Seasons Leadership Podcast

Navigating the Tides of Anxiety towards Opportunity with Dr. Constance Scharff

September 18, 2023 Seasons Leadership Program Season 4 Episode 47
Navigating the Tides of Anxiety towards Opportunity with Dr. Constance Scharff
Seasons Leadership Podcast
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Seasons Leadership Podcast
Navigating the Tides of Anxiety towards Opportunity with Dr. Constance Scharff
Sep 18, 2023 Season 4 Episode 47
Seasons Leadership Program

What if the chaos and uncertainty of autumn could be harnessed as a metaphor for transformation, providing a fresh perspective on managing anxiety? Constance Scharff, PhD, joins us on the Seasons Leadership podcast to unravel this intriguing idea. 

We delve into a rich discussion on the root causes of anxiety, especially in the modern world and Constance sheds light on ways we can discern real anxieties and offers actionable steps to make our workplaces and our lives safer. Leadership and its far-reaching influence is an integral part of our conversation. We underscore the essence of effective communication in bringing about change and the power leaders wield in shaping organizational culture. We touch on the significance of openness to fresh ideas, even if they stir discomfort, and the leadership shadow we cast.
 
 We talk about the importance of valuing the perspectives of others, regardless of their status or experience. We explore the need for leaders to be accessible and foster a culture of mutual respect and self-care within their teams. Constance passionately emphasizes that nurturing oneself is pivotal to being able to give to others. She also talks about her upcoming book “The Path to God’s Promise,” which will come out on Nov. 1, 2023.


Bio: Constance “Ahuva Batya” Scharff, PhD is an internationally recognized speaker and author on the topics of addiction and trauma recovery, the psychological impacts of climate change, and women’s mental health. She is the founder of the Institute for Complementary and Indigenous Mental Health Research. Her writing centers around using complementary health and contemplative practices to improve mental health treatment outcomes and wellbeing. She is a passionate advocate for decolonizing mental healthcare and incorporating indigenous practices and ontologies into healthcare services, as well as radical social transformation to lessen the impacts of climate change. Dr. Scharff is a recent recipient of St. Lawrence University's Sol Feinstone Humanitarian Award, honoring her service to and advocacy for those suffering from mental illness, trauma, and addiction. She regularly travels the world speaking, teaching, and advocating for compassionate health practices that destigmatize mental health problems and sociocultural adjustments to improve human existence and experience. An award-winning, bestselling nonfiction author, Dr. Scharff’s debut novel, The Path to God’s Promise, is scheduled to be released in autumn 2023.

Resources:

Website: Constance Scharff

Books:
Rock to Recovery Book

Join Debbie Collard and Susan Ireland, certified coaches and co-founders of Seasons Leadership, in making positive leadership the norm rather than the exception on Wednesdays on the Seasons Leadership Podcast. (Selected by Feedspot as one of the Top 15 Positive Leadership Podcasts on the web!)

And now you can join our community of values-based leaders on Seasons Leadership Patreon at Patreon.com/seasonsleadership. At our gold-level, unlock our exclusive Lessons in Leadership Column from our Resident Seasoned Leader David Spong, a lifetime member of the Board of the Malcom Baldrige Foundation and our Leadership Elements Series.

Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

What if the chaos and uncertainty of autumn could be harnessed as a metaphor for transformation, providing a fresh perspective on managing anxiety? Constance Scharff, PhD, joins us on the Seasons Leadership podcast to unravel this intriguing idea. 

We delve into a rich discussion on the root causes of anxiety, especially in the modern world and Constance sheds light on ways we can discern real anxieties and offers actionable steps to make our workplaces and our lives safer. Leadership and its far-reaching influence is an integral part of our conversation. We underscore the essence of effective communication in bringing about change and the power leaders wield in shaping organizational culture. We touch on the significance of openness to fresh ideas, even if they stir discomfort, and the leadership shadow we cast.
 
 We talk about the importance of valuing the perspectives of others, regardless of their status or experience. We explore the need for leaders to be accessible and foster a culture of mutual respect and self-care within their teams. Constance passionately emphasizes that nurturing oneself is pivotal to being able to give to others. She also talks about her upcoming book “The Path to God’s Promise,” which will come out on Nov. 1, 2023.


Bio: Constance “Ahuva Batya” Scharff, PhD is an internationally recognized speaker and author on the topics of addiction and trauma recovery, the psychological impacts of climate change, and women’s mental health. She is the founder of the Institute for Complementary and Indigenous Mental Health Research. Her writing centers around using complementary health and contemplative practices to improve mental health treatment outcomes and wellbeing. She is a passionate advocate for decolonizing mental healthcare and incorporating indigenous practices and ontologies into healthcare services, as well as radical social transformation to lessen the impacts of climate change. Dr. Scharff is a recent recipient of St. Lawrence University's Sol Feinstone Humanitarian Award, honoring her service to and advocacy for those suffering from mental illness, trauma, and addiction. She regularly travels the world speaking, teaching, and advocating for compassionate health practices that destigmatize mental health problems and sociocultural adjustments to improve human existence and experience. An award-winning, bestselling nonfiction author, Dr. Scharff’s debut novel, The Path to God’s Promise, is scheduled to be released in autumn 2023.

Resources:

Website: Constance Scharff

Books:
Rock to Recovery Book

Join Debbie Collard and Susan Ireland, certified coaches and co-founders of Seasons Leadership, in making positive leadership the norm rather than the exception on Wednesdays on the Seasons Leadership Podcast. (Selected by Feedspot as one of the Top 15 Positive Leadership Podcasts on the web!)

And now you can join our community of values-based leaders on Seasons Leadership Patreon at Patreon.com/seasonsleadership. At our gold-level, unlock our exclusive Lessons in Leadership Column from our Resident Seasoned Leader David Spong, a lifetime member of the Board of the Malcom Baldrige Foundation and our Leadership Elements Series.

Speaker 1:

Hello everybody and welcome to fall with the Seasons Leadership podcast, where we recognize the time in your leadership journey to integrate new insights and knowledge. Throughout this season, we're going to bring you actionable advice to improve your leadership and your life today. Thank you for joining me, debbie Collard and my co-host and co-founder of Seasons Leadership, susan Ireland. As certified leadership coaches and co-founders, we share a vision to make excellent leadership the world wide standard. You can learn more at Seasons leadershipcom. Join us in making positive leadership the norm rather than the exception. By listening and engaging in the discussions that we feature on this podcast, you help us bring leadership excellence to the world. Thank you for joining us.

Speaker 2:

Today we have Constance Sharp, phd, and she's a repeat guest for us and we're so glad to have you again to see what's happening with you. Thank you, yes, great. Constance is an internationally recognized speaker and author on topics of addiction and trauma recovery, the psychological impacts of climate change and women's mental health. She's the founder of the Institute for Complementary and Indigenous Mental Health Research. Her writing centers around using complementary health and contemplative practices to improve mental health treatment outcomes and well-being. She is a passionate advocate for decolonizing mental health care and incorporating Indigenous practices and ontologies into health care services, as well as radical social transformation to lessen the impacts of climate change.

Speaker 2:

Dr Sharp is a recent recipient of the St Lawrence University's Soul Feinstein Humanitarian Award, honoring her service to an advocacy for those suffering from mental illness, trauma and addiction. She regularly travels the world speaking, teaching and advocating for compassionate health practices that destigmatize mental health problems and social cultural adjustments to improve human existence and experience. An award-winning bestselling nonfiction author, dr Sharp, constance's debut novel, the Path to God's Promise, is scheduled to be released Did you say November?

Speaker 3:

1st Looks like November 1st yeah.

Speaker 2:

November 1st 2023. Congratulations and welcome Thank you.

Speaker 3:

I'm thrilled to be back.

Speaker 1:

Well, thank you we are thrilled to have you back as well, constance, and we're going to kick this dialogue off with, as I read in the intro, seasons.

Speaker 1:

Leadership is all about using the seasons as a metaphor for leadership, and we are all about making excellent leadership. The worldwide standard which I think we can all agree is not today, and so there's a lot of growth potential there, and what we hope to do with this conversation with you is to give leaders out there and our listeners some insights to how they can focus differently, think about things differently to be better leaders. What comes up a lot today with my coaching clients is the word anxiety or anxious, and they talk about well, I have a lot of anxiety about that, or I'm anxious, I'm too anxious to ask that question, or I don't want to step wrong. So it comes up in lots of different contexts when I'm coaching them about leadership. But what advice would you have for leaders about this environment we're living in today which, let's face it, there's lots of things to be anxious about and making that both from the leaders perspective, what they can do about it to make it a safe workplace for their people, and how they can deal with when this comes up in the workplace.

Speaker 1:

That was a lot of question there. That was a lot of question.

Speaker 3:

So let's start with the topic of autumn, since that's you know, we're talking about seasons. What is autumn? Autumn is the time of transformation. We move from the abundance of the harvest and now we're slowing down. It's where the leaves change and where we go into hibernation in winter, where we really, you know, have that time for self-reflection.

Speaker 3:

But what I think, with regard to anxiety autumn brings up for me is this is the time when the leaves, the trees, let go of their leaves, the leaves fall, and when the leaves fall, you're letting go of things that you don't need in this time. Anxiety is the opposite of that. It's the opposite of letting go. It is holding on because I don't know what's going to happen. So why do we have anxiety? It's because we have fear of the future. We're not in the moment, right. So depression is linked to the past. These things happened and I can't get out of them. Depression and trauma are backward-facing and anxiety is forward-facing.

Speaker 3:

So I'm concerned about what's going to happen with the housing market. What's going to happen with my job? Am I? I'm fully remote now. I just I heard last night on the news about a woman who was hired in like like 10 years ago, so well before the pandemic fully remote, and the company that she's worked for for 10 years has said everybody back to the office. And she's like well, that doesn't apply to me because I was hired fully remote long before. And they're like, nope, everybody back to the office three days a week and she's like bye, and she got a different job. So you know, we don't know what's happening with that. It's back to school. You know, there's COVID seems to be on an uptit, like oh, there's so many things. I went to the grocery store and I was like you have got to be kidding me.

Speaker 3:

Some of these prices you know, which I have never been price sensitive at the grocery store. If I wanted that, I got that, and now I'm like I don't want paying $2 for a candy bar. I am just I'm not like on principle, like I don't like it that much. It's not good for me anyway. Right, so there are plenty of things, as you said, to be anxious about. So we have to discern which of those are real. You know, like the woman who, whose company said no, you have to come to the office. That's a real concern, and she made a decision based on I can't afford to go to that office, it's over 50 miles away.

Speaker 3:

It's whatever Versus what are things that I just can't do anything about. If a candy bar is two bucks, I can either pay that or not pay that and not buy it, but I don't have any. So we get to look at that. In doing that, in discerning what's real and what's sort of feeding off our angst that's already there, we can then put our focus on what it is that we need. So if you, if you, you know, have I don't know 25 employees that work, who work for your company, and you're concerned because you've got, you know, real estate that needs to be filled and Employees who don't want to go back to the office just using that example again then you have to have, if you want to Reduce your anxiety, genuine conversations with employees about okay, this is what is good for the business, what's good for the employee, and how can we, you know, work in between so that there are compromises on both sides, because there are some things that you can give and some things you cannot.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So I heard a couple of things in there that are super important, and I want to emphasize One, which was the last thing you said is it's all about communication. Right, so many things in leadership are about communication. You can be in your head saying, okay, here's the solution, but it's not really a solution if your Employees, the people following you, don't see it as a solution. So having those conversations is so very important.

Speaker 3:

Well, those conversations are critical because we only know what we know, and we only know what we know from our Position, where we're sitting on the bus. So when I do research for mental health or climate change or whatever, I'm doing research, for the first thing that I do is I go to a place and I sit there and I just try to see it from the perspective of the person who would be sitting on that stool. So I was doing some research recently, in June actually, on LGBTQ issues, and I went to New York and I sat at the Stonewall Inn, which, for those of you who are not familiar, the Stonewall Inn was where there was a riot and that's sort of the start of pride, not sort of it is the start of pride and Going there and sitting there and it's still just a community bar, you know. And I, in fact, I asked I don't drink. So I asked, I said, oh, do you have non-alcoholic drinks? And they're like yeah, we have sodas and juice. And I was like I thought they'd have like mocktails and be fancy. And they're like, no, you can have, you can have, you know, mixers. I was like, okay, so you know, I got a soda and I'm just sitting there and sitting there Gave me a person. I was like, yeah, I could see how if the cops were poking, poking, poking, poking, poking. But one day, you know, someone got up and threw a brick and said I've had enough. So, to get that Conversation and that feedback is really important because if your employees, if your staff, believes that you really have their interests at heart, they're gonna understand.

Speaker 3:

Not everyone, I mean, there's, there's, you know, people who just are very self-focused, but they're gonna understand if you say okay, a friend of mine's a real estate agent and it her brokerage. They gave up there, they gave up their lease. She's like I can't afford because of the way the housing market is turned. She's like I can't afford to keep this brick and mortar and Do the business that we do. She's like it would put me under. So she, so she had a conversation. Well, one of the people said, well, I really want the brick and mortar. And she was like well, but you didn't sell any houses this year. So, yeah, if you're not bringing money in, I have to make these hard decisions. But they understood each other. That right, because it's like okay, well, I really like using that facility, but I didn't bring in any money to support it. So I understand why boss had to give up the facility.

Speaker 3:

If you can have those real, real conversations, people will work with you. You know you hear this complaint all the time, especially in big corporations, right? Well, you know that people come older people complaining, or people have been there for a long time complaining. Well, the younger people or the newer people, they move from job to job to job. Why do they do that? Because they get a 15% on average pay increase when they move. So if you want loyalty from your employees, you have to be able to match and move them up. A cost of living 3%, 2% pay increase, especially with inflation, it's just not gonna. It's just not gonna work.

Speaker 3:

But you have to have that conversation with your employees to say, okay, this is what I actually can give and I'm a big fan of Open books.

Speaker 3:

You know there's some things that you know legally have to be, you know, hube, some human resources issues that have to be kept closed. But for the most part you know why doesn't everybody know what every? You know roughly what everybody else makes. If there's a pay range, you know for that job, like the guy at the top of the with the most seniority and and the most experience Should be at the top of the pay range. And and if you know he or she is not, they're not Then your employees Legitimately have questions to ask of you because they're they need to feed themselves. They don't work for you because they love you. They work for you because you pay them and If you treat them well and if you treat them respectfully, they don't want your business to go under because they don't want to look for a new job either. So that communication is Absolutely critical. But if they think you're lying or if you need to, you know, keep too much back, it's not gonna. It's not gonna work out for you.

Speaker 1:

The other point that you made that I really liked and I'm not gonna ask a question about this, because I'm let Susan to get to the question she's probably got but was Focusing on the things you can control, you can do something about, and I think, as leaders, oftentimes we forget that, and so it's about saying, okay, what out of the situation Can I do something about? And your candy bar, example, was a great one, right? I can either not buy it or buy it. Those are my choices, right? So so, understanding what you can control, susan, I know you got a great question.

Speaker 2:

Well, I did have a question, but I also Wanted to comment on something you said, because I think it's super important and that is, and it could be kind of tied to like if the leader herself or himself has anxiety and so what leader doesn't in this economic situation? Yeah, exactly, but one of the things that the thing about being a leader is that you cast a huge shadow. Yes, and so I think anxiety and any kind of maybe emotion is contagious in a way 100%, 100%.

Speaker 3:

If you are scared, anxiety and fear, yeah, later. Right, if you are scared, your, your employees are going to be scared, your organization is going to be scared and it starts to spiral. It can, it can. It doesn't have to, but it can. That's very often a result. The result no, I think that's important because if you, a family member of mine, was diagnosed with cancer I'm sorry, thank you, they're doing very well, but was diagnosed with cancer. And so I spoke to a friend of mine who's an oncologist, who gave me a pretty grave, you know, outlook for this person and I said, well, but this person's very optimistic, and the doctor looked at me. The physician looked at me. He's like, well, that's the important one, right? And so you are not optimistic, even in the face of evidence that is concerning. If you don't believe that you can get through this, that becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. That's what spirals.

Speaker 2:

Yes.

Speaker 3:

That's what spirals. And so, you know, in in the mental health world that I work in, we talk about storytelling, and if you believe it's true, it's true. So if you believe there's no hope and the company's going to fail giving a business example, or the organization is, you know, not going to meet its, its fundraising goals, or or whatever then the likelihood of that happening is nearly 100%. Yeah, and so, because there's no opening for something different and that's where this communication comes from, because I don't know my own blind spots yeah, so if I can lay out on the table and say, okay, here's what I'm seeing, here are the books, here's what I'm seeing, here are my concerns, and I'm not saying that we're going to fail. We, we missed this goal, or that didn't happen, or that company that we worked with a long time went under, or the cost of our production has gone up, or y'all need medical care and I really want to give it to you. But here are our numbers and I don't know if how I can make that happen. Whatever the issues are, put them out on the table, because other people have other perspectives and someone may have an idea, and so I think that we should be willing to be open to ideas that are not ours.

Speaker 3:

So I was recently talking with a nonprofit in Washington state and their executive director was like the situation is not good but they have lots and lots of assets. And the executive director suggested she said well, I think we should to ran this past me first, said I think we should sell off our assets and become a foundation and give grants to local agencies who are doing the direct services, rather than giving direct services ourselves. And we went through the books and we went through the numbers and and I was like that's actually a really good idea, because otherwise they need to fund raise $30 million, which is multiple times the value of the of the organization, to in order to move where they want to go. And so, you know, the executive director brings it to the board and the head of the board says I think perhaps are not a fit for us anymore, because changing in that way feels like giving up. So I don't have a horse in the race, so I don't. It doesn't matter.

Speaker 3:

I think that there's, there are probably also ways forward. I don't know that they can raise 30 million given their current size and staffing, but I think that's a whole sale cutter off, yeah, and I was like, wow, you guys really might go under, not slowly, because I have a lot, of, a lot of assets. You're going to go under slowly because you're not willing to listen to an idea that isn't in your own lane. And I think, as a leader, it really works to our advantage when we are like, okay, let me sit with something that's really, that's really uncomfortable to say you know what we aren't doing that great at direct services. The economic indications are that that's not going to change. But here's a way to do really good impact.

Speaker 3:

We've been a direct services organization for 50 or 70, whatever it is years. Should we change direction that radically to have the courage to sit with that, learn more you know and think about it and then maybe say, no, that's fine. But to just be like, I actually think we just probably need a new executive director who's in more in line with our thinking. I'm like, okay, well, that tells you all you needed to know, my friend, you know because my friends, the executive director, I was like time to look for a new job.

Speaker 2:

Exactly, yeah, yeah, wow it's I. Yeah. I think that is the thing that leaders sometimes forget is how much influence they have on the people around them. You know everybody's looking at the leader. You know I remember there was a time when somebody didn't know who I was. This was in my former job and they were talking to me about they heard that Susan wanted something. You know it was like. You know it was like Wow, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, and it wasn't exactly right, but it was.

Speaker 2:

You know it was. It was the kind of like this what do you call that? You know that that when you telephone, you know like so and so.

Speaker 3:

Yes, yes.

Speaker 2:

So, yes, so it's something that you really have to, I think, monitor.

Speaker 3:

And it's also the leader.

Speaker 3:

The leader is stronger when they have good relationships with the people under the necklace, and if you have a company of a thousand people, obviously you can't be besties with all of them, nor do you want to be truly friends with people that you know you have to discipline and fire and all of those kinds of things. But if you have genuine respect, yes, because the people that I work with. I'm very good at a very limited amount of stuff. What I know how to do, I really know how to do, but that doesn't mean that I don't contact other people. I'm an amazing writer. I'm also a very good editor and I have an editor.

Speaker 3:

And on the final version of my book. I called because I didn't know if the word should be humans, so human apostrophe S or humans apostrophe.

Speaker 2:

Yes.

Speaker 3:

Right, and we had a five minute editor and I had a five minute discussion and she eventually said, well, why don't you just change the word so you don't have to? And I was like, oh right, so so we don't have to, because, because it's so nuanced, like so, even the experts don't always have a definitive. This is the answer. Yeah, but I am so blind to so much that isn't so. You know, when I go out and I board a horse, my horse is boarded at my friend's barn and her cousin's daughter is is riding the horse at the moment because I injured my back and couldn't ride for a long time and I was like. I was like I would love someone to use him. Why don't you? I ask the teenage girl who's riding him, what's going on with him? How are his hooves? What's this? Do you need money for anything Like? Does he need some veterinary care? Does he need the like? What do? What do we need? Because I'm not there every day, so I might have more experience, right, with horses in general, but I don't have her perspective of being the day to day caretaker of the animal. So in every business right, we want to, or organization where you could be the leader of your church or the leader of a nonpro or whatever. But in any, any group, we need to learn to value what other people bring, even if they're not at our same income level or whatever you know title or whatever floats your boat, that makes you feel important. And these people who are on the front lines very often have insights into problems that the leader needs to hear. And going back to you know what Debbie was saying initially about communication like that. That's where those lines of communication come from.

Speaker 3:

And when I, back, when I worked for the Girl Scouts, I literally had an open door policy, you know, with my teams and if my door was open, you could come in. If my door was, which was most of the time, if my door was closed, it meant I was in a meeting and please, only it better be, you know, but an emergency right. And if the door is open, you know, 95% of the time, and every now and again I'd get a slip of paper shoved under the door like, please, I need to speak with you when you, when you open the door, absolutely, absolutely. So you know we can do that very easily by making ourselves available, right, and by valuing the humanity of the people we lead, and I think it's not better than you because I have a different title, because I have all these degrees, because I have the experience, because I earn more. None of those things have anything to do with my value or your value and being your.

Speaker 3:

Most people I know try the best they can to do the work that they do. They have good days, they have bad days. Sometimes they perform very well, sometimes they over underperform me. In every single position I've ever been in, work or volunteer, there are days I underperform. There are days where I don't show up, where I'm just like you know what, I'm just too tired and I cannot do this today, you know, or I have a bad attitude and I just take myself out, right. So we're all human beings, but we're human beings and man, if you, you know, it's like the it's the old story of the guy who treats the person, who treats the janitor or the receptionist or the host at the restaurant Well, right, then we know something about their character and if you can develop that as part of your culture in your company, you know, then you're going to have a really good shot at having, you know, a very positive you know experience.

Speaker 2:

Well, and it sounds like in order to do that, because, again, you know, the leader sets the tone for the culture, right? So leaders have to take care of themselves.

Speaker 3:

Right, you have to. I was just thinking that go ahead, yeah, you have to, you have to be healthy In order to be able to give like this. So the most dysfunctional teams I have ever worked with and observed are where the and you hear this complaint a lot on social media where leadership takes care of themselves but does not offer the same opportunities for self care to the employees. So, I need a mental health day and I take one, but you better show up because we're short staffed on the floor.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

That's terrible. I take time off because I'm sick, but I don't have any coverage. You better show up and how sick are you? You know, when you've called in sick and they're like well, how sick are you? You know, like that is now.

Speaker 3:

If everybody is working themselves to the bone, it's not a healthy, it's a dysfunctional situation. But everybody's treated the same. And then we also have those situations where the leader does not take care of themselves but is reasonable with, you know, people under them, but you teach people oh, if I want to rise in the ranks, I have to be willing to be sick. Yes, so the best organizations are the ones where the leader, by example, shows people okay, I'm going to take care of myself, and then I'm also going to insist that you take care of yourself, you know. So being proactive and saying I see you haven't taken your vacation, let's schedule that. Right, is there a reason that you haven't scheduled that? You know, have that conversation. You know, maybe they're going to quit and cash it out because they've got a sick kid. So is there something that we can do to you know, mitigate that so we retain the employee, right, you know there's all sorts of things, so we want to make sure that employees have, you know this whole thing. Like you know, unlimited time off, which we know is no time off at all, you know, is saying no, no, I want you to take time or schedule a whole time where the you know, on I don't know, july 27th, that Friday it's not near any holiday like 4th of July is gone and you know what you're going to call it Labor Day ain't here yet, like, the whole company is having that day off paid for a mental health.

Speaker 3:

Like we can do these kinds of things for you know, the people that we work with to make sure that we all have the accommodations we need for our health, for our well-being. I mean it's easy. I mean, come on, yeah, yeah, we, everybody who has a kid is like, make it easy to take the kid to the doctor. Right, it's back to school. You know, my friends, I was just at my friend's house today and her kids went back to school the day. Make it easy, those kids, somebody's going to get sick. They're kids, somebody's going to get sick and need to get picked up. You know, make it easy. And if your business can't accommodate that, or your or your nonprofit or whatever, then there's something wrong in your staffing model. If somebody being out sick means that you as a CEO have to do all of their work, or the business crumbles or whatever, because you can't cover that, then you're probably doing too much business for the amount of staff that you have. You're overworking your people, right.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely so, shifting gears just slightly, but not really. You've got this new novel coming out in November and I think you told us is focused on climate change, so can you make a connection for us with what leaders might need to know about this subject you're passionate about?

Speaker 3:

Sure. So I, you know, come to the table from the mental health field and I work for many years, a couple of decades. I've worked at the intersection of addiction and trauma because those are, although they're technically traditionally diagnosed separately, I think they're kind of not the same thing but definitely interrelated, like. So, you know, 50% of people who go to addiction treatment center also have, you know, trauma, and a huge percentage of people who have diagnosable trauma not someone who's been through a traumatic events, but diagnosable trauma very often cope with that using substance abuse because it works.

Speaker 3:

But what I started to see in my work with trauma is more and more people being traumatized through climate change events and climate disasters. I'm out in the West and so we have just tremendous wildfires and I mean whole towns gone. What's happened in Maui is devastating, you know, and so, and that's trauma upon trauma, because native Hawaiians will tell you, you know, like you know, we didn't really want to be a state anyway, right, and now this has happened and is there going to be a land grab and are the you know, the native Hawaiians who've lived there going to be pushed out of the place that they have traditionally lived, which was the capital of the Hawaiian kingdom. So you know lots and lots of questions and trauma there. So I thought I really. So I've been moving more in the direction of mental health and trauma related to climate change and what I noticed is there's a huge wave of anti-intellectualism and people don't really want to hear from scientists about climate change and about trauma and about you know, all those things that we dedicated decades in school.

Speaker 3:

I mean, I went to college for 10 years just to learn enough to be able to do the research you know, and so I'm like, huh, I didn't really. My goal in life is not to like pull the wool over your eyes and make you do something you don't want to do. I just want to find out how people can live better lives in a mental health aspect. So I decided to write a novel and I thought, you know, maybe fiction is the way, because everybody listened to Harry Potter, that's all. That might as well be. You know truth, like with a capital T, like you know, harry, I don't know. I know people who know a hell of a lot more about Harry Potter than they do about history you know like actual history of the last, say, 50 years, you know, in their state, in their nation, in their.

Speaker 3:

So I decided to write a novel. So the novel is called the Path to God's Promise and it follows a woman named Eleanor who is a middle-aged Jewish lady of no particular renown. She happens to be a writer and God speaks to her and he says I need you to be my prophet. And she's like I have none of this because it doesn't end up very good, for you know people who want to be a prophet.

Speaker 3:

She's like, that's not my interest, but God's message is that climate change is done by us, that God is not coming to save us. There will be no divine intervention. There are consequences to our actions. We have free will and if we don't want these dire possibilities to come, not just for, but I mean climate change is happening so fast, much faster than scientists anticipated that it would. It's not for some unforeseen future, it's for our children. With this new novel that I wrote, the Path to God's Promise, I get to engage with people and I get to talk about climate change and I get to talk about leadership and I get to talk about agriculture.

Speaker 2:

Constance that sounds.

Speaker 3:

I think we could go on all afternoon I get a little excited, you know, because I want people. Well, because it really matters to me, I want people to live better lives in the way they define better lives. Well, we're going to have to have you come back again Anytime you like, I'm happy to do it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah Well, I'm just going to wrap up here now and thank our listeners for joining us for this Seasons Leadership Podcast. We hope you take these words of excellence with you to help strengthen the organizations and communities in which you live and work and join us in making excellent leadership the worldwide standard by subscribing to our community on Patreon. Remember, no matter what level or role, you can become more than you are today and make a difference. Visit Patreoncom To become a member and begin working toward your full leadership potential. We would love to connect with you as we build our community of excellent leaders. Until next time, we are sending you positive vibes for integrating these new leadership insights into your leadership and life. And thank you and thank you, constance, thank you for having me Thank you for being here.

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