actually in your own house. Yeah.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    Yes, a bit like a prison, but maybe friendlier people that come by your door each day and better bathrooms.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    But I definitely went through many series on Netflix and I am fully caught up on the Queen's Gambit and what I would recommend highly recommend to anyone. It's a great, great piece of television. But there were there were times when when I felt really, really ill that.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    I just kind of felt miserable, and I think the isolation made it a bit worse. And then there were the times that I felt more energetic and that was also really frustrating to, I think, one of the most heartbreaking moments for me, though, of over those two weeks of being isolated was just seeing my youngest daughter's face 12 feet away from me and and just knowing how much she just wanted to hug me. I think in follow up conversations after, you know, we've all been cleared and healthy talking to my girls about.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    Their feelings when I was sick has been very illuminating for me because they were very worried. They were worried that I would get sicker and sicker and they were probably even worried about my mortality at times because this is an unpredictable disease that attacks all sorts of different systems within our bodies.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    And so and and honestly, I think this is the first time I've ever been confronted with my mortality from a kind of a sickness perspective. And so it's it's hard on it's hard on those who love us to.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah. You you've mentioned it throughout the episode, but just to keep you up to make sure we didn't miss anything. What would you say to someone who's listening and perhaps over the next couple of weeks they are going to interact with someone, whether that's in their family or their friend group who had a COVID diagnosis? I always ask on this podcast,

    - Liesel Mertes

    What are things that you would say, don't do this like this, don't do this. This will be bad.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    So the number one thing that I think I alluded to it before is don't let your first question be. Where do you think you got it? Because rarely is that actually a meaningful question, I would suggest instead that your first response be how are you feeling?

    - Liesel Mertes

    And on the positive side, what were things that you experienced that you would say this was so meaningful, whether it was in support of you or people who supported your wider family in the midst of that, what would you recommend to people who want to show care?

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    Well, interestingly, I've never been a fan of sending or receiving flowers. I find them so temporal and yet so expensive at the same time that it's never been my go to. But I have to say, being stuck in a room by yourself, having a beautiful bouquet of flowers or forms of flowers was just this wonderful visual kind of place. I could rest my eyes and concentrate on some beauty. And so interestingly, I would suggest flowers. I totally lost my taste buds for four weeks, so food would have been completely wasted on me.

    - Liesel Mertes

    So no chocolates does make you more accepting of anyone who has to cook for you, though. You can just be thankful for whatever you gave me. Absolutely.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    Normally I love hot dogs, but this one didn't taste like anything but from an emotional standpoint.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    The daily check ins, I received text messages from dozens of people a day checking in on me, and even if I didn't respond back right away, I would get another one the next day checking in on me. And that was very, very impactful for me. It meant to me that people were thinking about me, that they were wishing me well. I took a lot of the energy and I I accepted the responsibility of finally resting enough to get better because a lot of people were really concerned across the whole world.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    And and that was very, very impactful and very special. So it only takes, what, 10 seconds to send a text to somebody, but it can really make a big difference. Yeah.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Is there anything else that you would like to add that you didn't get a chance to say in the course of the interview?

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    I think that, ironically, I'm really, really, really happy that it was me that got COVID in my social and professional network because I. I wouldn't have wanted anyone who didn't have the kind of agency that I have to have faced the shame and stigma of being that first person, and for me, not only has it been an opportunity for leadership, but.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    An incredible opportunity for her personal growth for me, and I'm I'm just very, very thankful and well

    - Liesel Mertes

    And I I hear that something that touches on a note that we discussed earlier in the podcast, especially as COVID, is disproportionately affecting, you know, black and brown communities. And, you know, as as so many people from those communities are frontline workers and, you know, are disproportionately at risk that, you know, things that are already unfortunately and baked into so many interactions of like shame or blame or judgment or feeling like there's a power dynamic, that things that were inadvertently doing just unthinkingly as we respond to people with COVID could really reinforce some pretty toxic interaction cycles of people who have who tend to have less agency within the dynamics, whether that's interpersonally or at work.

    - Liesel Mertes

    So, yeah, I hear I hear that aspect of what you're saying.

    - Arwen Widmer-Bobyk

    Yeah, it's very that's very important to to think before we talk. Always

    - Liesel Mertes

    They tried that in kindergarten and it remains an important lesson decades later.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    Here are three key take-aways from my conversation with Arwen…

    Leaders, consider the unintended consequences of your policy about confidentiality in COVID cases.There can be many good and important reasons to protect privacy, but what are you inadvertently communicating with the shroud of secrecy? What are ways that you as a leader can be proactive in dismantling stigma around COVID? For Arwen, this was sharing the news of her own diagnosis. What steps will you take? Go gently with people who have gotten sick.Remember that you always know only a portion of someone’s story. Arwen was coping with concerns about having to leave the country, worries about her daughter’s health conditions, and a number of large projects that needed her attention…all of this on top of her COVID diagnosis. The moms who sent frantic, shaming emails had no idea of this cascade of pressures. When you hear that someone has gotten COVID, do not let your first response be “Where did you get it?”Most of the time, people do not know. But on a deeper level, this shows a self-interested posture that fails to truly pay attention to the person who is sick. Instead, try something like, “I am so sorry. Can I send you a DoorDash or GrubHub gift certificate?

    OUTRO

  • - Liuan Huska

    And so I. I felt like when people were able to say to me, you're not just like something to be fixed, but we can actually learn from what you're going through and what you have to offer as someone who is suffering is valuable and actually may be central to our human experience, is not marginal in something that we just put on the aisles.

    INTRO

    My guest today is Liuan Huska. Liuan is the speaker and the author of a tremendous book, just released this month by IVP Press called Hurting Yet Whole, Reconciling Body and Spirit in Chronic Pain and Illness. Today, she is going to talk with us about living with chronic illness and the turn that life took for her in her early twenties, upending what she thought about the world and faith and the body. Our conversation is far reaching, Liuan is Chinese American, we dive into intersectionality, the dark side of capitalism, and why weakness invites us deeper into our shared humanity.

    But first, a little bit more about Liuan. Liuan lives in West Chicago with her family.

    - Liuan Huska

    Is my husband and our three kids, and we just adopted a couple of feral cats who live outside to get rid of our mouse problem.

    - Liesel Mertes

    How has that gone as you hoped it would go?

    - Liuan Huska

    So far we've only had like one or two mice since they've been outside catching mice for us. So I think it's going in a good direction.

    Liuan’s children are 1, almost 4, and almost 7. During COVID, finding outlets for fun has been complicated, so Liuan and her brood have started to forage.

    - Liuan Huska

    So we started going I made a point to try to go to least one new forest preserve every couple of weeks. And we picked up what we downloaded an app for plant identification. I also picked up a book from the library about foraging, and that became just this lovely adventure that we had over the summer of identifying all these new things out in the woods and some of them even edible. So we really enjoyed that.

    From dandelion soup to chicken of the woods, they’ve enjoyed being more grounded in their immediate surroundings. - Liuan Huska

    Yeah. It's just a great way to pay attention. Right. Like we're so caught up in the the macro level of what's going on in our world and it can feel really disorienting.

    - Liuan Huska

    But I read an article about how like naming and paying attention to what it's like their local flora and fauna is a way of loving, like what's right in front of you. So the foraging was like my way of doing that was saying I'm here and yes, I'm present to this world right here, right now. I can love this place in a really attuned way.

    Being grounded is important to Liuan. She likes to be in nature, in the dirt, and teaches yoga as well. Liuan is also a lover of words, both as an author and as a voracious reader. - Liuan Huska

    So one of my the books I read most recently, one of my favorites was called An Elegant Defense, and it's a New York Times science writer who basically looks at the immune system and all the new developments around the research of how the immune system works.

    - Liuan Huska

    But he tries it in four different people, stories who have autoimmune disorders or have different experiences related to like cancer or things like that. So that was just really fascinating to me. And it's something I try to do in my book as well.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Mm hmm. Well, and I hear in that. Connections to your own story and your journey with pain and the embodied experience,

    - Liesel Mertes

    would you set up for me what your life felt like in in college, in your early 20s and then.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Then the moment when things started to change and you had the first like a, you know, flickering of what would become a much larger part of your story.

    - Liuan Huska

    Yeah, well, I come from a Chinese immigrant family, and my family has always been kind of like we get things done. I think of that Hamilton quote, like immigrants, they get they get the job done. That's totally my family. So my parents owned a Chinese restaurant when I was growing up. And I, I also had two younger siblings that I took care of a lot while, you know, doing school and extracurriculars and working at the restaurant.

    - Liuan Huska

    So a lot of my growing up years was just kind of plowing through everything that needed to get done and felt like was my responsibility. And I felt pretty good about that. Like I felt like I was a very capable and responsible and competent person and I'm going to be in college. I definitely carried that, um, that sense of self with me.

    Liuan moved across the country to attend Wheaton College, an evangelical Christian school in the suburbs of Chicago. I am also a Wheaton grad, and we overlapped by a few years, sharing space on the leafy campus. As an aggregate, our college was a driven bunch of young adults.

    - Liuan Huska

    You know, Wheaton is a pretty type A community. I think I've I've heard someone say that.

    - Liuan Huska

    He's like a psychologist who had been with Wheaton students say that these are like Wheaton students are some of the most like angsty students I've ever met under the surface. And I think I probably I'm lucky because I resonate as a graduate as much as we could try to relax. We're still trying.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yes, exactly right. It's always pushing, pushing, whatever it is.

    - Liuan Huska

    It's funny because somebody just told me I posted a question on Facebook about what are the what are the most unhelpful things that people have told you when it comes to responding to pain or illness. And somebody said. You don't try it, you're try it, you're not trying or you're trying too hard, you just need to relax and then God will, like, go in there and take care of it for you.

    - Liuan Huska

    It was the same idea, right, that if you're not going to try hard, you're going to. Try to not try hard the same thing, apply your world to relaxing.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yes, yes, I know that is true about our shared learning community.

    - Liuan Huska

    Mm hmm. I mean, there were some I did experience and in my first year at Wheaton I was a transplant to the evangelical community and I experienced a lot of culture shock and had a hard time making friends to begin with.

    - Liuan Huska

    But I was eventually able to get plugged into this group of people that I really felt like I could be vulnerable with. And so there was it was it all just pushing, pushing for sure, but that was the overall feel of that community.

    - Liuan Huska

    And when I graduated from Wheaton, I expected that I would go on to graduate school, I wanted to travel around the world. I wanted to write books. And I just sort of felt invincible like that.

    - Liuan Huska

    My body was just something I was using to get to my goals, but, um, that I didn't really pay too much attention to as far as like the signals and maybe ways that my body was saying, hey, you should slow down or this isn't feeling good.

    Good.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And let me dig a little bit deeper what you talk about, "maybe I wasn't paying attention to the signals". As you look back when I fill that in for me a little bit more. What were some of those signals that you would say you were experiencing, OK?

    - Liuan Huska

    Yeah, well, when I finished we in I started a nonprofit job and it was again, I applied that same just barrel through.

    - Liuan Huska

    And there's a psychologist, therapist whose book I really enjoyed. Her name is andI Kolber. I don't know if you've heard of her. Her book is called Try Softer, but she uses the phrase white knuckling. And that's what I, I feel like I've done so much in my life. Is white knuckle my way through anything that's hard instead of just like maybe realizing I could take a break instead of, like, pushing through?

    - Liuan Huska

    So I had I got this really stressful job doing conference planning and it was a Christian organization. And that layer of the Christian mission over my work made it harder because it made me feel like I really couldn't stop. Like I was like maybe letting people down that needed this ministry if I somehow didn't, like, fulfill all of the expectations that our the director was putting on me. So I was just kind of just doing everything and saying, yes, we'll do that.

    - Liuan Huska

    And I did try with another co-worker to kind of push back, but. You know, I just had I think I was like not as well equipped as I am now with the kind of knowledge and confidence and ability to honor my body that I was then.

    - Liuan Huska

    So I just kept going and. We did the conference, it was in June, which would have been a year after I graduated from college, and I remember after that conference, my husband met me at the conference location and we took a two week vacation and my my brain was just like in a complete fog.

    - Liuan Huska

    So that was one of those, like, signals of something's not quite right. Or like I, I pressed the override button too many times on my body, and that was the biggest one.

    - Liuan Huska

    And also just like really easily triggered emotions and tears, really trivial things or what seemed maybe it was trivial on the surface, but it was just the tip of the iceberg of a lot of the bigger issues that I was wrestling with.

    - Liuan Huska

    Yeah, and that summer was when I started having some minor pain in my ankle and I didn't think too much of it at first.

    - Liuan Huska

    It was just. I thought, oh, it's just like some kind of weird sprain and it didn't happen out of any kind of injury, so that was what was sort of strange about it. But I thought, OK, it'll go away in a couple of weeks and I'll just go back to normal, which normal means just, you know, assuming that I could do everything that I put my mind to and I could make my body fit into my agenda.

    - Liuan Huska

    Mhm. So yeah. Yeah. Just continuing to chug on through.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And boy you gave voice to of the the nonprofit like whether it's Christian or not, trap of the mission driven organizations that can't compensate you on pay but can definitely drive you on a mission to continue to give more is absolutely a real dynamic of anybody who has worked for very long in that world.

    - Liuan Huska

    So yes. And it's so hard when you're relying on donations. Right. So you think, man, I really have to.

    - Liuan Huska

    Make these people's money count. So it seems like almost impossible to say I need to use your donations to pay for my health care or take care of myself. That seems like that's not what they were intended for. But that really misses the point of, you know, what what what the mission of being taking care of other people are doing good in the world is that it has to incorporate the people who do it to not just the people who receive it.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Right. And like you said, I mean, asking for any degree of rest or release can be construed as like you are taking resources away from, you know, homeless youth in Chicago or starving, you know, entrepreneurial mothers in Bangladesh. That's horrible of you, which has its own psychological pressure.

    - Liesel Mertes

    So you're feeling you're beginning to feel this pain in your ankle. You are hoping that it can go away so you can get back to performing and executing in a way that feels good. Incongruent to you. What happened?

    - Liuan Huska

    Yes, so it didn't go away, it just kept spreading, so within a few months, you know, I was limping and I was using crutches or using a walking boot and that just translated everything that was going on my ankle up through the rest of my skeleton so that my knee started hurting and my hip started hurting and my lower back started hurting and my neck started hurting.

    - Liuan Huska

    So it became like this sort of whole body thing and.

    - Liuan Huska

    Really, though, the hardest part, I think, for me was I had this expectation that it would go back to normal pretty soon, and when it didn't, I it was just a lot of psychological turmoil because my expectation didn't match up with the reality. So I just wasn't able to accept what was happening.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Tell me a little bit more about the particular messages that are going on in your mind at that time, the things that is you maybe even still presently like what are what are the statements or conclusions that are being offered to you as you're trying to make sense of this? Hmm.

    - Liuan Huska

    Well, um, within the Christian community, there's I think there might be this assumption. That our bodies, God created our bodies as perfect and then. You know, whatever pain or disease or suffering that we're experiencing is the result of Adam and Eve eating the apple or whatever fruit you think it was and the fall and sin coming into the world.

    - Liuan Huska

    So there was this narrative going on in my mind that my pain is somehow connected to. Sin and not necessarily my own, although I definitely had question that what did I do to to make this happen?

    - Liuan Huska

    But it was even just more generally, I think it's it goes beyond just that people that believe that you can claim your your healing and you'll have it. I think there's a really subtle variations of that within a lot of different Christian communities. And and does that feel then like. I I need to work harder to get to the bottom of the medical causes or I need to understand better, is there an element of I need to be trying to do something better to get me healthier?

    - Liuan Huska

    Yeah, I kind of went on this like a seesaw between. Oh, you just need to trust God and wait, and you're not trusting God enough by seeking out kind of frantically seeking out all these different possible medical treatments.

    Liuan saw an orthopedic doctor who told her to take some Tylenol. But the pain was still there. She went in for an MRI,

    - Liuan Huska

    In my book, I write about how it was like I felt like I was like offering myself up, like, you know, to like a priest, like on a table, you know, as like a sacrifice or something, because it just felt like this. Oh, I'm just waiting for, like.

    - Liuan Huska

    The oracle to speak and then and then once you know the magical interior images, we are right out like seeing through and like, you know, the power of science. So but then it didn't come back with anything conclusive.

    - Liuan Huska

    Like I said, there was something about a swollen navicular bone, which I still don't really know what that is. But the prescription was just more Tylenol and more walking. Puzzo I really was hoping that I would be able to get some kind of surgery and that would be it.

    - Liuan Huska

    But that was not the case.

    - Liuan Huska

    So I just kept going to different doctors and sometimes I would take breaks because it's just really exhausting to tell your story over and over again. Different medical professionals and nobody's talking to each other like, you know, the osteopathic doctor that just like natural medicine is in talking to, like, the guy that checks your hormone levels and the guy that looks at your bone.

    - Liuan Huska

    So it's it was really challenging to be like a medical advocate for myself. Yeah.

    - Liuan Huska

    And having to put together the almost mosaic of different pieces of insight and trying to make sense of it.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Well, and I imagine in the midst of that, I mean, you're just living the dailiness of chronic pain. And I think for for people who haven't gone through that, it can seem kind of amorphous, like, well, it sounds painful, but

    - Liesel Mertes

    could you tell me what what a bad day looks like for you in your journey with chronic pain as you're walking with it?

    Mm hmm.

    - Liuan Huska

    So I should say this is part of my journey. Is that because you say what a bad day looks like?

    - Liuan Huska

    I, I have way less pain than I used to. And we can talk we can get into like what happened like several years down the road when I got pregnant with my first child. But whenever I do have a point, a pain flare up. I just can't walk that far, and that is actually one of the really hard things for me, being someone who loves to be active and out in nature and being out in nature is such a powerful way for me to find meaning and just feel alive.

    - Liuan Huska

    So whenever in the worst of the pain, I know I wasn't able to walk more than a couple of blocks and that sense of like, I'm so stuck in my own body and like I there's, you know, when when something traumatic happens, like there's this fight or flight reaction, you want to somehow get rid of the threat or like by, you know, killing the predator or running away from it.

    - Liuan Huska

    And there are so many times in my in the worst of my pain that I just wanted to get out of my body.

    - Liuan Huska

    I just wanted to run. And that was like the thing I couldn't do, was run. I wasn't able to kind of like process that the sense of like trauma and being like having my life being derailed. I wasn't able to integrate that into my body very well at the beginning at least, you know, I was just kind of keeping it in in my head for so long.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    We will return, in just a minute, to my conversation with Liuan. But I want to take a moment to tell you about our sponsor, Handle with Care Consulting. 2020 has been full of disruption: COVID, an election, murder hornets, rising unemployment, a national reckoning with pervasive racism. Empathy is THE leadership skill in the midst of these upsider down times, and it is how you will ensure that you don’t just survive as an organization but that you stabilize and thrive. Handle with Care Consulting can help, with interactive keynotes, certificate programs, and coaching cohorts, we give you the skills you need to build a consistent culture of care.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    - Liesel Mertes

    You spoke earlier about being Chinese American and this this capacity to push through and get the job done. How did that particular orientation affect your view towards yourself? And I don't know if at this time you were surrounded by many other Chinese Americans, but even in your family, how did that affect maybe how they were able to come alongside you or not in your pain?

    - Liuan Huska

    Mm hmm. Um, so the main, um, person who in my life at that time who kind of brought our Chinese background into my life was my mom. She lived in a different state. But I I was definitely in contact with her a lot, telling her what was going on. And so my mom is one of those people that is like super like. Kind of paranoid about everything and really anxious, like as a mother, mothers are towards things that are going on with their children.

    - Liuan Huska

    But also she when I was growing up, she would tell me a lot. If you don't have your health, you don't have anything. And because she grew up in Mao era China, where. It was a pretty materialistic perspective right there. There's no like nothing exists outside of, like, the material stuff in front of us. So if if there's nothing else but our bodies, then if our bodies are not working as we want them to, that means, like, what are we supposed to do like that?

    - Liuan Huska

    Like signals, like bad things for our future and our moneymaking ability and our ability to provide for retirement and everything. So unfortunately, like that sort of really like. First perspective wasn't always helpful because it infused more anxiety into, like the way I was approaching it as sort of like, this is all I have, my body is all I have.

    - Liuan Huska

    But on the other hand, my like my Christian communities were saying, like. It doesn't matter what's happening in your body as long as you're spiritually well, so there's like this opposite push towards well.

    - Liuan Huska

    The spirit is the most important, so you can just sort of like, ignore and transcend your body in order to just do what God is calling you to do. So my book really came out of that wrestling with the one pole and the other of,

    - Liuan Huska

    OK, we are our bodies and that's all we are, or we're more than our bodies. And we're actually our bodies are not essential to who we are. And I think that the truth lies somewhere in the middle and that's that.

    - Liuan Huska

    And it's really, you know, it's a mystery to be able to hold both of those things together. But I think there's something really valuable that we can learn from just holding those two tensions together. And that's what I'm trying to do with the book, is hold those two things together.

    – Liesel Mertes

    And you are you're both telling your own story in the book. You also are an aggregator and collector of some other people's stories of how they have worked with pain, whether from your own story or those that you talked to. You know, you talked about like a specific thing that your mom said. What or some other things that you heard or that doing research for your book. Other people heard that you would say this is just don't don't do this.

    - Liesel Mertes

    This is not helpful to people who are going through pain in their bodies. Hmm.

    - Liuan Huska

    Yeah. Well, you know, you were asking me about how my particular cultural background shaped my experiences, and it's something that I write about my book.

    - Liuan Huska

    But one of the other things that really shaped my experience was being a woman. And interestingly, like most of the people, all but one of the people that I interviewed, whether that's because I connected better with women, I think. But partly I think it has some grounding in the statistics to all.

    - Liuan Huska

    But one of the people I interviewed was a woman I met were women. So there's only one man that I interviewed and. What I heard a lot from from people who are sharing their stories with me was. A lot of dismissal, just like, oh, fibromyalgia, that's a fake illness, right? Or one woman who was kind of my is my age and was at an editing job at the time, told me that she just started getting her fibromyalgia symptoms as she was doing this job, taking care of three children.

    - Liuan Huska

    And she she would ask for days off and the the dad and the family would say, OK, can you just come anyways? Like you're you're still like you're sick, but you can still work. Right.

    - Liuan Huska

    So there was a lot of frustration over the ways that pain is dismissed or seen as in in our head or seen as just women being overreactive to like kind of like too emotional about what's going on.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Hmm. Well, and I hear how that touches on aspects of intersectionality of like, you're missing me in my lived experience.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And I'm experiencing a dismissiveness that to be female in the world also like just yields up to my experience again and again in a way that is painful. Yeah.

    - Liuan Huska

    And the word intersectionality is something that I didn't really come into contact with until a couple of years ago. One of my friends is a therapist who works at that with people who have intersectional identities, which is just more than one marginalized identity. So she works particularly with Asian-American men and women. But when you have more than one aspect of your identity that is marginalized by society or kind of seen as lesser than all of those things affect our health, like just being in in a society that is not structured with our unique interests and needs in mind is a source of constant stress.

    - Liuan Huska

    And the you know, there's so many stories of like black women having higher rates of, you know, pregnancy related complications. I think, like the statistic is like black women experience like preeclampsia, an early birth at like three to four times the rate of white women. And that is something that I explore in my book, like how those aspects of our identity that aren't accepted as part of like, you know, like fully accepted when we bring ourselves into wider society, how that affects our health.

    - Liuan Huska

    And it does in so many ways that science is only beginning to document.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Oh, absolutely. I, I resonate with a. A fascination of the growing body of scientific research that supports the reality of the way stress and marginalization is held on a somatic level. And and it's not that it has to be validated by a researcher in a lab, but to begin to have the language. To discuss that in, you know, the science is a part of opening the gateway for that to be in, you know, just more of the commonplace understanding of the lived reality of so many.

    - Liuan Huska

    Yes.

    - Liuan Huska

    And I think it's becoming clear in the pandemic. Right. We always hear the statistics of African-Americans have been dying of COVID at higher rates than other communities and. It just makes you realize, like people are finally asking, like, why are people why are black people sicker than white people? And it can't just be because they make poor choices like something else is going on. So it's I think that statistic made it really clear to me, and I hope it it's like making others ask questions as well.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Right. Well, and it's fascinating. Even the you know, the data points of how stress affects you in utero, you know, before you've even taken a breath, you know, the stress of your parents lived situation, how they are experiencing, you know, marginalization and trauma and how that affects development of just in a way to be taken seriously of. Like there are formational forces that are being imprinted on the body as a result of stress and marginalization.

    - Liesel Mertes

    They have incredibly deep roots. And what does it mean to reckon with that, you know, as society and as individuals?

    - Liuan Huska

    Yes. And I was just speaking with someone who works in the health insurance industry yesterday. It was really fascinating because we were talking about the way that health care costs have been rising and people are just have such a hard time getting their minds around why things cost so much. Right. Like, why does an MRI cost like ten thousand dollars and why are we paying so much for premiums when we're only getting out like we're only just going to see a doctor for a physical every year,

    - Liuan Huska

    like we're not getting out what we're putting in is the feeling that a lot of people have. And he was talking about like we as a society, as Americans, we're just so sick and depressed and in bad shape collectively. And I think that just has to do with this drive. That part of it, I think has to do with this drive that has been so ingrained in the American psyche of we we just like produce and we push and we we make it right.

    - Liuan Huska

    And we're just like the economy needs to keep going and we need to just make things happen, like we can't shut down. So that has affected everyone. And people that are feeling it the most are the people that are the most vulnerable to all the economic shocks.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Well, it's the it's the two-faced aspect of capitalism, right?

    - Liesel Mertes

    You can be whatever you want to be. But also like people are they matter based on their capacity to produce in that brutal expression of that. And especially as that relates to some of the idea of talking about like why did empathy in the workplace matter? There is there is a truth that that runs counter to some of the most foundational grain of capitalism, which is like just keep producing, which is probably a good segue I'm talking about. So you you are living with pain.

    - Liesel Mertes

    You're going to lots of doctors. How is that translating into your work situation? Are you needing to take time off and how is that pain being met by your workplace?

    - Liuan Huska

    Yeah, so I quit that job that I was mentioning to you that was really stressful, that conference planning job. I felt like I just had to keep going for the sake of the mission. After I finish working on that, it was an annual conference that happened in the summer.

    - Liuan Huska

    And at that point, as when I started having pain, it still didn't play a huge role into my calculations about what what's feasible for me to do for a job. But I was also planning to apply to graduate school at the time. So I ended up taking a couple of part time jobs while I was applying to graduate school. And thankfully, the one job I had was with a Christian, what's called the Christian century. It's a it's another publication of a magazine.

    - Liuan Huska

    But they they were actually such a healing place to be after the. The not the Christian non-profit conference planning job that I had, because they gave me the space to say. It was a flexible job and it was based not on the hours that I worked, but on like the I was doing business administrative stuff just like fulfilling the task. But then I was able to go home after I had finished doing what I was supposed to do that was like so surprising to me that they didn't say stay and keep doing more things because like, you know, like we are here and you're a willing worker and, you know, for the sake of the mission.

    - Liuan Huska

    But I do want to say, going back to just like the the workplace thing and how the the work my workplace has received me as I was figuring out what it meant to live with pain on a on an ongoing basis is that I had the ability to work two part time, really flexible jobs that really probably wouldn't have supported me, like if I if it was just me.

    - Liuan Huska

    But I was married at the time already and married to someone who wasn't going through health struggles and had a full time job with health insurance, which was a really important and that enabled me to sort of explore different options and put together different combinations of work and school that I know not everybody has a lot of people. They're dealing with these health issues that are coming up, but they don't have like good support networks. And they have to they just have to keep going to work to take care of their families and put food on the table.

    - Liuan Huska

    So I just want to be like, you know, kind of bring that up that I I was definitely in a place of privilege to be able to have options for how to handle what was going on.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah, that's an important point.

    - Liesel Mertes

    As you think about for yourself, things that people did that made you feel or make you feel especially well supported, even if outside of the workplace in your journey with chronic pain.

    - Liesel Mertes

    What what makes you feel seen and supported one of people done well that's been important for you. Mhm.

    - Liuan Huska

    So I think that listening is really the best gift that I've been offered, listening in a really nonjudgmental.

    - Liuan Huska

    Just holding the space sort of a way, you know, um. As a Christian, going through these this health struggle, I just had so many questions about like questions questioning God's goodness to me, questioning whether I was, you know, my life was going according to God's plan and having places where or at least people that I could raise those questions with without feeling like I was being like going off the rails of my faith or becoming heretical gave me the ability to really reckon with the hard things without having to just stuff it, stuff, everything I was feeling into like a tidy Christian narrative.

    - Liuan Huska

    And and out of that, I was able to like the listening that people have provided me, allowed me to just come to like truth and insights about like who I am as a human being.

    - Liuan Huska

    And what does it mean to be a human being with limits and vulnerabilities? And how are those things maybe not only just not not necessarily liabilities, but strengths

    - Liuan Huska

    like all those conclusions that I was able to come to happen because people gave me the space to process and and weren't like trying to push any kind of agenda on what I was processing, but simply being present to the pain and.

    - Liesel Mertes

    I think that it's an important turn of phrase and one I'd like to hear a little bit more about for those people that were, from your perception, pushing an agenda. How did some of those? Because because we translate a lot right in our you I look in the sort of questions we ask in the sort of statements we make. How did those agendas sound to you?

    - Liuan Huska

    Hmm. And I remember going up to ask for prayer at a church that we were visiting on Sunday and was one of my really desperate moments of like, I really need to be fixed. So I went up for prayer and told the prime minister my story. She was listening very kindly and attentively. And then she asked me, are you harboring any unforgiveness in your heart? And it was just this really odd moment of like, wait, I thought you were like here for me.

    - Liuan Huska

    But now I feel like something you're asking me to.

    - Liuan Huska

    Like, it's not and I don't want to say that there's like there's no link between emotional trauma and unresolved wounds from the past to our physical pain, but the way that sometimes people sort of interpret it, they're kind of their view of what was going on and and push that into the ways they were trying to help me. That was really it just felt like I wasn't being seen.

    - Liuan Huska

    You know, I was I was kind of being put into there what the way they wanted to see the world and the way they wanted to understand how God and healing and bodies work, being maybe processed within a paradigm.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah. Hmm. I would call that persona in some of the work that I do. Aspects of a a Fix It frank, hi. Oh, this is a problem. And even even if she posed it as a question like let's fix this.

    - Liuan Huska

    Right. Yes. And we all have those tendencies like I, I do too. And I like I was I remember like speaking with a friend who was going through really hard times. And the first thing that came to my mind was actually seeing a counselor have actually seen a physical therapist or she should try this. And then I had to just stop and sit and realize that's not what she's asking of me is a major problem. She's asking for me to listen to her.

    - Liuan Huska

    That's all I have to do. And that's. Way more helpful to her than what I have to tell her about how she could fix her problems, right?

    - Liesel Mertes

    Well, and sometimes I I tell people who who struggle with that tension, like they feel like they have a lot to give, even to ask the question, like what what would you like of me in this conversation? Are you looking for suggestions or would it be more helpful for me just to listen like I have to do just on a micro level? I do that sometimes with my husband because I can have this very default tendency of like, oh, well, let's talk about solutions and more often than my personality would like.

    - Liesel Mertes

    He says, I just want you to listen. And I think, OK, I can do that. I can table all of these marvelous suggestions that I feel like I have.

    - Liuan Huska

    Yeah. But I think that's a good point that you bring up, that there are times when people are looking for, like, really practical, like what should I do? Sort of help. And it's it's important to just be sensitive and read read the people for like in their body language and and, you know, know from the history of your relationship together what's needed.

    - Liuan Huska

    But it's really great to just be direct and say, what do you need? That's like. Right. People like have such a hard time doing that.

    - Liuan Huska

    They just they just want to, like, jump right in it, especially especially if you're a person who's verbal anyway, bring it back, know genuine listening.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Were there other things that were really helpful to you along the way that people said or did?

    - Liuan Huska

    I mean, just physical presence too, was another one that. So I tell the story in my book of one night when I was having a panic attack and it related to the pain like it was, you know, pain, kind of like fed into depression and anxiety, which fed into insomnia, which made the pain worse. It's just this vicious cycle that kind of goes on.

    - Liuan Huska

    And I was I was in the middle of that cycle and I woke my husband up to try to, like, shake me out of it and just talk to somebody.

    - Liuan Huska

    But he had been woken up so many times in the past months. And this was like just a moment where he.

    - Liuan Huska

    Felt like he needed to sleep and wake up the next morning and go to work, so he just turned over and said, can we just talk about it tomorrow morning? And I just snapped at that point like it was something just like. Kind of just like, you know, a thread was snapped, snipped and a I went out into the living room and just had this like. I don't know, like frothing at the mouth episode, basically, it's I'm laughing about it now, but it was is pretty bad.

    - Liuan Huska

    It was just that, like, I want to run and, you know, leave my body, but I can't feeling. Just yelling and I took this jacket that was right next to me and I was just like pounding it, like slapping it on the wooden floor and I just couldn't stop, like, I needed some way to, like, physically do something about how I was feeling. But my husband ended up obviously he was woken up by the whole thing and he came out and he just.

    - Liuan Huska

    SAT behind me and put his arms around me and just stayed there with me and that physical presence of knowing that someone is with me in my pain and I'm not alone,

    - Liuan Huska

    I think I needed that, like tactile, like signal of that to like what it's to in order to kind of release the feelings of panic. And so I know that's not always like a appropriate thing in the workplace, but even being present, like without touching and asking, like, can I put my hand on you like.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah, embodied acts of care are so important.

    - Liuan Huska

    Mhm, yeah, but but then I wanted to say like beyond the on the level of what, what can people like, what are helpful ways that people can come around people, those experiencing life disruptions. Um

    - Liuan Huska

    another one for me uh that I talk a lot about in my book is. Just like like we were talking about, like we don't want to come at it as you are a problem to be fixed and.

    - Liuan Huska

    What I realize in in a lot of Christian churches is that the people that, um, kind of have like these things that they're going through that are ongoing and just seem like unresolvable, they're seen as people to be ministered to. And so they're put sort of on the margins. Right, of of the churches like they're in the handicapped, sit in the aisles or they're, um, they're going up for prayer on the sides at the end.

    - Liuan Huska

    But, um. We don't understand sometimes that those places of of deep suffering are also the places where, like life and creativity and new things happen if we are able to just be present to them enough to let those things happen.

    - Liuan Huska

    One of my favorite quotes is from Brother Roger of Taizé, who founded the Taizé Communities in France. And it's in the pains, or where or when the wounds where anxiety is seething, creative forces are also being born.

    - Liuan Huska

    And so I. I felt like when people were able to say to me, you're not just like something to be fixed, but we can actually learn from what you're going through and what you have to offer as someone who is suffering is valuable and actually may be central to our human experience, is not marginal in something that we just put on the aisles.

    - Liuan Huska

    Like like we want to hear your story and your voice. And that matters like when I was as I started getting opportunities to speak out of that experience and have it be welcomed as as not just something that scary and that needs to be fixed and threatening, but like valuable.

    - Liuan Huska

    That was really healing for me to be able to integrate my experiences into who I was and who I am today.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Hmm. That's a really I feel like important reflection that I'm going to mull over to think about how how we encounter people, that we would say, oh, they they need something, you know, not not just in a utilitarian sense of fixing them, but also without defaulting to some of like that the trite language of just like gods, God's going to use this. And it's all going to be in striking the right balance of saying whether it's in a Christian or secular environment of like you actually have something to give out of this without pushing people to do it before they're ready, you know, but.

    - Liesel Mertes

    I don't know, almost just to make the space for belief that that they're like and and to have a posture that is ready to receive that when the person is ready to give it. Yes.

    - Liuan Huska

    And it's also one of the things I note in my book is that the gifts that we receive from people who are whether they're disabled or they've experienced some kind of terrible loss or in pain, they're not always things that people give to us.

    - Liuan Huska

    Like people in the disability community will talk about how the communities that have that are able to welcome people with disabilities are more peaceful because they've learned to deal with difference better. So they're able to just integrate those differences in ways that don't cause, you know, strife.

    - Liuan Huska

    But they're also the teachers teach better whenever they have people with disabilities in their community, in their classroom, because they're learning to adjust their the ways they're teaching to their their student with disabilities. But that improves the way they teach to everybody.

    - Liuan Huska

    People are more grounded when they have people that are different with in their midst, like, you know, like allowing people to go at their own pace, whether that's like a child that's just learning to tie their shoe or or someone that's having trouble walking and just like slowing down to walk with them to the store or to their car like that.

    - Liuan Huska

    Those are all gifts that we receive from people that are are suffering, whether or maybe not suffering in the case of disability, but. Whatever it is like not conforming to the workplace norm or the societal norm, when we're able to just. You know, be in their presence, that itself is a gift without them having to, like, offer anything to us.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Mmm. That's so good. And it makes me think of an article that I sent out to family members just this morning.

    - Liesel Mertes

    It was a New York Times article, and it was it was talking about just like community, OK? It was called American. Stop being ashamed of weakness. And it was fascinating. It was fascinating on a number of levels. But there was one place in which they were it was quoting a noteworthy anthropologist. I'm not going to say their name because I'm not going to pull it correctly at this point. But this anthropologist was being asked, what would you say are the first signs of human civilization as differentiated from just other high functioning mammalian civilizations?

    - Liesel Mertes

    And was it going to be tools or signs of being Hunter-Gatherer like cultivating the soil? And this anthropologist response was the remains of someone who had been found and they had had a femur that had broken and healed and had for the time. What she said was this is evidence that, you know, like a femur fracture like this would take six weeks to be able to heal at this level. And during this time, that person obviously would have had to have been, you know, had food brought to them and shelter and the care of a community that comes alongside them in that sort of a, you know, prolonged time horizon as really being a marker of, you know, like a particular type of care and civilization that is given.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And and for some reason, I'm I'm reminded of that. Our capacity, actually to care to learn from is making us better. As you said, you know, the data points that show that, but also a marker of something deep and human within us.

    - Liuan Huska

    Yes. Yeah, I've I thought a lot about that because. Right. Are the ways that our bodies fall apart or just our vulnerability in general. It seems like such a flaw. Right, in the design.

    - Liuan Huska

    Yes, exactly. People have talked about that. But I've talked with like evolutionary biologists and and people in the field who have who have said what one person told me. She called it a selective advantage for community in that she was giving the example of, like, humans have a really short inner birth spacing. So they tend to have children like one after the other, whereas other primate species, they have like five to eight years between when they have children.

    - Liuan Huska

    And and that could be considered a design for like why if humans are having this many children, they're not going to be able to give as many resources to children. So there's going to be more deaths. But the ways that human communities have made up, so to speak, for that side flaw is that they share child care and they they co parent and resources are shared among people. So that that's just show to her that, like, the way that we've evolved, if you want to think about it in evolutionary terms, is towards community and towards being able to like.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Integrate our weakest members instead of just leaving them behind so they can just die of their broken femur, right. And this this has been a wide ranging from personal to metal level statistics conversation. I know that you draw a lot of these wisdom and insights and even more into your book, which is due for release in this December of 2020. Congratulations.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And can you tell us a little bit more about your book? We're going to link it in the show notes, but where people can find out more about you and preorder or order your book as well.

    - Liuan Huska

    Thanks for asking. Yes, my book is called Hurting Yet Whole Reconciling Body and Spirit and Chronic Pain and Illness. And it's published through Intervarsity Press. And it's it's springing up. All of these things that we've just talked about, how my story led me to ask these questions about questioning some of our common assumptions about healing and then coming to the conclusion that are the way to heal is not to overcome our limits and our vulnerabilities, but to learn to embrace them as what it means to be human and what in a way that connects us to other people as as a way to become whole, not just individually whole, but whole in a group with other human beings.

    - Liuan Huska

    So you could you can get it wherever books are sold on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, your local bookseller, the Intervarsity Press website. And then you can also go to my website, which is my name, liuanhuska.com and you'll find an excerpt for the book. And also you can preorder at that on the site as well.

    - Liuan Huska

    I also have in case readers are interested in a series of meditations that are a companion to the book, that there's for ten minute meditations that kind of takes you through some scriptures and silence and invites us to come home to our bodies and embrace what our bodies are.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    This conversation with Liuan sparked so many points of interest for me, and I hope that you do check out her book, there is more info about ordering in the show notes. And here are three key-takeaways to consider:

    Do you consider someone who is living with pain, whether that is physical or psychological emotional pain, as a problem to be fixed?How does this Fix-It Frank mentality limit your interactions with them? What does it look like to consider them as individuals that actually have something deeply meaningful to contribute to the collective life of a community? Physical presence, just being able to sit and be with someone in their hurt, is incredibly powerful.And this can be hard, because we live in a society prizes happiness and success AND we often feel the need to fix grief. Liuan spoke of the power of her husband just being with her, bearing witness to her emotions instead of moving away. How can you show up like this for people that are hurting in your own life? In your work setting? Are you promoting a white-knuckle culture within your workplace or family? Liuan wrestled with this type-A drive. And if I am honest, this is a take-away point that is totally for me. I can really prize pushing through and doing hard things. How can this lead you (and others) to ignore the needs of the body as you constantly prioritize productivity over rest?

    OUTRO

    Find out more about Liuan Huska and her book here: http://liuanhuska.com/

  • - Cedrick Smith

    We're going to tackle topics that are hidden in the crevices, that are a lot of times filled with shame and no one wants to talk about. But in order for us to get to where we need to get to and to heal from those pains and traumas, we are going to cover those topics and this being our first film, we couldn't be more pleased

    INTRO

    This is the conclusion of a two-part conversation on Working While Black, where I talk with Tosca Davis and Cedrick Smith, two Black workers and film-makers. Their powerful, award-winning documentary, To Be Us: To Work, is making the film festival circuit and garnering praise. It looks at the disruption of living and working in a world where whiteness is supreme. If you haven’t listened to the first episode, I encourage you to do so now. You will hear more about Tosca and Cedrick and their formative life experiences of marginalization and oppression in the workplace.

    Their film features candid, compelling stories from Black workers across a range of industries telling their working while Black stories. Both Cedrick and Tosca hope that it resonates powerfully.

    - Cedrick Smith

    I would have to say, To Be Us, To work the movie, the film that we did was made to help liberate and to heal. Tosca and I always talk about the healing element of To Be Us: To Work and that we knew we made this movie specifically for Black people.

    - Cedrick Smith

    We know that everybody is going to see the film and take away from it what they want to take away from it of all different ethnicities and races. But we also know that this film specifically was made for us, was made for black folks to be liberated and say, I can identify with what is going on here. I didn't know what microaggression meant. I didn't know that this is what it's called.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And and we believe, like Tosca says, in naming things. And once you're able to name things and pull the scab back, that is when the true healing begins.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And so the authenticity of the storytellers in the film, which at some point we hope everybody gets to see the film because we're currently in film festival mode right now and it's not in distribution and we're looking for a distribution deal.

    - Cedrick Smith

    You know, that that was the the crux and the intent of making this film. And as we move forward, To Be Us Productions, that is the. The force behind what we do is that we're going to tackle topics that are hidden in the crevices, that are a lot of times filled with shame and no one wants to talk about. But in order for us to get to where we need to get to.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And to heal from those pains and traumas, we are going to cover those topics and this being our first film, we couldn't be more pleased about the outcome. We couldn't be more pleased about the storytellers and the courage that they had in telling the stories.

    But there was a particular challenge to carrying all of these stories.

    - Cedrick Smith

    Early on, I would have to go out and talk to people and get their stories, write them down. And then, as you can imagine, the next weekend I went out and talked to people. I would kind of regurgitate some of the other stories so they could understand what I was talking about. And then the next weekend, I was telling some of those stories. Right. So invariably what was happening to me was, you know, even when we were having our business meetings with To Be Us Productions, you know, putting our production schedules together to map out how we're going to make this happen and so forth, I was becoming very irritable.

    - Cedrick Smith

    I was, no, not becoming, I was irritable. I was I was depressed at sometimes. I was very on edge. And I literally had to tell Tosca one day. I think I probably called her late one night. It was like, "Hey, Tosca, you know what it is?

    - Cedrick Smith

    I have internalized these stories." I had nowhere to diffuse them, so as you can imagine, I had these 40 stories that I had inside of me that were angering that you just sat there and you said, how could somebody be that cool to somebody?

    - Cedrick Smith

    And one one story, this the guy in particular was there's a young lady who told me the story of she had changed her hair. She had made it instead of, it was straight, it was curly. But maybe she wore natural that day.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And she's on an elevator getting ready, going to work.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And there's a white co-worker that's with her get ready to go into the office with her. And the white co-worker goes up to her and grabs her hair and starts touching the hair. Literally, this is what happened to her.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And she's said, hey, look, don't touch my hair. What are you doing? You know, like, no, don't touch it. Oh, it's not a big deal. I just wanted to kind of see how I felt it. I like your hair and you just tell me you like it, but don't touch it. You have to touch my hair. So she works throughout the day. She gets a call from the manager, said, I need to see you in my office.

    - Cedrick Smith

    The Black woman gets a call from the manager saying, I need to see in the office. She goes into the office. The manager says to her, "Hey, look, I heard you got into a little altercation with X white person that was touching her hair, like, she didn't really like the tone that you used, you know, maybe." And so do you hear that?

    - Cedrick Smith

    So she had hurt. That's dang near an salt. You touching my hair without my permission. She tells them not to touch my hair. And she's the one that got reprimanded for by the manager because of her tone of telling her not to touch my hair.

    - Cedrick Smith

    OK, I mean, I was blown away by that

    - Cedrick Smith

    another story was a young lady who had a degree from an Ivy League type school undergrad, who had an MBA from a Power five conference school.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And she was a director at a at a job where she was co-director with another white man.

    - Cedrick Smith

    So it was a public institution where you can see the salaries of the salaries come out and she sees on the email she's making thirty thousand dollars less than the white male in the same position.

    - Cedrick Smith

    All right, she's been working it for years, that's a difference of three thousand dollars in ten years, that's a significant amount of dollars, whether it's private school or maybe we get a second home or, you know, saving for college or whatever have the money to use. That's three hundred thousand dollars.

    - Cedrick Smith

    The interesting thing about it was she thought she could go straight to her boss and say, hey, look, we need to rectify this.

    - Cedrick Smith

    This is ridiculous. I'm in the same position. I should get this at least equivalent money or even more. We need to correct this. And the boss says, "No, we're not gonna do that. And the boss will have to be a woman, a white woman. She says, OK, I got to go up above you. She goes in thinking, OK, I'm going to HR, is going to get taken care of. It doesn't get taken care of.

    - Cedrick Smith

    She had to threaten to go to EEOC. ABC did ask you to threaten to get a lawyer, then they they finally brought her salary up to here is the new salaries come out on the email. He's making four thousand dollars more than she is and she has to start the whole cycle again.

    - Cedrick Smith

    The caveat to this is, is that the white man didn't even have an undergraduate degree from college.

    - Cedrick Smith

    He had graduated high school. So she had an MBA from a Power 5 conference, undergrad degree from from an Ivy League type university, and she's making still less money than he was making.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Not to overuse the word exhaustion, but just the, having to keep asking is, is this habit like is this habit, that person I think they're treating me that. I think that that would be denied to someone else and like, am I not getting invited here? Or is that specific in

    - Liesel Mertes

    That sense of like the mental reprocessing that has to go on as a subtext all the time? I mean, I just imagine it's that much less attention to give to all the other things in life that we want to demand attention if you're having to constantly run that tape.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And yeah, I just that was something that I perceived as well. I'm like, that's that's just must take so much energy that could be, you know, doing all the other things in life to have to be processing at that level.

    - Tosca Davis

    Right. And I want that.

    - Tosca Davis

    I don't think you can overuse the word exhaustion, but if you hit that, you hit it because because we do have less time than white people. We have less money than white people. We have less power than white people. We have less everything than white people. We, we have, you know, the health disparities, the wealth disparity is all because of white supremacy. You know, there could be a there could be in a house that the exact same house, a street away.

    - Tosca Davis

    What is the black neighborhood? What is it, a white neighborhood and what is worth, quote unquote, two hundred fifty thousand dollars. The other one worth five thousand dollars. That's a disparity in wealth. Just awful white supremacy alone.

    - Tosca Davis

    Just because white is normal, just because there is there's the assumption that white people are supreme or that they are smarter or they're cleaner or they're the best. That is a difference in two of fifty thousand dollars in wealth.

    - Tosca Davis

    Everything about living under white supremacy is exhausting and takes away from our we don't ever have pure experiences, we just don't I can't even imagine literally and I have a I have an awesome imagination. I can't imagine what it feels like not to have to wonder if you didn't get something or if you did achieve something or something happen to you because of the color of your skin.

    - Tosca Davis

    Like what does that even feel like? I've never just in my forty six years, I've never just had pure joy, even even doing something that I love to do, which is, you know, we talked about the top of the hour is watch TV and and watch movies when most of the movies are still white centered and a lot of them have micro aggressions and, you know, jokes that are that are racist even a2020, even as we progress, even though many of the shows I watch are definitely different than the shows I watch in the 70s and 80s and 90s.

    - Tosca Davis

    But even watching TV, white people are centered.

    - Tosca Davis

    No matter where I go, white people are centered. Even if I want to move to another country or a city, I have to do research on that neighborhood to see how anti-Black they are, that if they are antiblack, how antiblack they are, and how does it feel to see a house that you want to move to in butt-fuck Wisconsin and as a white person, not have to do research to see if they don't like white people.

    - Tosca Davis

    That's just not going to happen. But I have to do that any time I move the whether what neighborhood I moved to where if I want to work somewhere, I do research on. What's the scale, do they hate black people this much or this much so that

    - Tosca Davis

    It definitely takes a toll on you? Because it is it is part of everyday life for me, even if I'm sitting at my home looking at TV.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And. That's that's powerful and well-spoken, and I I can imagine that there's a perspective that you have encountered and you've spoken some to it, that sounds like this.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Is this all just in your head? I mean, haven't we passed the laws? Haven't we had a Black president? Why are you still making a big deal out of it? After all, America is a place where you can be anything you want to be if you just try hard enough.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Cedric, how does that sort of a statement sit with you?

    - Cedrick Smith

    You like for it to be that way of life or for us to have Utopia? But that's not the case. That's that's just typically that is just absolutely not the case. The disparities that are there show it. I mean, I'm about data. You know, we have health disparities. I do a lot of research around health disparities, do a lot of reading around health disparities. And these are actual impactful numbers. We're dealing with COVID-19. We're seeing black and brown communities that are being devastated by this disease.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And there are reasons for that. And a lot of those reasons are based off a systemic oppression, the systemic racism, period. That is the number one factor. You know, when you look at Barack Obama gets elected president, doesn't mean white supremacy goes away.

    - Cedrick Smith

    In fact, you know, even in our film, we have instances where, you know, even the groups that that are oppressed, if you will, even the groups that are affected by the systemic racism sometimes take on the characteristics of the group that oppresses them.

    - Cedrick Smith

    So you even have Black people in positions or Brown people in positions that propagate or are the gatekeepers for white supremacy.

    - Cedrick Smith

    You know, even in our film, I think we have one young lady that was like, you know, I went to this one person.

    - Cedrick Smith

    I looked for it for empathy from this person who was like me thinking that, like, I can find and embrace something with them and they will understand what's going on. And even at that person is not able to give them the empathy that they wanted at that moment. And I have other reasons why that person may not have been as empathic as that person wanted. It may have been the ten thousand the ten thousand story that that person had to deal with when they're working there for 40 years as a mentor and they're just tired that day, it's all about blame them.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And so when I hear this, you know, "You can be all you want to be," there's so many instances where, like Tosca says, you know, the margins are very tight. The risk is greater. My one hundred thousand dollars is not the same as on a thousand dollars as a white board. It just isn't. You know, I got to pay for Big Mama's medication.

    - Cedrick Smith

    Sometimes I help a brother pay his rent, you know, or I help a cousin out who's not as well off as I am.

    - Cedrick Smith

    So it's not like I'm taking my whole one hundred thousand dollars home with me. It just doesn't work that way. And in a lot of Black families it it not that way.

    - Cedrick Smith

    When you're looking at disparities of wealth where the average net worth, depending on what labor statistic you're looking at, is anywhere from nine thousand dollars to, I think, the latest labor statistic may be seventeen thousand dollars for the average net worth of a black family versus one hundred twenty two to one hundred eighty thousand dollars for white family. We're talking upwards of ten times, sometimes twelve times more in net worth.

    - Cedrick Smith

    That is a huge, impactful disparity.

    - Cedrick Smith

    You know, to I remember when I sold my house, I live in a very nice neighborhood here in Houston. And I remember when I sold it, I remember one of my neighbors that I've been neighbors with for eight years. Pretty cool guy, you know, seemed like pretty cool. I remember when he saw that I sold my HOUSE for a pretty, pretty good lake and he said he looks at me and he goes, "So Cedric who bought the house? Were they Black or white?"

    - Cedrick Smith

    I he literally asked this question to me, not thinking. I'm cool with this dude. I'm like, where does that come from? Like, that's the question you're asking me on a block away from my house, too.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And so when we throw out these, you know, everybody's equal and all is great and all is good and you can achieve the American dream list.

    - Cedrick Smith

    This is not the same. The pathway is not the same. You know, oppression hurts. Systemic oppression has impact. The data is clear. And from health to economic disparities. Go ahead, Tosca.

    - Tosca Davis

    I'm sorry, obviously to say and not to mention the five hundred year head start, like I, I,

    - Tosca Davis

    I am offended when someone says bootstraps or, you know, you can make it if I can make it. Are you, whiteness alone is a privilege. So you know, the poorest white person has privilege, which is we have evidence based on how they vote. So many people talk about, well, white, poor people, they are always voted against their interests.

    - Tosca Davis

    No, they're not. They're voting for whiteness. It is a privilege to be white. That's why every century or so white people let and other rules, you know, the Irish, they weren't always white. The Greeks weren't always white. The Poilish weren't always white. But every so often they let people into the club and they become white. So that is a privilege to be white.

    - Tosca Davis

    And if you've had a three hundred, four hundred, five hundred year head start I really don't want to hear about, we're even an even playing field,

    - Tosca Davis

    because even, even if we had the same amount of wealth, even if we had the say the best health, you're still white, you're still going to have the privilege over me.

    - Tosca Davis

    You're still going to get into clubs I'm not going to be able to get into. You're still you're still not going to use a lot of your mental energy trying to figure out, is it because a black is because I'm black? Is it because I'm black?

    - Tosca Davis

    I would if I didn't get this because I'm black. Maybe I should change my name on my resume. Should I take Tyrone off and put Dan? I mean, what should I do? These are things that we have to do all of the time.

    - Tosca Davis

    So I'm very offended when anybody feels as though, you know, we are only saying I want equal ground when there are Jim Crow laws there. Redlining, there's voter suppression. I mean, it is it is is offensive.

    - Tosca Davis

    I mean, I'm angry thinking about it right now.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    - Liesel Mertes

    So for yourself, within the stories that you've collected that are particularly unhelpful as you for for people from a white majority culture as they interact with black people in the workplace, they would say, hey, don't do this. It's really stupid and offensive. Feel free to start wherever you want.

    - Tosca Davis

    I'm just here thinking about that question, because there's it's not that there's it's not that I don't have an answer is that I have too many answers on.

    - Tosca Davis

    I think. This is you know what, this is one I don't think a lot of people think about, I, I would like for white people to understand that many times, not most. Not all the time, but many times black people don't trust you enough to be your friends outside of work.

    - Tosca Davis

    They have information about their private lives and their personal lives have been used against them before. And also, it's very hard to trust the oppressor, just just generally speaking, is very hard to trust the majority culture.

    - Tosca Davis

    So many times black people are penalized for not going to happy hour or sitting at lunch. Understand that we have a limited amount of time or we could just be ourselves and not perform.

    - Tosca Davis

    And so, you know, I don't think it matters if you take it personally, but it's not a personal thing. It is a security thing is a safety thing. We don't feel safe being vulnerable with you. And I don't even think we have to go into the reasons why.

    - Tosca Davis

    I just know that it is unhelpful to assume that someone wants to be your friend and to be friendly. You may have a carefree life where you don't have to think about the oppressive systems, but black people don't have that. And we definitely don't have time to sit with you at lunch if we don't like you or go to happy hour or play golf with you on the weekends. Our weekends and our evenings are our time not to be in an oppressive system.

    - Tosca Davis

    That that is the main thing I want to tell white people.

    - Cedrick Smith

    Yeah, and I would add to that that, you know, you were saying some like don't do is more like me. Tell them what you need to do. You know, there's a there's a large amount of healing.

    - Cedrick Smith

    I think white people need to do, you know, when it comes to racism, when it comes to the history of this country, if you're you know, we talk a lot about doing these diversity and inclusion classes that are supposed to kind of help, you know, equalize everything and help us understand each other better and deal with unconscious bias.

    - Cedrick Smith

    But and a lot of instances, Black folks got to deal with conscious bias, you know, and so let's deal with that first.

    - Cedrick Smith

    I mean, we know that unconscious bias exists. You know, we know that there is sexism and we know there are some other isms that we have to deal with. Yes.

    - Cedrick Smith

    But to think that in these diversity and inclusion classes that we come into it, you know, equally afoot in the same way is naive and one in which if at some point in your lifetime you're not trying to get a better understanding of the impacts of chattel slavery had on this country and had on Black people, what red redlining had, what what black codes were about, vagrancy laws that were put in place after emancipation of slaves, understanding Jim Crow and what happened. If you're not put in the work to try to understand that and understanding white fragility, then, you know, hey, you can take it someplace else.

    - Liesel Mertes

    There's resources like on the Internet, in video and book and article form. Like I, I think it is worth noting as people are receiving that challenge, it's like, you don't have to feel like there's not a place to start. There, there are actually some very good scholars, activists, artists that have put together some great stuff. And it's not like buried deep in Google. You can just start looking.

    - Cedrick Smith

    There is a there is a very good book that that talks about kind of like redlining, talks about the history of Section eight housing and how it was created. And it wasn't just a black thing. You know, now we look at Section eight, like as a Black problem, like this is not what it was for.

    - Cedrick Smith

    It's called The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein. Very good book. I highly recommend it. There are some other books out there, White Fragility and so forth. But that's about the kind of shows you systemically how policies, specific policies were made against Black people. Specifically and the impact that it has very matter of fact book, but very well researched and I highly recommend.

    - Liesel Mertes

    It makes me think of a statement that I have seen in the mix, which, you know, has an aspect of like America is functioning the way it was designed to function. I mean, it's it's not just by happenstance, like there were actual, very purposeful, interest groups and, you know, mortgage associations and bank cabals and like, it's functioning the way it was meant to. Like that, that was not just how it happened.

    - Liesel Mertes

    What are things from white people that you know, that have made you feel most seen and heard

    - Liesel Mertes

    that you would say, OK, these are these are things not true. And Cedrick, you touched on this some, but on the positive side to say, you know, these these are things that were important to me that I received from white people in my life.

    - Tosca Davis

    I have very few white people in my life, and the white people who are in my life now are very anti-racist, very progressive. They understand that they must give up power. It is not so, you know, we tell people to read and do things like that, but you have to be active.

    - Tosca Davis

    And so actively giving up power looks like giving up leadership roles, giving, giving the mic to someone else, not centering yourself at all, not being involved at all. And

    - Tosca Davis

    the number one thing I would that makes me comfortable that I've seen white people do is to give money directly to black women. OK, so one of the things that that bothers me is the performance of white people when they are performing woke or performing anti-racism. If you're not giving money directly to Black people, then you are not woke. You need to give money to Black trans women and Black women. That makes me comfortable because when Black women and Black trans women get everything they need, the world is all in. And when I say Black, I mean we're talking about the United States, then we're talking about African-Americans. But if you're talking about on any continent in the world, on the world, the darker skinned people, if you're taking care of, if those people, are well cared for.

    - Tosca Davis

    They have everything they need, then the whole world has everything they need. And so that is what white people need to do. They need to give up resources, give up power, give up the mike, give up leadership. That is the only way that we are going to make a more equitable world.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And and to add to that, kind of make an analogy, I am, yes, a Black person, but I'm also a Black male.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And with that, I know there privileges in this patriarchal, hetero normative, patriarchal, ladened society where everybody views everything from their certain privileges I have as a man.

    - Cedrick Smith

    So if I am going to request that those who are of the oppressive group, which men are oppressors to women, which I am a part of that group, then I would have to say that some of the practices that I have had to put in place that I've been called on, that I have been shown that, no, no, this is wrong.

    - Cedrick Smith

    What you did. This is wrong. What you said to to, to Tosca's to tune of saying giving up the might mic and being centered.

    - Cedrick Smith

    I've been centered so much as a six four black male in certain settings to where people thought that, oh, let me just go ask the doctor over here, this tall and handsome, the answer to this question. And I have no idea what the answer was, but this black woman to the left of me knows all the answers. And you should be asking her, so what does someone do in that position? I say the mic needs to go here and you need to center her.

    - Cedrick Smith

    This black woman who knows the answers to these questions and who has more knowledge about this. You just assumed it because I was male

    I want to share just one way that I have seen Cedrick share the mic. When I posted the first installment of this podcast, I wrote about “Cedrick Smith and Tosca Davis”, listing Cedrick first on my LinkedIn notification. He sent me a kind email that strongly (and kindly) requested that I reorder the names. He wrote, “we are intentional about tosca (woman) always being placed before me (privileged man)”. Big themes are communicated through a series of small but meaningful gestures, like this one.

    - Cedrick Smith

    Having an awareness of that privilege. As a white person is one of the first steps, and I'm trying to make it analogous in that way from being a man and being more aware of, like, let me not center myself. Let me move to the side. Let me empower somebody. Let me go in my pocketbook and give some money to some Black women who I know are out here doing some things that are going to change this world for the better.

    - Cedrick Smith

    That's what I do. And so that's what the charges would be for white folks. To do that, you need to give up that power, like Tosca says, and decenter to yourself, you know, and we'll be more effective in that in that matter.

    - Cedrick Smith

    It's going to feel odd, because you are brought up in a system and this is what Tosca talks about all the time, is that we are unlearning.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And believe me, once you unlearn a lot of things and have a vigilance to do so, because we're not perfect, we still make mistakes, I still make mistakes and have to say, oh, you know what? And I wasn't as vigilant about that. I need to I need to correct that. And having that that self-awareness and working on it can make things better.

    - Tosca Davis

    I know that people are listening and they're like, how do I give money to black women? I can definitely send you some grassroot organizations because, again, the the biggest organizations are typically not giving money directly to the people on the ground. So in order to make change, we have to have community. We have to have grassroots organizations who are doing activism or doing social justice work.

    - Tosca Davis

    And that's typically not your big name, nonprofits that you're where where the CEO is making a million dollars or half a million dollars. So I always send your money directly to the bottom line, and that is how we make a more equitable world. And I'll I'll get some resources out. And you can start from there.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah, we will link those in the show notes.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Thank you. Thank you both for taking time to Put just words and voice to that, a question that arose as I was listening was, I feel in white America that that there can be this interpretation of having Black people in your workforce, that it is either, it can tend towards tokenism of like, well, we need to do it because it's the right thing to do, tinged with an aspect of a fear-based crouch of like we don't want to screw this up.

    - Liesel Mertes

    We know what a hot topic right now. We don't. And it can it can be the sense of, you know, we can vacillate between these extremes of like, well, you're here because we need to, but we're super scared of getting it wrong.

    - Liesel Mertes

    I would love it if you would both speak to the positive side of that equation.

    - Liesel Mertes

    What would you say our workforce's, our communities are missing out on by not allowing black people to flourish and just, you know, not have to be made small.

    - Tosca Davis

    I would, first of all, let me respond to getting it wrong, if that that is that's the discomfort, that is something you're just going to have to deal with. You have to deal with making mistakes and feeling uncomfortable.

    - Tosca Davis

    But how you handle that, that is being vulnerable is that I think I made a mistake. I apologize. I will, I will do better. And not relying on that person to teach you , you know, don't ask for labor that you're not going to pay for.

    - Tosca Davis

    So I definitely want to speak to that. Is that your discomfort is something that you need to get used to.

    - Tosca Davis

    If you are comfortable white person, you are doing things very, very wrong. OK, you will probably need to be uncomfortable for the rest of your life

    - Tosca Davis

    to answer your question on what you're missing out on, what you're missing out on by not engaging black folks. You are missing out on a a world, a world that you can't even imagine.

    - Tosca Davis

    You you may or may not notice that there is a large group of black people who are in the helping field. Black people are typically in the human resources field because we have been socialized to think about other people. We have no choice. That's the only way we get to civil rights. That's the only way we get through slavery. We could not be individualistic. We have to think about other people. So I think that's what I think that's the main thing you're missing.

    - Tosca Davis

    Of course, you're missing imagination. You're missing all types of solutions to problems because you're not asking the right people that goes without saying.

    - Tosca Davis

    But but holistically. You're missing out on this wonderful world where we are not destroying the earth. Well, we are not using terrorists to pull these neighborhoods where we are using community as the the basis for everything we need for education, for teaching, teaching people. Some people may say punitive or punishment, but imagine a world without police.

    - Tosca Davis

    I guarantee you, if you put enough black people together to make decisions, at some point you're going to see that you don't need police because the police are always in our neighborhood. If they're not in your neighborhood, they're in our neighborhood. Let us get together and I guarantee you will find a way to bring down crime, which we know why we have crime, poverty. And so if we get rid of poverty, we'll have less crime. Right.

    - Tosca Davis

    So I think that's what you're missing by not employing black people is you'll find out how how we'll make this world more equitable.

    - Cedrick Smith

    Mm. And on a more, you know. On a more acute level, I guess, in in this capitalistic world that we do live in. You know, I got to go to a job tomorrow that is rooted in capitalism.

    - Cedrick Smith

    We're starting to see patients as units and you got to see him in 15 minutes each. You know, what you're seeing in these types of settings in this capitalistic world is a creativity that you're losing. I have an instance where I have a buddy in IT, and he talks about how he literally has solutions to some problems that that were happening from an I.T. standpoint in this company. And they were having a big meeting.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And invariably the question goes around and all the supervisors were white guys and they go around and ask, you know, other white guys like, hey, what's the problem there? Like, I don't know what the problem is. I don't know what I don't know what the solution is. I don't know. I don't know.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And if all the white guys don't know what the solution is, they just closed the meeting down and he said there's been so many instances where he had the solution and he just felt like, you know what, if you're not going to ask me, I'm not going to offer it up because you're not validating who I am as a as a human being.

    - Cedrick Smith

    You don't even see my humanity.

    - Cedrick Smith

    You know, you just see me really as an object to be like in the movie we talk about our narrator says, you know, to be surveilled, you know, just to be, you know, surveilled and not even validated as a human being in the setting like a contributor.

    - Cedrick Smith

    So I think a lot of times in corporate America, in any type of setting, I mean, blue collar, the would be even in our movie we have where the guys knew how to fix something in 30 minutes, whereas a lot of guys try to fix it for three hours, some white guys.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And when they fixed it, they were the one that were demonized for fixing that in 30 minutes.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And so acutely in this capitalistic world that we live in right now, you know, you're missing out on creativity that is unparalleled in regard to coming up with solutions that you're tamping out and not allowing to flourish, which would make the environment, the working environment, a better working environment, which would make it a more productive working environment, make it a more creative working environment. And so, yeah, I would say on a on a more acute level, looking at it from that standpoint.

    - Cedrick Smith

    You just missing out.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

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    - Tosca Davis

    I guess I would want people to take away the fact that we are all victims of these systems and that we all have privileges, and I want us to all be super aware of that and that we need to all go an through unlearning. And it will be a lifetime of unlearning.

    - Tosca Davis

    And I know people aren't going to believe this, but trust me when I tell you this, if you are a straight person, you are very homophobic.

    - Tosca Davis

    I don't care how you were raised. If you were raised in the United States of America, where straight people are centered and are seen to be valuable, you are homophobic, OK?

    - Tosca Davis

    If you are, if you have no disabilities, then you're able if you go through your entire day in your life without thinking about how a person in a wheelchair or how someone who has a mental illness, you don't think about how they are going to explore the world, how they're going to engage in the world.

    - Tosca Davis

    You're not going to think about that at all, as evidenced by how quickly we were able to work out of our houses and how many times a person with a physical disability was told that they can't work from their houses or they can't take classes from their home. But we did it very easily for able bodied people. And so once you realize that you're homophobic, that you're able that you're transphobic, that you're racist, that you're misogynistic, that you're sexist.

    - Tosca Davis

    If you can't say those things out loud, then you are not going to get anywhere. As a white person, you are absolutely racist. There is no way around that because, because I am a Black person and I happen to have I happen to suffer from internalized racism. I have taken on many of the oppressors behaviors because that culture was centered in my life.

    - Tosca Davis

    I was taught that culture. I'm embedded in that culture. So I have I have and will spend a lifetime un-learning white supremacy. And I'm a Black person. So if I'm a Black person who has taken on the oppressors behavior, there is no way you escape without being a racist.

    - Tosca Davis

    OK, I need for white people to stop being ultra offended by being called a racist because you are a racist. I'm a straight cis person. I am very trans-phobic and I'm very homophobic. But guess what I'm doing. I am unpacking all of that. I am I'm learning all of that.

    - Tosca Davis

    You cannot live in a world that is centered Christian, male, white, able bodied heterosexual CIS people. And not have an “ism” yourself is just not going to happen. So tell yourself, you know, before you are after you listen to his iPod. I am racist and homophobic and transphobic and I am doing my best. I am unlearning. I am listening to people, I am reading, I am giving other people the mic.

    - Tosca Davis

    I am giving up leadership roles. I am giving up power. If you do not do that, we are not going to move the needle, it is just not going to happen. So I am I am asking you specifically white people to stop being offended when someone call you racist, because you are racist. And if it does, you cannot live in the United States of America and not be racist.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah. And well, and, you know, in the white communities where that I'm a part of that are having these conversations and it's important we need to be having them like not just with black people, but with the other white people, you know, to also have this realization of like the long term commitment of the process and the work and that there will be time like it's heavy stuff, it is heavy stuff to confront. And there will be times where, you know, you'll feel like, oh, man, this is so much.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And it's like know how to care for yourself, know how to go. You know, that's that's an adult thing. That's a differentiator between adults and children, that you can like self soothe and be able to go to bed or take a walk or do some yoga and then like return back to it.

    - Liesel Mertes

    I think I think at times, especially people who begin, they're like, I started and I wanted to learn everything. And then I just got so exhausted and I'm so tired myself and now I can't pick it up again, like with anything.

    - Liesel Mertes

    You know, if you're committed to health, like you don't run, you don't begin running like ten miles. And then when you can't do that four days in a row, say, I'm never going to run again. Like you begin the process and you say I'm committing myself to, like, taking the rest I need and going back.

    - Tosca Davis

    I totally agree with that, I think because of 2020, there's so many people who are trying to rush and read everything and take these classes, they're going to wear themselves out and they're going to feel like a failure.

    - Tosca Davis

    Then they're going to go back to the same behavior and they're going to be exhausted, because when you're exhausted, you don't perform well. So I totally agree with you. This is a life, if you don't think it's the lifelong commitment, it's going to it's going to be so overwhelming for you. Again, as a black woman, I know I have a life long commitment to unlearning homophobia. I know this because I know that I'm going to unlearn this for the rest of my life.

    - Tosca Davis

    So it is a slow process for me. Some weeks I learn more information, some weeks I don't learn any information so or able to behave in a way that is empowering to the LGBTQ community. I am committed to providing resources to the community. And so if you do everything at once, like you said you are, you are going to give up. You're absolutely going to give up. So I totally agree with you on that.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And then kind of piggyback on what Tosca said earlier, I was kind of I didn't mention the word misogyny, but that was the word of the system, that being a male is that I'm a misogynist. And the unlearning of that has been a process.

    - Cedrick Smith

    You know, it doesn't mean I'm this evil person or anything like that. That's not what it is saying, stop being offended by that. It is a fact that I grew up in a system that was was built and designed to be oppressive to women.

    - Cedrick Smith

    That is what Tosca is talking about, that every day or every other day or whatever I can to do and my behavior and and in practice, that I do things and am mindful and intentional about the undoing and unlearning of those misogynistic ways that I have. Not perfect every time, I'm not going to get a quote right every time. But there's an intentionality that says, no, I'm going to do this and behave and change this and do this and do this and do this and be consistent about this.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And as she says, it is lifelong, but I'm definitely better off now than I was 15 years ago. Absolutely.

    Absolutely.

    - Cedrick Smith

    But and and I'm not done. And it does it doesn't work that way.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And it's nothing it's nothing to sit there and go, oh, well, let me put myself in the back. I've gotten to this point. No, it is still a vigilant, as I say, a hyper vigilance that one must have every day or however the interval is for you that you can tolerate to continue that process.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And you will see the change. You will see it, you'll see the change.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    Here are three key take-aways from this second part of my conversation with Tosca Davis and Cedrick Smith.

    For my White listeners, we must begin by asking better questions and open ourselves up to different perspectives.Did you struggle listening to some of the labels? I know that I still do, there is a part of me that wants to defend myself and say, “No, not me!”. But I really like and appreciate the labels that Cedric and Tosca encourage us to embrace (and use for themselves) is that they use them to signal of the need for vigilance, NOT as a marker for shame. Because shame always has been and always will be a crappy, crappy motivator. This is not about taking on a label as the totality of all that you are, but using them to signal of aspects of privilege that you and I will need to be constantly unlearning. The unlearning is made up of small and large gestures, letting someone else’s name be placed before yours, giving up power, contributing money to Black women (you can find notes of Tosca’s recommendations in the show notes).Where are you doing this (or not doing this) in your personal life? In your business? And realize that this is particularly hard in a strongly individualistic society like our own. For White Americans, we want to assume that we are entirely self-made and unbound by wider structures. Realize that compassion fatigue is real.To make a meaningful difference, you have to be committed to the work of equity and justice for the long haul. When you start to feel exhausted, take time to step back, do something that refreshes you or makes you laugh, and then return to the good work of making the world a more beautiful place where everyone can flourish.

    OUTRO

  • Cedrick Smith

    So the disruptive part for me is the white supremacy, the white supremacy, and the microaggression is the microaggression of outright racism, to be quite honest with you, that I've had to deal with and I think that's what people don't realize is what we're bringing to the workplace before we even hit the door, before we even have to deal with some of the I want to say normal disruptive events that we all have.

    INTRO

    This is the first in a two-part series about the challenge of working in a world where whiteness is supreme. And if you don’t know what that means, if that previous sentence put your teeth on edge, then this episode is probably one that you especially need to hear.

    My guests are Dr. Cedrick Smith and Tosca Davis, two Black activists, professionals, and, most recently, filmmakers. Their film, To Be Us, is making the film festival circuit, receiving accolades for telling the stories of Black professionals whose primary disruptive life event is living and working in a world that does not value divergence from the norm of whiteness. The question that they ask all of their interviewees is, “What is your working while black story.”

    I am giving it two episodes not because it is easy listening, but because it is essential listening. I’ve seen the film; it is both powerful and necessary and I am eager to be a part of exploring the themes in our next two episodes.

    We began our interview during election week in November of 2020. The whole nation was tense, but I was especially struck by the physical uncertainty for Cedric and Tosca in Texas.

    - Tosca Davis

    Friends walked into the apartment building and this white guy said, what are you doing here inward? And, you know, I was like, OK, it's already starting. So regardless of who wins as a black body, there's going to be terrorism stuff. We're going to feel it. So it doesn't have to be physical. I'm always going to be very protective of my body and I'm already conscious of where I am as a black person. I've already been socialized to be conscious of my body at all times, regardless of where I am.

    This is Tosca Davis, an activist, mystic, a storyteller, and the co-CEO of To Be Us Productions. We will hear more from her soon.

    - Tosca Davis

    But as far as feeling safe, I wouldn't say you would find too many black people who are going to feel safe in either.

    - Cedrick Smith

    In fact, back then to that, we already won and family members are still like that, we have text groups that are like, hey, look, if you are by yourself, be very aware where you are. Be very aware of your surroundings. You know, go with somebody, gas your car up in the daytime. These are literal things that we're texting to one another during this time. So, yeah, like Tosca, we don't never feel safe.

    This is Dr. Cedrick Smith, he is an activist, an athlete, a writer, a comic book collector, and a physician. Very much a Renaissance man and a co-CEO of To Be Us Productions.

    - Cedrick Smith

    I just don't think that I was at my country club the other day hitting balls and we have a practice area and there was a guy's house and he's always trying to police. And I put that in quotes, police the practice area.

    - Cedrick Smith

    So every time I come out there, he's always like, hey, you replace the divets? Are you doing it? I'm playing golf since I was seven years old. I'm fifty. And so I'm like, yeah, I'm doing all of that. But he's he's like surveilling and policing. So he he comes out of his house when he's walking toward me. And I was like, OK, who wants to do walking toward me? So I just kind of moved away from it, first of all, because the would not want to be close to him, but he was going to get one of the golf carts.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And I said, I hope not coming out here, police me like you always try to do with people that have the driving race. And I'm not really trying to please you. So that's what you always kind of do when I'm out here just trying to get golf balls. And so we kind of got into it and it ended up this kind of a back and forth ended up with him at some point saying like, well, how to get my gun and shoot you.

    - Cedrick Smith

    It got that elevated, you know, and I mean, so you like, OK, this is you know, I'm just trying to tell you, I don't I don't need you to police me. Let me hit my golf balls and enjoy it. That's why I'm out of here and about. And you leave me alone.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Well, and I imagine that that there's no way that that feels like just an empty threat that is easily passed off, like, you know,

    - Cedrick Smith

    He knew what he was doing. He noticed that. I mean, you know, I don't think he was going to go get a gun and shoot me. I didn't. But again, you know, just the fact that you went there, you know. Right.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Well, and if you're a member of a community where actually that sort of violence is not even an aberration like that, deep in the psyche to be like, yeah, people make threats and that happens to black. Yes.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Well, that's it is it is a nationally happy moment, but I hear in both of your voices a level of concern for physical safety and well-being. That is not part of my experience. And, you know, it feels draining just to live my experience. I cannot imagine having all of those other levels of care on top of that, which is one of the things that we'll be discussing some in today's episode.

    As you just heard, Cedric loves to golf. He plays many sports: football, basketball, tennis, ping-pong. He was the QB for the Dallas Carter Cowboys the year before the won the title. But it is golf that is his passion.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And the thing I love about golf is there's a there's a singularity to it. There's a. Not having to rely on, you know, other teammates, which I enjoy that part of team sports, but in golf it's really about you versus the course, you versus your feelings, your anxieties.

    - Cedrick Smith

    You're feeling the pressure and having to hit a particular shot at a certain time. I tell people all the time there's I happen to have played golf at a very high level. I played college, golf. I was an all-American two times. And I tell people all the time that there, for me, there was no feeling greater than winning a golf tournament.

    - Cedrick Smith

    I don't care if it was with 10 guys or with a tournament where I won out of, you know, 50 to 100 people winning a golf course. There's a there's a habit I get that I can't really explain.

    - Cedrick Smith

    When you look back at all the work that you did to improve, to get better, all the failures you had, where you were in contention and you got third place because you missed a shot here or you mismanaged the last three holes or you couldn't manage your emotions well or you didn't win. The shot was called for. You weren't able to pull it off.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And it's disappointing. And then getting up from that and learning from it and going back out and executing it and winning, there's no feeling like that.

    - Cedrick Smith

    Even the feeling of being in contention, you kind of know where other people are at that level.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And for me, there's just there's just no feeling like it. I cannot explain it. I can explain to people. I just. The joy that it is giving me, the pain is giving me the learning lessons it's given me is just an incredible sport, incredible sport. And I'm glad my dad was able to teach me the teach me the game.

    Cedrick hasn’t had much time for golf recently. He works in preventative health and has been hit hard by COVID.

    - Cedrick Smith

    Early on, we were seeing patients were really, really sick and not knowing exactly what was wrong with them. And so. With that, as a medical director, you're trying to come up with protocols and real time for your staff, you're trying to balance family members who are not quite as aware you as you are with what's going on, telling friends, warning them of what what is to come.

    - Cedrick Smith

    It's been a lot more strenuous in that regard.

    Cedrick has also been busy with his activism work and his film-making, which we will hear more about later on in the episode. But I also want to introduce you to Tosca Davis, Cedrick’s co-CEO at To Be Us Productions.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Tosca. What are some things that fill your time right now that give you joy?

    - Tosca Davis

    Oh, thank you for asking that question. I really appreciate that what brings me Joy right now, several things. So first of all, I'm going to be honest, I love watching TV. I love watching movies. I you know, that's my escapism. My belief system is that most people have a drug and my drug of choice is storytelling. And so I like it in the form of, you know, visuals and 3-D. And so that's why I love streaming services and I can watch anything that I want to watch.

    - Tosca Davis

    Sci fi fantasy, romance, rom com and fantasy are my two favorite genres. I was born in the 70s and I grew up on big gesture rom coms.

    - Tosca Davis

    I've even tweeted Tom Hanks and let him know that he ruined my romantic life because I that my life would be that way because I grew up on great rom coms with great soundtracks. And so that is bringing me joy right now. It would bring me joy regardless if there were if there were a pandemic or not.

    I just loved TV and film.

    - Tosca Davis

    The other thing that brings me joy is, well, I already talked about that. I love storytelling. So within that I love mythology. So under the umbrella of mythology and storytelling and symbolism, I study astrology. I study tarot. I'm now taking classes to be an herbalist. So, you know, some people may call me strange and I rather love that. I love that moniker. I love to be called strange, but I kind of like to do things that are that are unique.

    Tosca is imbued with deep curiosity and an omnivorous intellect.

    - Tosca Davis

    I think I don't really have I don't think I had a problem being strange. I knew that I was strange early on as a child.

    - Tosca Davis

    Even my family has called me strange, but I've never I've never was made to feel bad about that, really. And not that I didn't have. You know, it's not that I have didn't have a you know, I had an upbringing that was a little traumatic, but still, I was never that was never told that I was abnormal or strange.

    - Tosca Davis

    But I knew I was because I knew I had different belief systems and different interests than other children.

    - Tosca Davis

    So, for instance, I when I was when I was smaller as a I guess maybe around eight, nine years old, I want to be an architect. And so I wanted to I spent hours drawing floor plans and reading better homes and gardens and checking out drafting books and mechanical drawing books. No other child was doing it, but nobody told me that I couldn't do it. So I. I don't feel like I was made to feel bad.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And, you know, one of the things Tosca talks about with her being, quote, weird and strange and an open toast is very she the openness that she has is she has this talent of freeing people of of you know, she always talks about. People being given the permission to be who they are or having a belief system that may change, or you may have thought this one time, but hey, if that doesn't fit with your inventory now, when you do your yearly inventory, you can change it.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And that was one of the things with her that I must say with me was very freeing. I mean, there are there are a lot of similarities that we have to go into something that was healing, which is medicine. She did social work. So there are some commonalities there.

    - Cedrick Smith

    But also, I must say, I was inspired by her in regard to how free she was in navigating this world that was very harsh and harmful and very rigid at times.

    - Cedrick Smith

    But her saying that you can do this, you can be this.

    - Cedrick Smith

    If you feel like doing this, you can do it.

    - Cedrick Smith

    You know, so there's a there's a permission quality that she has that is very endearing and and much, much, much appreciated. She has definitely inspired me in so many different ways.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And I couldn't have thought of anyone more to to that I would have enjoyed more than working on this project of creating a film production company that's so out of the blue for both of us,

    - Tosca Davis

    I know that. Thank you, Cedrick. I feel so honored. I appreciate all those words.

    Tosca began her studies pursuing architecture.

    - Tosca Davis

    And then I took one psychology class and that changed everything. So everything became about human behavior. And that's when I made it a social work and psychology and became a social worker.

    - Tosca Davis

    And then I'm not a social worker anymore because of what I've learned. As someone who's very intuitive and can be very empathic and sensitive, people like me tend to go into the helping field or the social work field where it will definitely it will wear us out because we feel everything. So because I felt everything, I decided to leave social work, but I still want to help people.

    - Tosca Davis

    So I went into nonprofit and so I worked for the United Way. I work for Children's Aid Society. I work for Planned Parenthood, I work for some major nonprofits and I work for the Sickle Cell Association. And that's where I met Cedrick.

    Cedrick was on the board and Tosca was an employee at the Sickle Cell Association. This was 15 years ago, in 2005.

    - Liesel Mertes

    What were your first impressions of one another?

    - Cedrick Smith

    I guess for me, I was a board member and I just remember Tosca had really big hair. And no, I mean, at that time, I think she had kind of like a reminder there was a movie kind of came from that movie by M. Night Shyamalan with Samuel Jackson as Mr. Glass.

    Yeah, I care about my mother and broken or something like that. Yeah, unbreakable. Unbreakable.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And I just remember one day, seeing as I was a board member living across the sea. And the thing that struck me was this kind of like in the movie, Mr. Glass had this kind of like hair that was like their signature and our hair was big in that way. And then from there, I remember, I think at the time I was working on a book. And I didn't have a computer at home here.

    Cedrick was co-writing a book with a friend, coming into the office to work.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And so one day, Tosca and I got into a conversation and she said, "Well, Cedrick, what where did you work on the book?"

    - Cedrick Smith

    And I said, I'm working on it at work, on the computer, at work. So why don't you work on another computer work? Because I don't have a computer at home.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And she started laughing and she's like, What do you mean? And what, you don't have a computer at home? And so I was like, no, I don't. I just work on it and, you know, it at the job. And so after hours.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And so she said, no, you should have a computer.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And I said, OK, all right. Well, look, look, you give me the money, I'll go back if you and set it up for you. And that's kind of where. You know, our friendship took off. Got to set it up in my house, and from there we just developed a very good friendship.

    Five or six years ago, Cedrick began getting more involved in activism spaces, especially after the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Jordan Baker.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And so with that, I found myself going to various groups, sitting down, listening, being quiet. It doesn't matter that you, a doctor in those kinds of settings, sitting back in the back, being helpful and learning what it's like to advocate, learning what it's like to be organizing people and protesting and what is to come and what is to be expected. Learning from organizers locally of how to have specific asks and executing that and trying to get incremental change in this big system that you're trying to fight and get rectified and change.

    - Cedrick Smith

    But we would find ourselves going to a lot of these black spaces dealing with black issues that was in regard to uplift or liberation or what have you, dealing with police brutality, economic disenfranchisement, whatever the the the oppressive ism was at the time, we were dealing with these things at these meetings and what we came away with many times and not every time, but many times was that the culprit in the room was not addressed.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And so for us, there was this sense of, yes, you're doing the work, but we felt like you can't do the healing.

    - Cedrick Smith

    You can't get to the crux of the issue or to the solution until you have. Gotten to what is the cause and the cause in these situations was. White supremacy, and no one was saying that no one was talking about the actual system that is the culprit.

    - Cedrick Smith

    So with that fast forwarding, one day we're in a car which is driving.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And I just was I think I was going to pick up a trophy from a golf tournament that I just won like the week prior. And course, I wasn't able to play in this particular time because I was injured.

    - Cedrick Smith

    But we were talking I was like, you know, Tosca I'm just I'm just frustrated when I go because I just come back from another incident where it didn't go in on the culprit of the situation.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And I said, I'm just tired of coming away feeling as though we're not dealing with the culprit.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And as we talk back and forth, I said, look, why don't we just start a production company and we'll make films that we want to make to get the message out, that we want to get dealing with the issues that we want to deal with and we're going to go from there.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And that's kind of how it literally started. And so fast forward, we try to come up with a name. As you can imagine, Tosca has many names of trying to name a company and she had astrological names. I was more binary in my head, my approach to coming up with a name. And then I just lean back one day. And I said, you know what? I just want people to understand what it's like to be us.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And I say, just like that. And Tosca looks at me said, and that's it. That's that's the title of the company. And I was like, What do you like to be us? To be US productions?

    - Cedrick Smith

    And we were like, we talked about him a little bit. And it was like, that's it. And then I'm there. Now you're trying to figure out what you want to do with regard to making a film and. We decided to do a walking while black story with stories that are coming from from different storytellers, because we knew that one work is universal to talk, we'll probably get a little later.

    - Cedrick Smith

    She had a personal experience. You had a disruptive experience in our own life in regard to working on Black Story.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And three, we knew that we would be able to find content. The only challenge was what would would we be able to get the people to tell their stories on film?

    - Tosca Davis

    You will be amazed or maybe not. How many people have never been asked to do something? I've never been asked to participate or engage in a project outside of their family or their business or work. But I do believe that when you ask people something, they think about it and they say, well, OK, then no one's ever asked me that before, but Cedrick did a lot of good research and one on one face to face with people.

    - Tosca Davis

    And I would like for him go into how he did that.

    - Cedrick Smith

    I would go to restaurants where I knew that black people frequented. I would go to other black spaces, lounges and hangouts and, you know, odd spaces where black people were with this little literally black book that I had with a pen and sit down and kind of intrude a little bit as much as I could and ask them, hey, you know, I'm doing this research project.

    - Cedrick Smith

    Would you mind if I could talk to you for about five or ten minutes? Many people were receptive, and they would tell their stories. And I would say, you know what, driving while black means, right? And I was like, yeah, oh, yeah, you know, that is that's where you deal with the police brutality and stop by the cops and so forth. One black person doesn't know that. And then I would say, well, what about working while black?

    - Cedrick Smith

    And to a person, you know, if I was talking to a group of four people, three people would immediately say, yes, I do have a story. I know exactly what you're talking about. I do have an experience at work where this happened or that happened.

    - Cedrick Smith

    But invariably, what would also happen, that fourth person who said they didn't have a story, they would say, you know what, after hearing their stories, I do have one. I knew then we were on to something.

    - Cedrick Smith

    I probably have 40 stories literally in this black book that I have where, you know, some of the people are actually in the film. Most of them aren't.

    - Cedrick Smith

    But, you know, from the film and the story us that we got, we were quite pleased and shocked and surprised and amazed by how well they told their stories and just we were humbled and humbled by their stories.

    - Cedrick Smith

    So that's, that's kind of how we got. The people to come in was just basic guerrilla interviewing tactics and going to churches and so forth and just asking people, hey, we're doing this, could you come and tell this on film?

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah, and you know, someone who has seen the film, they do tell their stories with. With vulnerability and openness and, and they're you know, they are divergent to an extent, you know, it's they're different manifestations, as you said, of the same theme of feeling silenced and marginalized.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And you are you are both obviously care and tell the story as well. But especially for this, I guess I'd like to ask you both the question that you ask in your film Tosca. What is your working while black story?

    - Tosca Davis

    Well, as as someone said in the film, I have several working well black stories, but the one that stands out the most would be the most recent one, which was a catalyst for the film

    I need to interject here as a podcaster. It is very important to Tosca, to Cedrick, to the very ethos of To Be Us Productions to hold individuals and organizations to account. Part of this truth-telling is directly naming names.

    I believe this is incredibly important…but it also puts me in a potentially legal space as a podcaster. So, here I am, caught between my resonance and my potential liability. As a sort of half-measure, I am editing out the names that Tosca said, but I am linking a Facebook post by To Be Us that specifically names both the organization and the individual that are players in Tosca’s working while black story.

    Tosca was working for a very well-known, national non-profit that specializes in women’s health (more specificity is available in the link in the show notes). It was 2014, her last year working there,

    Tosca Davis

    And I was called into the office of my manager, who happens to be the vice president of Human Resources, and she asks me and she shows me screenshots from my Facebook page, my personal Facebook page.

    - Tosca Davis

    And she said, Tosca, just want to make you aware of this. And I want to ask if you you know, if you were OK with taking these down. Somebody reported that they feel if they feel offended by these posts and the post was they the post was about white supremacy and racism, oppression, whiteness.

    Tosca was surprised, shocked, especially since the national wing of the organization had just sent her to a training on bias, racism, and white supremacy. Tosca wondered, was it a volunteer that had reported her? No, it was a co-worker. You can find her name and role in the link in the show notes. This co-worker had taken a screen shot of the post and turned it into the VP of Human Resources. The co-worker felt offended that Tosca would feel a particular way towards white people.

    - Tosca Davis

    And I immediately told my manager that I was not going to take it down and they were going to deal with it.

    The VP of HR wanted to set up a meeting to discuss the incident, which Tosca thought was absurd.

    Tosca Davis

    When it was time to have the conversation. She was treated as though she was the victim and I was the aggressor, as she just really felt offended and she felt like I was being racist and she knows I was being racist.

    - Tosca Davis

    And if we need to be brought up, that they need to have some type of training. And if she is, she knew people who could train us in all kinds of whiteness, all kind of white madness. This is what I call it. And so I quit that day or the next day, I can't remember. But I definitely was not going to stay in an organization that claims to help women, just not black women, especially if you look at the the C Suite, you know, it is all white people except for one black person, one that's not even the stakeholders.

    - Tosca Davis

    That's not the community that they're serving. And none of them were child bearing age. So, again, you're talking about white women who should give up their positions to people who actually like the community. So all of that live to.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Do you use that?

    - Liesel Mertes

    Let me just jump in unison and evocative term white madness. I tell me a little bit more about that because I feel like it it bears unpacking. I feel like there's probably more there.

    - Tosca Davis

    OK, a white madness to me is the is kind of the audacity of white people to feel offended and the performance of it all, because that's what that's what I was getting. I was giving a giving a performance, especially from someone who claimed to be a white feminist. It was is the performance of being outraged and having the audacity to even challenge the whiteness or challenge someone who assumes that they are better than I am, are so that I am not not as knowledgeable as they are.

    – Tosca Davis

    So that they are the norm and I am the person on the outside, so that's how I describe madness, is that it's a performance that I've seen white people do and honestly, more specifically, white women. And I can go into more detail about what I think is white women, because they are trying to move, you know, in a parallel position of white men, white men. Typically, they already have that position. So they don't really do a lot of performing.

    - Tosca Davis

    A lot of their violence comes in in a very silent undercover way. The white women, they tend to be very performative when it comes to their violence towards women, especially toward black folks, especially in the workplace. That makes sense.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Yeah, thank you for taking the time

    - Tosca Davis

    so that so that was my working while black story and I'm especially offended and I wanted to to say for two reasons, again, because this is a nonprofit and non-profits typically get away with this type of violence and trauma toward their black employees.

    - Tosca Davis

    It's I've heard it is been discussed so many times in circles about, about this type of treatment. And personally, I can tell you that I did dabble in for profit and corporate before I worked in oil and gas. I never had any incidents of sexism or racism in that. And this is the Fortune 500 company.

    Now, I'm not saying that it didn't happen, is just I didn't experience it. I think the Non-profit is very relaxed. And because they help people, quote unquote, like I said, they get that they can get away with doing these types of things.

    - Tosca Davis

    So that's my working while black story. I still remember it again is one of the reasons why we made the film, because I just didn't want anyone to get away with that anymore.

    The stakes felt especially high for Tosca. From her perspective, this co-worker was out to get her fired.

    - Tosca Davis

    And if you're going to get me fired, that means I'm not going to be to pay my mortgage. I'm not going to be able to eat.

    - Tosca Davis

    I'm not going to pay my car. Note that is a that is a violence and a trauma that black people feel. You are putting my livelihood at risk because you are fragile. So that's why I keep using the words violent and traumatic and terrorism. I'm not trying to be hyperbolic at all. That is exactly how black people feel. We feel terrorized. We feel traumatized. We feel abused when white people feel like they have been offended by something.

    - Tosca Davis

    So that, again, that's the most interesting part is that I literally have left a conference on all of these topics and and dare to post anything on my Facebook page about it. And so that's the white man is right.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And yeah, we I think especially white America, wouldn't we love to think that it could all just be taken care of in a three day conference and then we would never have to talk about it again? Because what you said of the feeling of. It's it's a powerful and can be a powerfully oppressive thing, white discomfort, and I feel like, you know, I I as I continue to grow and avail myself to different stories, I just realized that the unwinding from me will be a lifelong task that I can, you know, either keep pushing to the side or be able to embrace, even as it makes me uncomfortable, because frankly, I mean, it's my discomfort is not on the same level as, you know, someone's livelihood or the safety of their bodies.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And I think that there is especially for for for me as a white viewer of your film, you know, there were places where I was like, I have done something like that. I have been on the other side of perpetrating you know, there is one one guest talked about a dismissiveness towards Black History Month, you know, as far as people were talking. And I thought, oh, like I know as a kid, you know, for whatever mix I was a part of, I talked about like Kwanzaa and why did we have to talk, you know, and like it was Christmas.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And I thought, like, I could see myself in those stories. And and there there is something to seeing the pain that is inflicted. Like it's it can't we cannot continue to imagine that they're just passing comments and feel like I'm just I'm just talking.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And so, yeah, that I think there is there's a powerful thing that white viewers need to see with the spirit of inquiry of where am I in these stories, because there are enough that we will find ourselves there. And it's important.

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

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    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    - Liesel Mertes

    Cedrick, what is your working while black story?

    - Cedrick Smith

    Oh, man. I mean, where do even begin? I mean I mean, yeah, I'm a practicing physician. You know, I've gotten anything from one in particular I talked to said, you know, how many stories are out there? I mean, I could go ad nauseam with that one in particular.

    - Cedrick Smith

    So one day when I'm on medical assistant is crying in the break room and I went over and asked, or it's not something that we're going to sit and just kind of play like it doesn't exist. I'm going to sit down as the medical director and say, hey, look at you, OK, what's going on?

    - Cedrick Smith

    She said, Dr. Smith, I'm tired of this. I'm like, well, what's what's happening is I'm tired of when patients come in and they ask, is it Dr.

    - Cedrick Smith

    White or black? I'm like, OK. And I'm like, well, what what do you like? Well, he's black and then the patient will go, Well, is there a white doctor I can see? Was there another doctor I can see? And so I'm like, OK.

    - Cedrick Smith

    I said, look, I mean, yeah, you're going to get that is excuse me is not the first time that I've experienced racism in the setting of being a doctor who happens to be black, you know, being a black doctor, but seeing the pain on her face, knowing how hard we worked to have the types of ratings that our clinic gets, like, you know, you probably Google Review us were like four point seven out of five.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And we really take very much pride in that. And they know that it comes from all of us working very diligently and hard and making sure that the patient is treated well.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And she, she also mentioned how she notices how when the patients come out from the visit with me, how happy they are, how they end up saying, like, wow, you know, he was really into my diagnosis. He really showed a lot of empathy and care, you know, and even gave me his card and said, like, you can call me 24 hours a day, you have a problem. These are types of things. It's just natural what we do and how we execute our patient care.

    And so she see, so this doesn't happen to be a woman.

    - Cedrick Smith

    She happened to see this kind of dichotomy between how they are when they first come in, when they're prejudging to having the actual visit to leaving and seeing this kind of duality of the racism on the front end and then having this wonderful experience with the doctor that they didn't want to see in the first place.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And the only reason that they didn't want to see him was because, well, not knowing that the doctor was he or she knowing that this doctor was black. And so that that and I remember that date. I remember going into the restroom after I talked to her and I remember I cried. I just remember I was like because I didn't realize the kind of the micro trauma that even my staff was going through as they were trying to, quote, protect me or, you know, having to deal with this.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And it just happened to the point for this particular person where, you know, it broke them. They were tired of seeing because they know what they mean to me.

    - Cedrick Smith

    They know how hard we all work and how hard I work to to practice my craft. And so that's one. I mean, I remember being in a room one time, you know, I have my white coat on. Is this, you know, medical director, all the big name, everything. I'm talking to this guy and he I mean, literally for like five minutes, ask him questions about his.

    - Cedrick Smith

    No problem. You know, what medications are you taking? Blah, blah, blah, going through the whole rigmarole. And he looks and says, wait, when is the doctor coming in? And I'm like, Mom, he wasn't blind yet.

    - Cedrick Smith

    Twenty twenty vision. I'm like, I'm the doctor. And he just had this look on his face like, oh, and so I mean, I had one time where this one, this really hurt this, this was all of them hurt.

    - Cedrick Smith

    But this is really painful because it was a child I was seeing a kid came in. The kid must have been three, four maybe, and was with the mother and nothing to get out like a sore throat.

    - Cedrick Smith

    I was reading a chart kid, a little sore throat. So I walk in any time I know children are going to be in the room. I kind of want to come out a little more animation. You know, I'm kind of like big kid at heart. I love seeing children when they come in. I rarely see them in our urgent care setting. They typically take them now to urgent care pediatric locations, not ours. But occasionally I gets on well, anyway, this walk into the room and the little child goes, Mom, there goes a nigga like that.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And and I and it the shock of my face.

    - Cedrick Smith

    As I looked at the mom, I remember I kind of turned to when I said where, you know, trying to be funny, trying to diffuse it, trying to deal with it at the same time. And then the mom just looks at me like I don't know where she got that from.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And so I went through the visit professionally. I saw the patient obviously treated her for her strep throat or otitis or earache.

    - Cedrick Smith

    I'm sorry not to use medical terms or earache and treated, but I just remember going home that day and I just I just cried like a baby. In her I mean, now that was piercing that a three year old or four year old child that was, you know, you know, saying that I've worked all this way hard to get to where I am.

    Cedrick Smith

    And at the end of the day, this is what I was reduced to from a three year old so that I

    - Tosca Davis

    Don't forget about the symbols.

    - Cedrick Smith

    I want to make sure you talk about, you know, when people, you know, undress and you see certain symbols on your body. Oh, yeah.

    - Cedrick Smith

    No, I mean, I've had to see people who come in and have swastikas, you know, on it, just because you know what? I have to do a physical exam. I believe in doing a very thorough physical exam.

    - Cedrick Smith

    We do it a little differently now because of COVID, because the touching and I may see 30 patients a day. We're little more different. If if it really doesn't want me doing a hard exam on this patient. I don't do it now just because we've got to use your stethoscope so many times and clean it off and you can miss something in, you know, transfer corona to somebody else.

    Cedrick Smith

    I'm not going to do that.

    - Cedrick Smith

    But in the normal setting, you know, I'm very thorough about doing examinations and people I've seen that. I remember one guy came in and he had a swastika around his chest. And I remember when he opened his shirt or opened his his gown for me to look at it. And it was like this moment of like he knew I saw it.

    - Cedrick Smith

    You know, he knew you know, he knew that I knew exactly what it was, and it was just that moment of pause where I still had to stay professional.

    - Cedrick Smith

    But, you know, a little bit of me was like, you know, you know, this this joking.

    - Cedrick Smith

    You know, he I mean, I don't want to curse on the show, but, you know, every every bit of me had to be like, I can just put a rating on it or not not work.

    - Cedrick Smith

    He didn't want me to, you know, look at him and take him out behind the building.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Well, and and you one of one of the interviewees was I think at that point he was a doctor, but he was reflecting on his residency and talking about just even the denial of the, the title, like the purposeful way that that was withheld from him. You know, like there they call me by my first name or they'll call me mister. And these these things that, you know, like they're, they're signaling they're signaling something that is profound. And this is this is something I'm asking out of not out of my experience, but out of my intuition.

    - Liesel Mertes

    I feel like the workplace is like it's generally a complex place to display sadness or grief.

    - Liesel Mertes

    Anger oftentimes by white men is acceptable in, you know, even like you're saying, with a cursing, like it's acceptable in certain circumstances. But to be emotionally flooded in a way of anger, sadness, I'm I'm struck that it's it's hard in general. I feel like there are particular unspoken rules as to how black men and women are, quote unquote, allowed to feel angry or sad, like there are some pretty swift penalties or judgments that are placed on them.

    - Liesel Mertes

    I’d love you to speak on that. If that has been your experience and if it has been to expand upon it or feel free to tell me I'm crazy if that hasn't been.

    - Tosca Davis

    Well, yeah, I mean, I think that atrocities like. I was just going to say that, I mean, I know you asked and I know your podcast is specifically about the workplace, but, you know, we've been we've been taught that since birth. I have been very aware that I can't have certain behaviors.

    - Tosca Davis

    I can't express certain feelings. I can't do things that, you know, the dominant white culture is allowed to do out in the open and free. I am in a place where I'm learning all of that. You're learning things because I'm learning things. Black people. You know, I my my plan is to to have full liberation. And so I am unlearning the oppression I'm learning. So I am when I'm loud, I'm loud. You know, as a child, you were told not to be loud or don't act like that in front of the white.

    - Tosca Davis

    Folks don't do that in front of white folk. You know how white people look at you if you do that.

    - Liesel Mertes

    And so, you know, can you tell me a little bit more about that? Just to flesh that out? Like what what were you hearing as a kid? Like, you know, that will get you in trouble?

    - Tosca Davis

    Well, I won't. I'll say from my personal experience, I wouldn't get in trouble. And I and I want to be specific that that was my personal experience. I do know that there were certain families that you did have to act a certain way and you did get in trouble. But it was it was it was always I was always taught to kind of make yourself small.

    - Tosca Davis

    That's what black people do. We make ourselves small so we won't be seen. So we won't be in the way. And then if you're a black woman, is the the, the teaching is supposed to be invisible. Don't be seen. Don't be heard. Make sure your hair is not wow. Which again, I go against everything which said I already told you when he first met me, my hair was big. I work in corporate America as someone with my natural hair.

    - Tosca Davis

    I was one of the very few black women who who actually had the hair grow out of my scalp as the hair that I presented. And that is one of the things that when I was younger, we were taught to relax our hair to make sure that it was not big or not high. So everything all of that we're unlearning as adults. But but getting back to your point that definitely, you know, will bleed into the workplace. I remember reading about this lawyer who was he was he was a lawyer.

    - Tosca Davis

    He was he was a big black bald guy. And just his body alone was intimidating. So he had to make sure that he was not loud, that he did speak. And this is an attorney where you need to be loud. You need to get into people's faces. You need to be aggressive. You need to tell people the law. And he had to make sure that he did not intimidate the white people, make sure that he was a scary to the white people.

    - Tosca Davis

    So my entire life is making sure that I am that seen, that I'm not heard. And so, as as I've gotten older, I have released that. And you're going to get me I'm not going to code switch. And code switching is using a vernacular are using grammar that is more palatable to white people. I typically don't use that either. I talk the way I talk with black people because I'm not good at all. Of this is exhausting.

    - Tosca Davis

    So you may be able to imagine if I have to change my speech, I have to make sure that I'm small and to make sure my hair is straight. I have to make sure all of these things are presentable and palatable to white people. How exhausting that is. So I stopped doing it. I have no longer doing any of that. You're going to get black Tosca and you've got to deal with it.

    - Liesel Mertes

    That sounds exhausting on so many levels.

    - Cedrick Smith

    Yes. And no, yeah, just to piggy back on it, I mean, it's the same way growing up is kind of like you don't really you don't really know how to process it when you're 10 or seven or five.

    - Cedrick Smith

    You just know that it feels different that when we go over someone's house and have to be white folks, that mom was like overly or dad was like overly like, you know, when you get there, you can't do this, but you better sit still.

    - Cedrick Smith

    But it just so it was always this kind of couching being couched in this whiteness.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And in retrospect, you look at it as you're twenty five or thirty or whatever, you start and you start saying, like, man, that was so weird.

    - Cedrick Smith

    You know, I want to be who I was. I could even dream like I want to dream, you know, it was almost like there's only to a certain point. I mean, you talk a lot in your podcast and regard to disruptive events and we all go through them as humans. That loss of a spouse, illness, sickness, whatever the case may be, whatever that disruptive, even the loss of a child or a child with a disability, whatever the case may be.

    - Cedrick Smith

    But when you get the disruptive event in my life and I can speak for me is white supremacy, because when I look back at every stage of my life from being for you, from being in the fourth grade and and our teacher saying, hey, look, let's partner up.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And you're thinking you're going to partner with one of your friends and you just kind of see the guy and and, you know, everybody's kind of grabbing hands.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And then one kid leaves with white kids, says, you, I'm not part up with you. And you're like, wow, you know, we call it together. We do math problems together. And he looks at you and says, I'm not doing it because you're black. And you're sitting there in the fourth grade going what you like. How do you process that then in the seventh grade, you want to you're the best golfer in the junior golf in the area and you live a block away from the country club that you can join, that you can walk to every day and hone your game.

    - Cedrick Smith

    You look in the fence, you see people playing golf and you're happy.

    - Cedrick Smith

    You want to go do that. But you have friends who are members there. And you guys, hey, look, I like to come play the course and they just say, now you can't come play like we play basketball together.

    - Cedrick Smith

    We play football together. We hang out together, going to ride our bikes together. Why can I come over here?

    - Cedrick Smith

    And he looks and he said, what was my father's membership? And, you know, we can't have you there and you're in the seventh grade. You're 12, 13 years old. So again, it's this reboarding again.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And when I'm 18 and when I'm 20, going for this interview, for this job and when I'm this, I get told so it doesn't end. So the disruptive part for me.

    - Cedrick Smith

    Is the white supremacy, the white supremacy, and the microaggression is the microaggression of outright racism, to be quite honest with you, that I've had to deal with and I think that's what people don't realize is what we're bringing to the workplace before we even hit the door, before we even have to deal with some of the I want to say normal disruptive events that we all have.

    - Cedrick Smith

    I have to deal with how my blackness is is is viewed. I have to make myself smile.

    - Cedrick Smith

    I'm 6’4. I have to be a pretty good-looking guy, you know. But I do remember times where I had to make myself smile or my passion for a project or my passion for defending my workers and trying to get them raises or whatever the case may be, is seen not as being impassioned, but being angry.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And being written up for that, do you like wait a minute, I mean, I've written up because, you know, you all did this to this coworker of mine and I'm just kind of fighting for them to get what they just deserve, being a part of an elite center, being a part of a team that does excellent work.

    - Cedrick Smith

    So it's those types of instances I did a I did a presentation, I went to a conference, I saw the conference, I said, you know what? I'm sitting on the ice. And like, I can I can do a presentation here. If they're doing presentations like this, I know I can do one.

    - Cedrick Smith

    So the following year, I want to do a presentation that happened to be on bias and happened to be on how to connect better with patients kind of using some of the tools that I use to help the other doctors understand, hey, this is how you can make your bottom line better by, you know, being more sticky with your patients, if you will, making them want to come back and being your marketing tool for you as they go out and tell how you need to go see Dr.

    - Cedrick Smith

    Smith or go see Dr. Johnson, because they do this, this, this and this.

    - Cedrick Smith

    Well, they put me on at five o'clock, which is the last presentation. And I said, OK, that's fine. I'm still going to do a great presentation. I end up doing a great presentation. No one left typically. Do you know about these conferences? People, if you've got a presentation at five o'clock, people are trying to run out the door, do the presentation when all of the the ratings come out. My presentation was rated number one at the highest ratings of all the presentations.

    - Cedrick Smith

    So, after that, they had like a no excuse me. They after that they had a like a a gathering of all the doctors who presented and kind of like a social hour, happy hour type deal with drinks and so forth, little light bites. And when it the first thing when I walk in, one of the people were at the thing that was kind of over. It was kind of like, oh, here's the shining star, here's the Mister Presenter.

    - Cedrick Smith

    But it was done in a very reductive manner. It was done with the sarcasm. Not like you really did a great job. That was awesome what you did. It was this kind of backhanded.

    - Cedrick Smith

    You can't give me all the love that I know you would have given had Muskingum and white and I was blond hair and blue eyes and looked good. As I look. I know I wouldn't like all the star. No. And I was also told, hey, when you get back to your region, I want you to do that presentation in your region.

    - Cedrick Smith

    Do you think I ever did that presentation? Do you think the guy that was over me let me do the presentation? He never did.

    - Cedrick Smith

    He never did.

    - Cedrick Smith

    And those are the types of things. That's the exhaustion. That's where you just sit back and go, hey, man, you know, what do I have to do?

    - Cedrick Smith

    You know, how do I get rid of this this this being less than. And so it's a good thing, and that's what you see in the film

    MUSICAL TRANSITION

    This is the part of the show where I offer three key takeaways from the conversation. And I’m still going to do that, but I want to remind you that this is just the first of a two-part series on working while black. In our net episode, Cedric and Tosca will go deeper into the stories of the film, pulling back the layers on the many levels of exclusion that Black Americans face daily in the workplace. You can find out more about their film, the production company, and the details of Tosca’s story in the show notes.

    Here are three key takeaways from my conversation with Cedric and Tosca…

    There is power to just listening to someone’s story.That is what empathy is all about, giving another person’s story weight and space. The stories that Cedrick and Tosca are telling are not what I daily experience in the workplace of America. Which means that it is even more important that I listen carefully, without judgment and “what-abouts?” and second guessing. If you are White, be aware of what was going on in you as a listener. What sort of responses or defensive postures were coming out in you? Full disclosure, they were happening in me too. This is because we don’t like to hear that the world is not how we want it to be. The next question, for me and for other White listeners, is to ask where these messages might originate from? The marginalization of Black Americans is not a one-off that just happens every now and then.As I listen to Cedrick and Tosca and the many, many participants in the To Be Us documentary, I hear how much of their life experience has been marked by the long shadow of normative whiteness. The pain is deep and real. And, as I mentioned in the interview, if you are White, you have contributed to the problem. I have been dismissive of Kwanzaa. I remember dancing with a really handsome Black boy at a party and asking him, “So, you must be good at football. Aren’t all of you good at football?” These microaggressions create a cumulative weight. If you are Black and listening to this episode, I hope that there is a heightened sense of community. One of Cedrick and Tosca’s aims is to let Black people know that they are not alone and that they are not crazy. Their film captures this ethos powerfully and I look forward to sharing more of it with you next week in Part 2 of this series on Working While Black.

    OUTRO

    For more info on Tosca’s Working While Black Story: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?id=1052380424956777&story_fbid=1460604034134412

    Learn more about To Be Us Productions: https://www.tobeusproductions.com/