A Game Plan For (Re)Connecting With Those We Teach, Lead, & Love

For First Responders and Their Back-Up (with BONUS Hours of Audio)

This module is full of suggestions around just how to lean into your people. Being kind and not tolerating bullshit gives leaders more access to empathy. And empathy, as we discussed often here, is a skill. For any skill-building game, there are often strategies and suggestions to be able to play the game better­ and empathy is no exception. The more genuinely you engage in each of these strategies, the more effective they become. Although not an exhaustive list, this is my go-to when talking to leaders and coaches.

This module is about the answers to it all. Truly understanding the power of acknowledgement can change the game. If it's done in a genuine way, people tend to rise to the best parts of themselves. It also, truly, carves a direct path to the best parts of the people we lead. It doesn't mean it makes the work of leading easy. Things like diversity and inclusion must be actionable. Talk it up. Hard conversations are necessary. What will always remain true, however, is that when you are acknowledged, if you are at all able, you will rise.

It's how you manage the people that is far more important and far more work than any product or service that you provide. This module is all about how, understandably, all of us can get to a place of burnout in our organizations, especially when all the circumstances are just right. And in this post-pandemic, disconnected world where we are often leading and being led by rules that no longer apply, so many of us are ripe for an experience of burnout. Maybe what I love the most about this concept is, by virtue of the theory itself, burnout implies that there was flame there to start with.

What I know to be true is that if you're okay, the people you love (and lead, and care for) will have a much better shot at being okay, too. I am reminded of the words of Rumi, the mystic and poet: "Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it." The answer lies in how we create a world where we reconnect to ourselves first. On purpose and with purpose. The rest, my friends, will follow. We're not good enough, none of us are, to strategically navigate other people to be better and do better. Single-handedly you will not undo systemic oppression or multiple generations of abuse and neglect in the people you lead. You (and I) are probably really good, but alone we'll never be powerful enough.

Although I believe with my whole heart that kindness is the currency of the next generations, it isn't often understood that the healthiest people among us aren't always "just kind." The healthiest among us understand where the edges are in the relationships that mean the most-and you can't often find these edges until you push up against them. Many of us are on the heels of a generation that suggested we should demand respect before we ever considered the importance of giving fellow humans the benefit of the doubt. Or that respect had to be earned. That behaviorism was predicated on not tolerating bullshit first; then, and only then, could you be kind.

In a world dominated often by the tiny screens in our hands, coaches guide real connections and leave kids both motivated and inspired. Coaches these days can not only change a life, they can save one. Dr. Jody Carrington wants to share the importance of coaches with parents, the public and even new coaches. Today coaches are often playing by a set of rules established in a world that no longer exists and it’s time to help them write a new playbook.

This module provides a review of the neurophysiological underpinnings of what makes people, in any organization or team, function at their highest potential. So many organizations continue to be focused only on output or measuring productivity with no understanding of what it takes to provide environments that will allow people the best shots at being their best selves.