Gather At The Well Episode 2: Self vs. Collective Care

Julie Confer39min

Lindsey Fuller

00:02

Hi. I'm Lindsay, and it's time to gather at the well. We're on a mission to microdose wellness, create human centered systems and retain our greatest asset, our people. We believe it's time for podcasts that teach moving beyond thought leadership and towards change leadership. Join us and our friends at we are for good as we model the way with concrete examples from the field and gain tangible tools, because it's possible to build adult work cultures we don't need to heal from. Let's get into it. It's good to be back with you again. If you joined our first episode. You already know we dropped into the concept of microdosing wellness, taking those small, intentional moments to pause, to work on somatics, that's your mind, body and spirit, and to think about how you want to be in relationship to yourself, to your colleagues and to workplace well being so, welcome back. We're really going to dive in today, and we want to talk about some of the ways in which micro dosing wellness rubs up against the harmony, or frankly, the disharmony, between self and collective care. But we also hope that you hear in this episode that there's a difference between thought leadership and change leadership, I like to lean towards the latter. So let's talk about that. Don't get me wrong, thought leadership is crazy important, so essential, right? It's those paradigm shifting ideas. It's innovating. And in the black community, we might even refer to that as freedom dreaming. It's thinking about what's possible, pushing the boundaries, creating new ways of being and doing and seeing the world. So thought leadership is really important. And like I said in the first episode, I feel like we're leaning a little bit too deep into becoming influencers around thought leadership, like we've got to come up with the novel idea that no one else has thought of, no one's written about. We want to put a cute, branded picture on it and put it into LinkedIn first. It's this rat race of innovation. But what happens when we spend all of our time trying to influence others with wild ideas and not actually scaffolding that brilliance, making it actionable, teaching people the way to achieve that change. That's what I really believe is possible when we think about change leadership at the teaching, well, we talk about dei J. You've probably heard of dei dei B. There's all the acronyms. Okay, we could get fancy with it and build some new shirts that we can all rock. But at the teaching, well, we center the J at the end that justice piece, because for us, that's the way that we know we're actually shifting folks on the margins to the center. It's how we know we're changing the systems that work against us and not for us. It's how we know that we're actually making a difference and achieving our greatest mission and values. So today, in this episode, you'll hear some of both, and I want you to feel the ways that the teaching well isn't an expert, but is still working through micro dosing wellness in the communal space. So let's get after it.

Lindsey Fuller

03:37

A quick somatic just to make sure that you're comfortable in the space, feeling connected to yourself and open enough to try on new ideas, inviting in a 10 second pause. First, no matter where you are, get comfortable in your seat or if you're standing, root your feet into the ground. Begin by closing or lowering your gaze, and if you're driving, you might just glance to the horizon. For the next 10 seconds, we'll just breathe with intention. You

Lindsey Fuller

04:28

and in this moment, we want to do a noisy exhale. If you've come to a workshop with the teaching Well, you know that when we make an audible sigh at the end of a deep breath, it allows our brain to know it's that natural pressure valve release right? It's time to relax. So do one with me real quick, that noisy exhale in through the nose and out through the mouth. I don't know who decided that sighing was unprofessional, but let's bring it back, y'all. Instead. We could meet our colleagues with I see you, queen, appreciate that you're self regulating. Get well, peel out loud. So we wanted to talk about a couple of places where we've seen our team and the organization grapple a bit with how we balance self and collective care. So much of that first episode talked about how we want to achieve transformation across all three planes at the individual, interpersonal and systemic level. But so much of microdosing wellness starts with putting our own oxygen mask on first. We can't pour from an empty cup. You're like, it's so cliche Lindsay, I know, but actually, somebody's granny identified that wisdom, and it stuck with us year over year. So where can that get sticky? Where are the tension places? What does it look like? Sound like and feel like when we are out of balance, one of the most common protocols we engage with as organizational teams is considering community agreements. Right? It's like, how do we want to be in the space together? We really want our team to constantly be thinking about, what do I need to thrive, to grow, to make my greatest contributions. But we also want to create that work environment that allows others to feel like they're in their creative calm, they're in their flow, their wisdom can come through easily. So often I've worked as a leader to try and externalize the ways that I can make an easy yes, the ways that I can support the team with tending to their own needs, and a part of that is working through this internal checklist that I'm just going to share with you all. There's three questions, and at this point, probably my team has memorized them. But does this ask impact clients? Will it impact your internal colleagues, and does it compromise the fidelity to a policy that might create an equity issue? What do I mean by this? So if someone's like Lindsay, my microdosing wellness needs a little bit of a macro lens. I need a full week off. Of course, we support that, and my team has now internalized my leadership lens in decision making and is able to come forward and say I've already rescheduled clients. All of my collaboration meetings occur before or after this break window. And I'm clear that there is a bit of an inequity when I take this time off because we have that major fundraising event. I'm not going to be on the floor. But here are the ways that I feel like I can pick up a little bit more on the planning side, or a little bit afterwards in the follow up work. And that enables us to start to find a communal dance around rest and that you stress or positive, motivational, healthy tension that comes from the work. So when I got to the teaching Well, it was really clear that we needed to refresh community agreements, and we worked through a process that's three part. How do we want to feel? What actions do we need to take consistently to get there, and what happens when it falls down, when there's a rupture, a breakdown, or we're not feeling that we're living our values in integrity, and we revisit those. So if you're someone who has joined a team or is recently a leader. You may have inherited community agreements, but we know a couple of things are true. If you are a leader and you aren't there in the creation of those community agreements, it's unlikely you'll be able to actually embody them. They need to be revisited. We also rewrite them any time 50% of the team is new, but every single year, we revisit those community agreements to keep them alive, because it's a fluid process. And in that annual review, we started to notice a couple of things certain parts of our team, namely, parents, as well as bipoc teammates, right? Black, indigenous people of color, were not feeling like they were consistently having the amount of deliverables or the share of some of the more contentious or emotionally draining labor being held equitably across the team. We also had such a culture of warmth at the teaching well, and a culture where our community time, our check ins and our professional development sessions really went pretty deep, okay, but it was almost giving group therapy vibes. Ask somebody it can get intense when. You are inviting people's humanity to come through, and actually their tears get to a point that creates discomfort, or it makes transitioning to work on the hour after your meeting really challenging. It can be dysregulating when we're not just witnessing a colleague, but we're actually getting a behind the scenes view into some of their deepest traumas, and that is an indicator that our meetings are out of balance, that our community agreement, that our self and collective care agreements are not being honored. It can feel like that individual is spilling or trauma dumping. And this goes back to one of my initial podcast episodes with we are for good. Check out that episode. We'll drop it for sure. But when we tell people that they should bring their whole selves to work is a trap, and I don't think we actually mean it. As leaders, we need to be more honest. We want to see people. We want them to feel like they're not constantly masking or code switching or having to completely change who they are, to interface with their colleagues and the work, but at the same time, we really, really want to make sure that there's a professional setting that lets everyone leverage their gifts. I realize I might be making an assumption, because I'm an educator, that all organizations have community agreements. Let's back up for a moment and talk about what you might have. What you might have are policies. What you might have are norms for meetings. What you might have is an invisible set of rules that supervisors and leadership regulate teammates around, but haven't explicitly revealed that's what you might have. But let me talk to you about why norms and policies are different than community agreements, and perhaps you're looking for a way to radically transform the way that people interact with each other. Start by asking yourself, do we have rules and regulations, or do we have relational guide posts? Because if you're looking for those guideposts, community agreements are where you need to begin to me, agreements are consensual. They're co constructed, and they allow a community to really weigh in on how they want to be in relationship with one another, how they want to feel inside of the workplace, and what they're committed to do those micro dosing actions, not just for them to get well, but because we all have a professional responsibility to invest in and sustain those agreements, to build the culture, ultimately, that we all want to work inside of. And so to me, community agreements are an essential part of micro dosing wellness, because it allows us to choose into each other. And I always tell my team, we can do hard things as long as we choose each other. But what does that mean? Like, that's abstract. So one of the things that we've really been able to learn about in the teaching well is that cultures sometimes rub against each other. And I'm not just talking about race, I'm talking about the ways in which our upbringing, our socialization, our work, traumas or experiences can collide if we don't have really explicit invitations and actions articulated as A community, a concrete example of something that we're currently navigating as well, with a team who has a substantial amount of folks identifying as neurodiverse, differently abled, whose brains work differently. You can say is that we thought at the teaching Well, we were hyper explicit because we had community agreements because we revisited them often, because they were in writing in a document that everyone could access, and because sometimes we like to play with things like charades to keep them alive, memes and gifts. We have a good time with our community agreements. They're absolutely living

Lindsey Fuller

14:18

and in year three in this organization this past summer, something that we realized was that for some of our neurodiverse teammates, our community agreements still didn't feel explicit enough. So when we say something like discerning what is an appropriate depth of a share when in community, there are a lot of embedded skills inside of that discernment is a whole situation, right? It's that inner clarity. It's the real time decision making. It's being able to assess in the moment whether or not your actions, your words, align with your beliefs, your values. Issues and what's needed by others to feel psychological safety inside of your meeting container. And so we had to get even more clear. One of the other areas that was sticky that I'd love to share more with you about is that concept of bringing your whole self to work. And we had something to the effect of bring your whole self to work and be mindful of your impact on others. We had a couple teammates being like, Okay, girl, that sounds cute. We love how that looks in writing, we could even put it on a t shirt, but we're definitely not clear on what that means in practice, because there are a couple of teammates that are feeling like their shares are too deep, and they're ruminating after the meeting about it for days, or they feel their share was appropriate, and other teammates are feeling uncomfortable, unsettled, like their piece was disrupted, or that maybe they should be reaching out to their colleague to offer additional Support. Right? So there were these moments of accidental tension that are in the human experience, and we needed to get a lot more explicit. So here's what's up. We took the time as a team to do an entire 90 minute PD on what professional authenticity is. We had coined it over a year ago, but even as great teachers, we hadn't taken the time to align, calibrate work through examples and non examples, and stamp a clear definition. So here's some of our thinking within professional authenticity. We want to express parts of our identity. We want to see you in your full expression. Your clothing is welcome. Here, your jewelry is welcome. Here, cultural garbs are welcome. Here, you switching into a different language is welcome. Here, we honor if you speak multiple languages, you're a beast, and we love that for you, we also want to presence the full somatic experience. If you're experiencing grief in your family system, that's not something that needs to be a secret at the teaching Well, if you had a hot mess morning because it felt like getting your kids ready for school felt like herding cats, tell somebody about it. It's all good. We just also want to balance that with producing the high quality work and impact that aligns with being the premier wellness org. We also want to balance that expression and that presencing with showing up with integrity to others in ways that don't disrupt their ability to perform their jobs. So whether it's colleagues, clients, funders, your supervisor, if the way you are is uplifting your colleagues, we want more of it, and that's not toxic positivity. We're not saying, bypass your experience to make others feel comfortable. We're saying, Are we creating the conditions and contributing in ways that allow us to presence what might be in the space that might be getting in the way that might be weighing down our mental load, without transferring our struggles, our anxieties, our projections, our insecurities or our traumas onto someone else. I had a somatic opening. A couple years ago. I had done some deep prayer and meditation work around some of the conditioning that I wanted to re pattern. I was raised going to a black Baptist Church, and I was often told a goal of mine should be to be a vessel, right? So I'd be like, Lord, make me a vessel. Allow me the honor of holding for my community what needs to be held. And as I stored more and more employment trauma, both direct and vicarious, from receiving crisis calls for 5000 students across 11 schools. I realized not all of this is mine to hold, and so that prayer evolved into, please make me a conduit. Allow the lessons, the blessings, the teachings, to store within me, but allow what's not for me, the burdens, the traumas, the negative experiences, or energies to just simply flow through. And that's a part of what guides my inner knowing around how much is too much to share with my colleagues. And don't forget, if you're holding a leadership title, you also need to be mindful of positional authority and the ways in which you're over shares to folks who are not at your level of title and status in the organization. It's not theirs to hold. Your paycheck is bigger for a reason. We can utilize some of that to get therapy and find communities of same position. Positional status that might be able to hold the challenges that you're navigating as a leader with more containment and clarity. So let's talk about flow and actually stop and do a somatic for a moment. I'm going to drop you in just to reflect for a moment,

Lindsey Fuller

20:22

a tense and released practice, coupled with a little bit of a mindful exploration, I want you to source back to earlier today, this week,

Lindsey Fuller

20:37

or even last week, to a moment where you learned of information that you knew wasn't for you. You learned of a challenge or an experience. Someone shared a story or a testimonial, maybe you even watched something or read it on Facebook, and you experienced a tension in your body, or perhaps you were the one doing the oversharing, and afterwards you left ruminating and asking yourself, did I do too much? Was that unprofessional? Either way, we can't go back to that moment, but we can make sure we're not storing it as a vessel. So to do this, if you've located that memory, I want you to start by intentionally tensing up your fists. Hold them tight.

Lindsey Fuller

21:36

Inhale and as you exhale, let your hands go limp. Let's try it again, taking in that tension, that rumination, that overshare or overexposure,

Lindsey Fuller

21:54

and exhale and let it slip through your fingers. Let's try a different somatic location. You might raise your shoulders up to your ears and hold them tight, that physical embodiment of anxiety or stress or insecurity, and as you exhale, let them drop, imagining that as you activate this tension and release, you're allowing that unpleasant experience to pass through your nervous system. Give yourself permission to let it go, forgive yourself, forgive that teammate, perhaps, and then get more clear on how you want to show up next time. So to loop back and solidify this concept of professional authenticity, just in case, no one ever taught you this. And really, I'm saying that with compassion and non judgment, because increasingly, as we experience people in the workplace, I have to stop and ask myself, are they behaving in this way because they actually think it's acceptable, or were they never taught how to adult and interact with others? And truly, I have no judgment around it, but I have curiosity around it, and I have a real intention to bring forward feasible behavior replacement work that helps people feel more confident and assured in their own performance, and helps people work and collaborate with each other with more ease. So in case nobody told you, authenticity does not mean we bring all our ish to work. It means we can bring our full identity to work, not the baggage. Be like bag lady, okay, a little Erica Badu in this moment. It means we care for each other, so we do want to see each other and hold space when it's possible with consent. But we're also running a business y'all, and providing benefits. Hopefully, okay, leaders, go back to Episode One. Hopefully we are offering benefits that support all staff to embark on healing work. I know for sure at the teaching well we do. So if you are finding yourself in meetings, routinely crying during Sharon's or in breakout rooms or in pair shares, if you routinely are leaving meetings over analyzing, overthinking, concerned or nervous about whether you'll get contacted by your supervisor or HR, or if you have a feedback rich culture and people are literally telling you the way you are is harming me, the way you're sharing is too intense, those are clear indicators that it's time to engage in a therapeutic intervention. We love a therapist, we love some clinical work. I know a lot of our communities have stigma around it, but so much is possible when a professional is there to just tend to you. It's going to be difficult at first, but I assure you, relief is coming when you're able to walk into your meeting spaces and begin anew, hit that reset button and feel more confident in the ways that you are showing up for yourself and others as an identity. Forward organization at the teaching Well, we encourage our employees to express their full identities, balancing a full somatic experience, but also showing up with integrity for our colleagues, clients and the organization we have good, good trouble to get into by any means necessary, if I'm channeling our incredible King Malcolm X, but it also means that we need to treat our healing and invest In our micro dosing of wellness with that same ferocity by any means necessary, it's time to heal. We deserve it. Our colleagues do. And whatever is at the end of your mission, when you've actualized that big vision of a more liberated community that's better resourced, that's more free. It requires us to do the work along the way, as we begin our downward descent here in this podcast episode, I didn't want to leave you with that feeling, because I get it sometimes with podcasts, as if we're centering an expert who's figured it all out. That's not me, and it's also not the teaching well, just because we're a wellness organization doesn't mean we have our own growth to do. So I want to talk to y'all about a current challenge that we're facing, and I want to share transparently and vulnerably that this is one of the things as we scale and grow, that's been hard to find that true harmony between self and collective care, that balance that we're seeking, and we're never looking for a 5050, perfect split, right? The lies they tell around work life, balance being perfect, it's just not coming, and we know it. But one of the challenges that we've been facing as an organization that is now in nearly 50% of the United States is travel. When I first became the Executive Director, I turned around to my boss, our board chair, Lisa, and I was like, Lisa, I feel kind of guilty that I'm getting to go to all these incredible conferences and and travel to do program work in other states. Like, how do I create more opportunities for my teammates to get this exposure? And she was like, That's a beautiful thought. Of course, we want to create opportunities for your employees to be stretched in that way and exposed to new environments, cultures, locations, clients. And she said, travel is wholly overrated, and you're going to figure that out real quick. And I was like, No way. Look, I get to go on an airplane again. Let me tell you, y'all, travel is wholly overrated. Now don't get me wrong, I love to come visit y'all. So if you are a client outside of California, we love and honor you, so don't take it wrong, and there is a mental, emotional and physical wear and tear that occurs when you have to pack a suitcase, get up early, the physical acts of lifting your suitcase and the hustle and bustle of the airport, the germ exposure, hello, be leaving our families and so while I've been able to figure out small ways to alleviate my mom guilt while I'm gone, like the sacred face time that my entire team knows is going to happen Every night when my kids are at dinner with my husband, I will join them. It's never compromised. I always connect with them. It also means sometimes you might be able to help your kid through their homework via FaceTime or Skype or pack a children's book in your suitcase and read aloud to them. Those things are nourishing, but they don't deal with the accumulation of tension, stress, overwhelm and potential burnout that occurs when you're getting on airplanes and leaving your home week over week and month over month. So we looked up and we're so grateful for the ways that opportunity has come to the teaching well, and I leaned on my leadership team, and we did our best across the three of us last year. Shout out to Aaliyah, who's joined the team to try and distribute more travel across us, and yet we were deep in fatigue. Yeah, so there's been a couple of things that we've needed to do, and again, we have not figured this out, but here's what we've tried so far. First, we had to lift the veil with our team. We had to let them know. I just told y'all as a leader, be careful that we're not venting or dumping on our staff. There's a fine line with change management, of inviting them towards the solution, and so we had a very clear conversation around our national expansion work. We looked at our values and our community agreements around feeling sustained and nourished and rested and healthy, and we shared with our team we're in this challenge of, how do we fold more of y'all into the work when the vast majority of teammates at the teaching well, have children under 15? How do we do this sustainably? How do we do it equitably, and how do we do it in ways that balance, that self and collective need because we're running a business and we're whole humans,

Lindsey Fuller

31:08

that conversation was really rich. We actually worked through a process of mapping out the markets that are expanding most rapidly and inviting our colleagues to think about personal or professional connections to those locations. Getting clear on things like shout out to Britt, whose family is actually in Atlanta. She's from Georgia. She'd love to go and do more client work over there. Add on a couple days of PTO and actually drop in with her family system. Shout out to Mark Anthony, who has people and connections to the land in Arizona, was like I would love to be out there more regularly, to deepen in my healing, to be with my folks, to be able to drop in with clients that honor, that space. I love to go to Hawaii. That's my business. One of my best friends from college is out there, and it's a place that my family and I already love to go. I have personal ties there, but I also see the ways in which educators across the islands can feel really isolated, and I have a professional curiosity and excitement to serve them and to help them to bridge the gap and feel greater connection, even though they're navigating a really interesting configuration of land based challenges. I want them to be free and I want them to feel well. So we did this exercise where we invited our team to figure out, Where are the markets that you might feel connected with, that gave a list to the leadership team that we could actually take steps to bring to fruition, right? We could invite our teammate, Selena May, to take on more of the Oregon clients, because she has energy around going up there. You see, sometimes I think leaders create stories in their heads. We make decisions based on our our gut feeling, and that can be really powerful, but sometimes we also need what we call corrective evidence. Right? Is that a story you've built, or did your team actually say they were unwilling to travel? And I'll admit it, I thought I was holding things down. I thought I was bringing financial security to our organization by saying yes to all of these out of state contracts. But a part of what I love about working here is that my team values my well being as a leader just as much as they want us to succeed. And so I had built a story that my team didn't want to travel because they had kids, so I just had to bear down and do it. And through that dialog, I got the corrective evidence I needed that actually some of our team is really excited to travel, and others are hella open to it, because they value the collective well being. They just need to problem solve with their partners to create sustainable systems to incorporate more travel into their work time. So that's one way that we're working to change, manage and bring other teammates towards a solution with us, and in the meantime, while we iron out those details, I needed to put some interventions in place to honor the people who are doing more travel right now, and that's the part of change leadership, right? I can think about designing new systems as a thought leader that create more equity in travel, but as a change leader, I need to recognize that if I'm not careful, I could burn out my leadership team who's holding the brunt of travel right now. So here are a couple of new benefits we're piloting this year, and we'd love to hear y'all feedback. So if you are someone that has other strategies you're trying on, reach out to the teaching Well, reach out to we are for good share with us. But here are three things we did. We added 10 additional flex days. So. To our leadership team. Flex days are days where we're not expecting them to take PTO, because we know as leaders, they're always kind of plugged into email, text or slack, but they might be remote. They might be at a field trip with their kid and being super, super present, but when they drop those kids back off at school, they might drop in and handle those responsibilities, it just allowed more space to say whether you've accrued more and more PTO or not. I trust you as a leader, to flex through some of those travel days, find comp time, but also honor your responsibilities and not worry so much about counting every PTO hour, having a trust based leadership model that honors the fact that they're taking on more travel for all of our greater good. We also added a text stipend specific to technology that might facilitate working on the road more easily, right? I was able to get some dope noise canceling headphones. We have rebe, who actually uses a plug in second screen. She's able to have a dual monitor on the road that's lightweight and not going to harm her back. The other thing we did was, anyone who has reached a certain amount of mileage, okay, getting your little wing pin, we paid for TSA PreCheck through the organization. If we can make travel more useful for you, why would we not invest in our people? So I bring this forward to y'all we have not figured it out. Just an example of how I've tried to dabble between thought leadership and change leadership to honor self and collective needs, and ultimately to experiment with micro dosing wellness in a present day challenge around travel, to be with you all across the nation and bring greater workplace well being to organizations that we care about. So we always want to close with a couple of affirmations for y'all. They may resonate. You may listen to them now or write them down to practice later, but here they go. I contribute to a balance of self and collective care in my organization, I can heal in small ways. Professional authenticity keeps me in balance. All of me is worthy. I can discern what to share in ways that let me rest and not ruminate. So as we close down, I wouldn't be a good teacher if I didn't give just a little homework assignment. So here it is across the next few hours and days. I want to invite in this journal prompt, and you'll find it on the teaching wells website, forward slash blog or podcast to find this journal exercise, here's some questions to think over. Is my team balancing self and collective care in healthy ways. What's my evidence? What does it look like, sound like and feel like to be in balance? How can I share my reflections and hear the reflections from my colleagues in intentional ways, and this is our critical hope until the next episode drops. I want you to really reflect on this piece right here. We have agency to shift into a place of balance. Y'all, it will never be 5050 it will ebb and flow to be responsive to self and community needs, but it's possible to share and bring yourself forward, to be truly known and valued by your colleagues, to not feel like you have to over compartmentalize every moment of every day, and we can do that in ways that allow others to feel just as valued and nourished and supported. It shouldn't feel like therapy, but healing at work is possible. Have a beautiful day. All right, y'all, thanks for coming to play at gather at the well the podcast that teaches, if you like this conversation, come visit us online@teachingwell.org and hit us up on our socials. Remember to visit the podcast page to download a couple useful tools to get your life and heal up your work you.

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