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Why Don’t People Trust Experts?

Episode 157

Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

With all of the global crises that have happened this year, people are stressed and we’re finding ourselves in the middle of a great divide when it comes to our perspectives on many important topics and it’s certainly having an impact on how we’re able to be a voice of influence.

In this episode, Rosanne and I discuss the growing lack of respect and trust for expertise and how you can get people to buy into your ideas in spite of that, the parallels between parenting and getting buy-in on your ideas from those around you, the importance of understanding that some people react based on logic while others react based on emotion, the value of taking actions to calm a situation rather than escalate it and the role self-awareness plays in that process, and more!

 

Transcript

Hey there!  Welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.  I’m Andrea Wenburg and Rosanne is with me again today.  We’re going to have a good conversation here in just a minute.  And we want to set it up a little bit by explaining, in case you haven’t been around much or if you didn’t realize what we’re really about.  Voice of Influence serves leaders and subject matter experts by helping them navigate personal and interpersonal human dynamics in order to effectively engage others and carry out their strategic mission.

 

So, if you are somebody who are in leadership, you have some expertise, and you really want to get that into the hands of the people that need it, we’re here to help you do that because there’s a lot going on that can get in the way of that happening.  And so, we’re going to talk about that a little bit today.

 

Now, just so you know, if you are interested in growing in your own social emotional intelligence, so that you can handle difficult conversations, feedback conversations, or things that need to happen between two people.  You’re wanting to convince somebody of something or you’re wanting to confront them about something, and you want to do this with more ease.  Well, we have a free mini course for you, and we’re so excited about it, and in under 30 minutes, you’re going to learn how to implement our proprietary model so that your conversations have a deep impact on others.

 

Go to voiceofinfluence.net and hit the podcast tab and there you’ll find more information about our free course the Deep Impact method.

 

 

Andrea:  Rosanne, welcome back to the show.

 

Rosanne Moore:  It’s good to be here.

 

Andrea:  And we’ve kind of been trying to talk through some of the things that we want to talk about today.  So, I’m just going to kind of let you set us up.

 

Rosanne Moore:  Well, we have talked a lot recently about how we see what you’ve referred to as the great divide, this divide in our nation with people. with different worldviews and how in this past year, in 2020, it’s become more problematic with all of the crises that are going on globally and nationally.  People are stressed, they’re tired, and it’s caused an even sharper division in perspective.  So, talk to me about that, Andrea, what do you see happening?

 

Andrea:  Well, I think the thing that kind of most concerns me for our audience in particular, has to do with the growing lack of respect for expertise in general.  And not just a lack of respect, but it’s also just general confusion about where should I get my information?  Who can I trust?  How do I know that I can trust somebody and what they’re telling me?

 

Rosanne Moore:  Right.

 

Andrea:  You know, my dad grew up, “You just trust the doctor.”  “The doctor tells you what to do, and you just trust them.”  And now there’s a lot more for good cause and good reason, people are advocating for themselves more in their own healthcare, which is good.  And yet, some of this finding your own voice and advocating for yourself, asking questions has turned into more cynicism and skepticism of what experts really provide.

 

Rosanne Moore:  Yeah, I mean, we’ve talked about how an expert is someone who really has devoted themselves to a subject so that they learned the nuances of it.  And so assuming that, because you have a piece of information, that’s equal in weight to somebody who’s looked at all of the nuances of something, that can be dangerous.  It’s got to be frustrating for our listeners who are experts in their field when they try to bring something and they’re not heard.

 

Andrea:  Right, right.  So, as a listener, maybe you have experienced this yourself where you have expertise to share but it’s not necessarily being taken with the same level of trust and “Okay, sure, I’ll do what you suggest.”  Or maybe you’ve got a change that needs to be made in your working environment, and you know that this is the right thing to do, you know, that this is the best thing to do, but you’re having a hard time getting people on board with it.  And I think that part of what we’re seeing in 2020 is this general like, confusion about like, “Why should I trust you?”  “Why should I do what you suggest to do?”

 

Rosanne Moore:  So, what should a leader do?  I mean, how do they get buy in on essential change?  That’s something that our organization specializes in.  So, share some of that, Andrea, what has led you in your thinking about this topic?

 

Andrea:  Hmm.  Well, you know, I sort of grew up watching my teachers and there are other students in my classes.  And it was just really observing when people actually understanding the teacher and taking in their information and obeying the rules of the classroom and when where they not and why.  Why was this happening?  I was constantly asking this question that was rolling around in my mind and kind of got to the point where I’d start to predict that when a teacher would say something, I’d be like, “They’re not gonna be able to understand that.”  And then I’d try to think of a new way to explain it to somebody, you know, not because I always knew.

 

I would oftentimes have to ask the questions myself and figure out what they’re trying to say or what they’re trying to accomplish.  And then perhaps every once in a while, you know, be a translator for another student in the class.  I needed a translator sometimes too but the point is that I just sort of have been studying this even as a kid.  And so, you know, I’ve continued to pursue that through my education, in my post secondary education.  And then I became a mom and, Roseanne, when you’re a mom, you have to really negotiate.  You have to be really good at getting people, little people to comply with what you have to say.

 

Rosanne Moore:  Right, absolutely into to make sure you’re getting behind their eyes so that you understand where the breakdown is.  So, you’re not trying to fix something that’s not broken and missing what is.

 

Andrea:  Right.  And this story comes to mind about 10 years ago, my daughter, she was about three.  We had continually gotten into this situation where I would tell her to do something or tell her it was time to do something; she would start to be upset about being told what to do.  And then I would get stern like I grew up thinking I should do.  I should be stern and I should take control of the situation, “I’m the mom here.” and give her that mom look, you know.  And that would set her off even more and the situation would just escalate.

 

So, of course, I’m given a child that is not ideal for my way of interacting and moving in the world.  I mean, you know, I had a whole plan for parenting before I started parenting.  Don’t we all before we start?  And I think this is so applicable to all of life.  So, that’s the reason why I’m telling this story.

 

But anyway, so this has been happening quite a bit.  And one night, it was it was about time for bed and I said, “Amelia, why don’t you go brush your teeth?”  And she looked at me and she said, she didn’t want to brush her teeth and I don’t remember exactly how that came out or I had no idea why.  But it just felt like a, “I don’t want to do it because you just told me to do it, so therefore I don’t want to do it.”  And there was this pushback and I thought for a second, I was going to do the mom look and get really stern.  And then I thought about it for a second, I’m like, “There’s something else going on here.”

 

And I had been studying other things.  So, I have a background in psychology and theology and some other things, and I’d been studying this for myself and trying to understand myself and why I was so irritated sometimes.  I would get really angry, irrationally so, and I didn’t always know why.  And then I started to really think about it.  I’m like, “You know what, when I’m really angry…” sort of prickly like a porcupine, feeling attacked or whatever it might be, “I want to just punch people.”  You know, not actually physically but that’s what my presence is.  I want to punch back.

 

But what I realized that I needed was I needed somebody to come calm me down because I didn’t actually want to do that, I actually wanted to cry.  And I didn’t want to admit that I wanted to cry.  But there was something inside of me that was sad and I needed help, like I was reacting in anger.  And that’s a normal thing for people to do to react out of that anger instead of reacting out of sadness.

 

So, when I looked at my daughter and things were going in that direction of escalation, I have one way of thinking about this, she has another.  We’re both feeling disrespected right now.  And I feel like as a parent, I should be able to take control of the situation.  But instead I looked at her and I thought, “What if she is acting like a porcupine, but she really just needs somebody to help her calm down.  Maybe I could be compassionate and help her calm down instead of being angry and forcing her to do what I told her to do and ending up in a big power struggle, and everybody being frustrated.”

 

So, I just looked at my little girl with her fiery eyes and I knelt down on the floor, and I reached out my hands and I just kind of opened up my arms.  I had no idea what would happen.  And as soon as she saw me do that, she came in and kind of fell into my arms and started to cry.

 

Rosanne Moore:  Ohh!

 

Andrea:  Why, because I asked her to brush her teeth?  No.  You know, like there was so much more going on in that moment underneath the surface.  And so, of course, I sort of teared up too, and I’m kind of tearing up right now thinking about it again.

 

Rosanne Moore:  I am too just listening.

 

Andrea:  Because this has played out many, many times since then in our relationship.  And I’ve realized that there’s something else going on inside of my daughter that is causing her to react with that kind of prickliness.  And the same thing happens with me.  She starts to be disrespectful of me, so then I feel disrespected and then I get prickly and only it furthers the process.  It only further escalates the whole thing.  So, I think that moment taught me something so huge, because after I gave her that hug and I just held her for a little bit, it was not hard to have her go brush her teeth.

 

That was not the issue.  It was just the simple like, maybe it was me asking her to change course in the middle of, you know, her playing and she didn’t want to stop.  It could have been that she felt like I didn’t care what she thought and I was already starting to look at her with a face that was the stern mom look and she doesn’t feel loved and that she feels disrespected and so that she was reacting to that.  It could have been a number of things.  But I think that the main thing that I learned from that was that sad is under angry.

 

Rosanne Moore:  Right.

 

Andrea:  Sad is under angry.

 

Rosanne Moore:  And I think what I’m hearing from you too, correct me if I’m wrong, is that if a leader makes the mistake of engaging someone who has an emotional barrier to something and just tries to do it logically, like with a kind of a command thing, they’re not actually going to be heard.  And so, when you’re running into resistance, it’s important to look for what is taking the person you’re trying to talk to out of a logical place and into an emotional place.  And if the leader is getting triggered to be in an emotional place, that’s what it sounds like you were doing with Amelia.

 

Andrea:  Exactly.

 

Rosanne Moore:  So, being aware on both levels, what’s taking us out of a place of actual dialogue, and I know in my background with teaching special needs kids, the two sides of the brain, the emotional side and the intellectual processing side are different.  And if you have the emotional side flaring, you’re not going to get anything taught.  And so that’s what I hear you saying, am I right in that?

 

Andrea:  Right.  So, you know, it kind of goes back to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.  People need to feel like they’re taken care of.  Their physical needs, their emotional needs are taken care of before they can really start moving in a new direction before they can really start changing something.  And so, if there is a sense of “I’m not safe right now,” or “I’m not respected right now,” then it’s going to be really hard for that person to let down their guard, not fight back, and let down their guard and then be able to actually take in what you have to say at all, let alone make the decision to follow what you’ve said.

 

I mean that is what we talk about in the Deep Impact method.  And I seriously want as many people to watch this video series as possible.  It’s a short course and it’s for free.  And I want as many people to watch this as possible, because what I’m hearing back from people who have watched it is that it actually is kind of mind shift for the way that they’re talking to people.  And my hope is that, you know, when we look at our conversations, and we see the other person on the other side, and they are getting emotional, there is an escalation that’s about to take place, or we know that this is what typically happens.  That we as a voice of influence, that I as a voice of influence will stop and say, “Now wait a second what’s going on here?”  “What do I know that is true about me?”  “What do I know that is possible, like what could they possibly be going through and then how do we move forward from here?”

 

So, the main point of that particular story is both the fact that there’s something else going on underneath the surface, but then also that if we address the sadness first, we’re going to have a much easier time getting to change.  If we’re just reacting out of the anger, where I’m angry, you’re angry, we continue to be angry and we don’t address the actual grief of the moment.  There’s something going on inside of you.  There’s something going on inside of me that I’m sad, we are sad.  If we don’t address that, we’re skipping over something vitally important that could get us to a solution much, much quicker.

 

Rosanne Moore:  And I think to it as you’re talking, it’s not always your daughter’s reaction was to push back vocally but sometimes people shut down when they’re in grief.  And so either way, whether they push back or whether they shut down, having that awareness of what’s going on, that’s getting in the way of actually, like being able to dialogue is so important.  So, when you work with leaders to help them navigate through this undercurrent internal reactions and adoption of changes, obviously, you’re not going to have them go hug them like you did with your daughter.  So, what process do you recommend?

 

Andrea:  Well, first of all, self-awareness.  First of all, we all have to kind of look at ourselves and say, I mean, one of the best reasons I was able to actually be able to take this to a new level with my daughter was because I understood about this about that myself.  So, first of all, what’s going on inside of me right now and why am I so angry?  And if I am angry, what is sad about this situation?

 

Rosanne Moore:  So, you’re in motivation, being aware of what was motivating you was crucial.

 

Andrea:  Yes.  Look underneath the surface to say and to be able to ask about this particular situation that I’m in right now, “What is sad about this to me?”  Because if I can be honest about my own, what’s hard about this, what’s difficult about this?  Then I can share that with the other person and say, “Look, this is really hard for me.  I do not like having to go down this path.  But here we are, you know, it’s the beginning of empathy to be able to really understand yourself and be honest about that.  It helps you to be more empathetic toward the other person.  It helps the other person be more empathetic toward you.

 

Rosanne Moore:  And I think sometimes it can be fear underneath anger.  I see that a lot, you know, that the anger is a safeguard against feeling fear.

 

Andrea:  So, fear and sadness, I think are very similar.  There’s the fear, but then there’s the sadness about the fear.

 

Rosanne Moore:  Right.

 

Andrea:  So, I would I would still get back down to that.  So, what is going to help calm the situation instead of what’s going to feed the fire?  So, what does this person need from me to empathize with me?  .  Fear is sad.  It’s sad that people are afraid.  So anyway, I would go back to what is sad about this situation.  Well, it’s sad because I’m absolutely terrified of, you know, whatever might be going on.  That is sad.  So, I need to know that about me.  I need to start to understand what might be going on with that.

 

So then, after that self-awareness, then there’s a sense of, “Okay, now I need to be curious and empathetic and respectful of why the other person might be resisting.”  So, the respect here may not be the kind of respect that is like, “I respect you because you have earned my respect the way that you’ve treated people and your expertise and all that kind of stuff.”  It might not be that kind of respect.  Instead, it could be the kind of respect that is about the other person actually being a human being.  I respect the fact that you’re a human being, that you have emotional needs, that you have an experience of all of your own.

 

So, if I can start there too, if I understand, “Okay, so I respect that you’re a human being, and that there’s a reason why you’re resisting.”  Then I start to can start to ask those questions inside of myself.  I can start to kind of dig a little and the other person.  So, what might be going on?  Why might they be resisting?  What might they be sad about?

 

Rosanne Moore:  And what if it’s not?  Part of it could be at times, not knowing something, right?  Not having certain skills or resources.  Sometimes the emotional thing has a very practical component to it.  Would that not be true?

 

Andrea:  Yes.  So, when we get to this point, the curiosity, the respect, all that kind of thing, then I think that we can look at it in three kinds of components, what might be causing this person to resist; the head, the hands, or the heart?  So, the head being what do they still need to know or understand so that they can move forward, so that they don’t feel resistant?  For the hands, what skills or resources do they need to pull it off?  And for the heart, what beliefs or feelings are going to need to change?

 

First, I think you have to address the fear or the sadness that we were talking about before, at least being able to understand that about the other person.  And then to ask that question of is there something that you need to be able to move forward?  Or is there something that’s getting in the way that you don’t understand?  Is there something else that you need in terms of resources or is there just like you totally are resistant because you don’t agree that this is the right direction to go?

 

Rosanne Moore:  You know, talking about this, Andrea, reminds me of a situation that I was in with the birth of my second child.  I have had a very traumatic delivery.  And there was some medical malpractice and mistakes had been made with my first child.  And so, with my preparing for the birth of my second child, I was very resistant to the idea of letting somebody else make decisions that I didn’t feel comfortable with.  I had gone into it very trusting the first time, didn’t know a lot, and the second time I was going to be prepared.

 

And I can remember interviewing doctors, pediatricians and they picked up immediately.  It was not hard kind of wearing it, my resistance to their expertise.  I think there were four different ones that I interviewed and the first three responded to that by doubling down on why they were the expert and I was not and I needed to do things, like they needed to call the shots.  Understandable, obviously, I had not been to medical school; I had not done all the things that they had done.  But the last one, when I started asking questions about how he handled things, instead of answering my questions, he asked me a question.  He said, “Did you have a bad experience?”

 

Andrea:  Oh, perfect!

 

Rosanne Moore:  And I told him what had happened and he said, “I’m so sorry that happened to you.  I can understand why you really want to make sure that your baby is taking care of well this time.”  And so then he walked back through all those other questions that I had and he explained his expertise, and that’s who I chose.

 

Andrea:  Of course, yes.

 

Rosanne Moore:  Now, did he make any suggestions that were different than the others?  No, he didn’t.  He held the exact same position, but he was the one I chose because he did engage me on that level.

 

Andrea:  Yes.  It so, so good.  What a great example, Rosanne.  I mean, it goes back to that people don’t care what you know until they know that you care.

 

Rosanne Moore:  Right.

 

Andrea:  And the reason for that is that they don’t feel safe.

 

Rosanne Moore:  Yes.

 

Andrea:  People are resisting you and you’re resisting what you have to share with them, your expertise, your knowledge or experience.  They’re resisting, they’re resisting, they’re resisting.  There’s something in them that is not feeling safe.  And so, it may be because of you, it may not.  But it’s _____ upon you as the person who is wanting to have, you know, the influence as somebody who cares about other people to ask that question, you know, “What might be going on?”  “Is there a bad experience?”  Or, you know, it could have been a different situation.  It might be a different question, but you stay curious and be respectful of that other person, even though they weren’t at medical school with you.  Man, that’s so important.

 

Rosanne Moore:  Yeah.  And all of my birth experiences, quite honestly, that was the best birth experience because both my OB and the pediatrician were very aware of what I had been through the first time and they did everything in their power to make sure that I felt heard and a part of the decisions and respected throughout the process.  Yeah.

 

Andrea:  It’s so good.  So, it’s time for us to wrap up, Rosanne.

 

Rosanne Moore:  Sure.

 

Andrea:  I think that if I were to summarize anything here, or if I just say, please remember this, please remember that sad is under angry.  Please, remember that.  There is a reason why people are angry, and it’s not usually the top response.  It’s not usually the core response.  It doesn’t mean that it’s not important.  Anger is very important.  And it doesn’t mean that we should write off people’s anger, it means that we need to be curious about why they’re angry and what might be going on inside of them that could actually be sad.

 

One more thought on this.  I’ve got a question for you, the listener.  When do you feel most close to people, when you’re arguing with them or when they tear up?  And maybe you start to give them a hug or, you know, maybe you don’t touch them.  But, I mean, we feel closer to people when we can see that they’re actual human beings.  And we’re not just arguing on a on this other level, that is maybe just about things that are on the surface that we’re not really getting down underneath.

 

And so, if we can get down underneath, if we can feel that empathy for the other person’s human experience that is vitally important.  If you have expertise, it’s vitally important that you understand that you can’t just share your expertise.  You’re going to have to be an expert on people too.

 

So, the rest of this month, we’re going to be talking about this particular topic.  Next week we’re going to be airing an interview that I did with Dr. Espen Klausen, the psychologist on The Psychology Behind Personal Change.  Then we’ll take another look at that and we’re going to just dive a little bit deeper here the rest of the month on this particular topic.  We’re kind of excited about taking a little deeper dive.  It’s sort of like a theme we’ve got running right now, Rosanne,

 

Rosanne Moore:  Yes.  So, if you want to become more effective in conversations where you’re encouraging an individual to make change, whether it’s in a formal situation an annual review or responding to feedback on the job, or whether it’s just in a passing conversation.  We started out by talking about the deep divide in our nation, maybe you have family members that you want to be able to engage better or there’s someone close to you that needs to take more responsibility for something, a bad habit they’re stuck in.  We have a free mini course that’s available for you.

 

And Andrea already made reference to this at the top of the show, but go to voiceofinfluence.net/podcasts and you can find information on the Deep Impact method.  Also, if you want to work one on one with Andrea but you’re not sure what that would look like for your specific business situation, we recommend starting with the Clarify your Voice Call.  Again, you can go to voiceofinfluence.net and hit the contact button there and ask to learn more about clarifying your voice.

 

Andrea:  Thank you, Roseanne.  All right, so your voice matters, let’s make it matter more!

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Greatest Hits: Episode 100 – The Elements of a Voice of Influence®

Episode 156

Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

In this special episode, we’re taking a look back at episode 100 of the Voice of Influence® podcast! Our team is thrilled with where we’ve been and we’re excited for where we’re going with the show in the years to come!

In today’s show, I share the ways the podcast has shifted and what has remained the same since the beginning. Then I discuss one of our biggest ah-ha’s from interviewing guests, the six elements of a Voice of Influence, so you can utilize the framework for yourself.

To get you started, here are a few examples of episodes where we address each of the six elements:

Your Purpose (or Passion)

Your Style

Your Message

Your Offering

Your Strategy

Your Community

Other Resources

  • The Deep Impact Method Mini-Course

    Give great, effective feedback!

    This show is brought to you by the Deep Impact Method free course. Handle problems and present changes with care and influence. Register for the free 30 minute course here.

 

 

 

Play here (the red triangle below), on iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn Radio (Amazon Alexa) or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Transcript

Hey, hey!  It’s Andrea and you are listening to Episode 100 of the Voice of Influence podcast.

Your voice matters, but you can make it matter more through our in-depth conversations with leaders and experts.  You’ll learn what it takes to move your audience with your message at home, work, and in the world.  It’s compelling communication strategy brought to you by your host, Author, Speaker, and Strategist, Andrea Joy Wenburg.  Welcome to Voice of Influence!

Welcome, welcome!  I am so glad that you’re here with us today.  It’s a kind of a day of celebration.  We’ve made it to Episode 100, and it’s been just over two years and about two or three months since we started the Voice of Influence podcast and we’ve made it to Episode 100, so fun.  So, thank you so much for being here, for listening, and for engaging.  We appreciate it.  We value you and your voice, and we really believe that your voice matters.

Over the course of the last couple of years, we have shifted, tried to figure out what exactly we’re doing with the podcast.  I’m typically not somebody who makes up her mind and just goes for it and sticks with the same exact thing the whole entire time.  Rather, we really believe in making iterations as we go.

And so as we started the podcast, we were really focused on the personal brand and personal brand strategy, which is still really important to the work that we do with people and the people that we’re hoping will listen to the podcast.  So, we’re talking about people who are really wanting to understand who they are and how they portray themselves to the world, how you are able to provide a presence that it will leave an impact, and that has remained the same.

What has shifted over the course of the last couple of years, especially in the last year and a half or so is that we’ve also added in this idea of service and leading teams and having a bigger impact on business in general.  But, really, it all comes back down to who you are as a person, what you believe about your voice, what you have been called to do, or feel a sense of purpose to do, finding meaning in your life and going after it.

And I tell you what, when it really comes down to it, it’s about putting yourself on the line for others, going that extra mile, being willing to sacrifice something of yourself in order to achieve something that is bigger, in order to put yourself in a position where you can have influence in a bigger way.  And when we’re talking about influence, we’re talking about influence that is ethical, influence that is not manipulative, but that helps other people to find their path that helps other people to make good decisions.

Sometimes that really looks like bringing clarity and helping people to see the big picture.  Sometimes that means giving advice, sometimes it could be providing an experience.  There are all kinds of ways that we can have influence and make a difference with who you are with your expertise, with what you have to provide.

But when it comes down to it, like I said before, it costs something.  It costs the person, you.  It costs you something to offer it because there are things at stake.  There are often things at stake.  There are things like relationships at stake.  There are things like your ego at stake.  I mean the idea of failing in front of other people, gosh, you know when you’re voice of influence when you’re putting yourself out there and you’re going for it and offering who you are to others.  Very often you’ll fail.  You will be rejected by others and it’s just part of life.  It’s part of what it means to lead and to be a leader, to be a voice of influence.

And so, I just want to say thank you first of all, for being a voice of influence.  Thank you for being willing to put yourself on the line for your cause for other people, to love other people really well.  I know that that comes at a cost to you personally and I just want to thank you for your courage and for taking risks.  And I hope that somehow along the way we have been able to provide for you a companion, perhaps a little bit of guidance on this journey of finding and owning and using your voice of influence.

Well, today we’re going to talk a little bit more in depth about what we consider to be a voice of influence here at our company.  We have a number of models, of frameworks, things like this.  This is one thing that I have found over the course of the last few years that I’m actually really good at.  And that is to help bring order to chaos, so, where there are lots of ideas or we’re trying to figure out how to solve a problem.  I love to help companies; individuals bring order to that process.

So, for example we the model of engagement, the A2 Model of Engagement and sometimes I call it A2, I don’t know.  I haven’t nailed that one down yet, but an A2 model of engagement, which is about how do you find context and understand where people are at in terms of engagement. And we do that in the context of agency and agreement, and I would love to explain that to you sometime if you want it, but it’s pretty darn hard to do that over a podcast episode.

So, send me an email if you’re interested in learning more about the A2 Model of Engagement and how I talk about that in keynotes and in breakout sessions or training sessions.  I’d love to visit with you about that.  You can send me an email at andrea@voiceofinfluence.net, and I’d be happy to schedule that with you.

But today, we’re going to talk about the Voice of Influence elements.  These are six things that over the course of the past few years as we’ve been putting together our thought leadership around voice of influence, these are the elements that we believe are absolutely necessary to dive into, understand, and get a grasp of for yourself when you’re wanting to be a voice of influence.

And as we are moving forward on the podcast, we want you to know that the way that we are structuring the podcast and the conversations that we’re having, the things, the insights that we share, the stories that we share are going to have to do with these six categories, these Six Elements of your Voice of Influence. And that’s how they fit together.  This is how it all fits together.  And it all also, as I mentioned previously, fits together under this idea of influence and service.

So, whether that’d be customer service or serving as a leader, we are serving other people and offering our voice of influence.  And so, in that process then these things all relate to all of those kinds of interactions.

Your Purpose

So let’s talk about these six elements.  We’re going to dive in.  The first one is your PURPOSE.  Your purpose could also be called your passion, but this is really about why you care.  It is so fundamental and important to have a sense of purpose, to give you meaning, to give you a reason to, you know, go that extra mile to get over that hump, to walk through the fire that you’re going to walk through in order to really offer what you have to offer well.  Having that sense of purpose and knowing why you care is incredibly important.

We’ve talked about this in a number of episodes.  I am going to a link in our show notes.  We will link to different episodes that have tackled some of these elements so that you can easily go back and see where we’ve already covered some of these things.  For now, just know that purpose is about why you care.  You need to know your purpose and have a purpose.  Whether it’d be something that you feel like is your own purpose and calling and that sort of thing, or if it’s something that you can align yourself to.

A lot of times when we’re working in a company, for a company, their purpose, the company’s purpose may not be exactly what our purpose is or what your passion, where your passion lies and that sort of thing.  But as long as it aligns with your purpose, as long as it fits together with what you care about, then you can still harness the power that comes with having a purpose and be able to utilize that.  So, the first category then is having a purpose.

Now, the Purpose at Voice of Influence is to help connect people’s gifts and expertise with the need in the world.  So, people and companies helping them connect what they have to offer with the need that is in the world.  That is something that drives us so that is incredibly important when it comes to what we do and why we care.  We see the need in the world.  We see your gifts, your talents, your expertise, and we’re saying, “Let’s figure out how to connect that.”  “I do not like dizzy thing go unconnected.”  So, we love to help make those connections with folks, so your purpose.

Your Style

And then your STYLE is the second element.  This is about how you show up.  What is the way that you do this?  How do you show up?  It’s kind of your personality.  Sometimes it has to do with your gifting, but certainly, the way that you show up in your personality.  The thing that we find that is so important about style is that folks often feel like they shouldn’t be the way that they are, or they don’t want to fully own who they are inside and then it doesn’t show up on the outside.  And it just really depends on the person, OK?

So, there’s a spectrum of different ways that we handle this, but let’s say on one side of the spectrum, there are people who want to be chameleons and sort of fit in with everybody else because we’re afraid of standing out.  We’re afraid of looking like we want to have attention, that sort of thing.  But maybe we do want attention or maybe we don’t want attention, but we need to receive attention in order to get a message out.

So, style and how we show up then for that person could mean owning who they are and showing up in a bigger way.  For somebody else, on maybe the other side of the spectrum, it could be that they are so out there and they beat everybody to the punch.  They are bigger than life and almost to the point where they’re covering up.  On the outside, they’re so big and flamboyant or extreme on the outside that they’re covering up something very, very intimately fragile on the inside.  And that fragileness on the inside then doesn’t have a chance to come out because it’s being covered up by a show.

Now, there are all kinds of people in between or perhaps on even further in different directions; who knows.  But how you show up authentically as yourself and knowing who you are being that person with others and then also at the same time being able to communicate and meet people where they are.  This is an interesting delicate kind of a balance.

It really comes down to being authentic.  It comes down to knowing who you are, being that person with others and caring about them enough that you don’t have to be you.  You know that you can make adjustments in order to meet somebody where they are.  So, the person who is naturally maybe loud, let’s say, like I’m naturally more of a sharer, there are times when I have to be quiet in order to meet somebody where they are, because they’re not going to share as much if I just start sharing.

So, there is this interesting balance that we have to kind of consider when it comes to being authentic, owning our voice, but at the same time doing it for the sake of others means being authentic to ourselves while at the same time meeting them where they’re at.  And that can be difficult but it is achievable.  You can do that.

And what I found with my own personal style is that I do tend to be dramatic.  I tend to be deep and intense.  I talk about all these things in my book UNFROZEN: Stop Holding Back and Release the Real You. I really went through a lot of struggle in my own life to figure out what was real about all of that and what wasn’t real or wasn’t me.

What I found is that when I’m feeling tension inside, when I’m feeling fear inside, when I’m feeling shame internally and that is unresolved inside of me, then I’m going to end up showing up as something that I’m not.  I’m going to show up in a way that is more self-protective.  That is more about me taking care of me and my ego than it is about loving others and serving them.

When it comes to our style, Voice of Influence, one of the ways that we know that we’re in-step with who we are in our style and how we’re showing up is if we’re not feeling that tension, if we are feeling free to be able to offer and love well.  So that’s something that you can consider for yourself, your style, if you’re feeling that tension.

If you’re feeling resentment and anger and sometimes righteous anger is legitimate and you should consider that as something that maybe is more of a passion or a purpose.  But when it’s indignation, when it’s, “Uh, I cannot believe they would do that,” that sort of thing.  Look, these are things that indicate that you are not totally resolved inside to be able to show up in a way that is true to who you really are and what you really want, which is to serve others well, to love them well, and to fulfill your purpose.

Your Message

And so this is Purpose, why you care; Style, how you show up.  And then MESSAGE, these are the words that you say.  Words that you say and how you show up are both part of your message truly.  But when it comes down to it, you actually need real words to be able to say, “You need to know what exactly you’re trying to communicate.”  “You need to know what your core message is.”  It’s one of the first things that we started doing at the Voice of Influence was to help people find their core message and get clear on the fact that you have to have a tiny message at the top, something that is specific and helpful to somebody else in order to be able to bring a bigger message behind it.

And so I call that the arrowhead alignment of a message, and we have talked about that some on the podcast.  So, I will make sure to link to an episode in the show notes on that one.  It’s about being really clear on what you’re going to say about your message, you know, what is it that you’re actually going to say?  One of the hardest things I think for people who tend to be more creative or passionate is that they might have a lot of different ideas, a lot of different things that they care about.  And it’s hard to narrow it down.  It’s hard to get more clear.  But if you’re wanting to come across as clear, you’re going to have to get clear for yourself.

And so, finding those words that you say are super important and the core message of Voice of Influence is when you align your voice or what you do and what you say with who you are, you will have more connected relationships and a bigger impact in the world.  That is the core of what we’re saying.  We are very clear on the fact that we want to help people get to that point where they can align what they do and what they say with who they are because that is where they’re going to find their voice of influence.

We also have other messages and you should have other messages that you’re really wanting to convey that you, you know, feel like are really important to you.  And we’re going to talk about having an anthem or a real clear set of values in Episode 102, so I’ll be working out for that one.  We’re going to be talking about what it means to have additional messages that are core to who you are and what you’re bringing as a team or what you’re bringing as an individual.  So we’ve talked about your Purpose, which is why you care; your Style, which is how you show up; your Message, which are the words that you say.  So we’re halfway done.

Your Offering

We’ve gotten down your OFFERING, what you can do to help.  All of these things, words are just words.  If you do not have something to offer, if you are not actually doing something for others, if you’re not putting out something that others can actually, you know, use or listen to or if you’re not serving them in some way, if there is no offering, then it makes it really hard to communicate a message.

A message in and of itself is nothing until you actually put it into some sort of creative contribution that you’re making to the world.  And so the question then becomes, what is your offering?  What can you do to actually help?  With Voice of Influence, our offerings have to do with training and coaching and strategy and these sorts of things.  And so we have a number of different offerings including the Voice of Influence Academy that allows us to draw from different teachings and different trainings that we have in order to create custom programs for our clients.

The Voice of Influence Academy is one of our offerings, but so is coaching and so as group coaching and the Fascinate Assessment and a number of different things that are aligned with our message and our style and our purpose.  And we want to encourage you to find an offering that aligns with who you are. And with offering, it may mean that you have to say no to other things in order to be able to do the thing that you really should be doing, that you really feel called to do.

While many of us have many opportunities to say yes to this committee and that nonprofit and this one and that and, “Oh my goodness, there are so many opportunities to serve in the world.”  And if you haven’t found those, if you haven’t found opportunities to serve or places that you can offer your gifts, even aside from your work, then I would encourage you to open up your mind to the possibility that there are a lot of opportunities out there and that you have to just go out and start to explore those and see them for yourself.

But because you have a specific voice of influence, you’re not just doing everything.  Instead, you’re going to need to narrow it in a little bit and make some decisions on what is going to be most in line with who you are with your purpose, your style, and your message.  OK, so now let’s figure out what you want to offer.

Your Strategy

Then the fifth element is STRATEGY.  This is about how you share your offering.  Now, in some situations it just means getting a job.  It just means getting the right job.  But really it doesn’t just mean, “OK, now I’m on this committee,” or “Now, I have this job and now I’m just going to play this role, this is my strategy.”  But instead when you consider your purpose, your style, your message and your offering, what is the best way forward?  What are some things that you want to do that will help you to share your offering better?

So, one of our strategies at Voice of Influence is to have a podcast.  So we’re going to have a podcast, we are going to get our message out there.  It’s going to give us an opportunity to connect with guests, to connect with listeners, to potentially help them to see a lot of these things for themselves.  And maybe there are a few people in the mix who are going to eventually want to work with us as a company as well.  So this is part of our strategy.

Other pieces of our strategy have to do with going out and speaking.  I’m doing a lot of speaking and going to conferences and getting in front of audiences who could potentially use what we have to offer, not just anywhere but places and getting in front of the audiences that actually need what we have to offer.  This is not about feeding my ego and getting me in front of big audiences just to get me in front of big audiences.  This is even tackling or going for smaller audiences of people who actually do need what we have to offer.  Then we are kind of more quickly getting to the path that we’re trying to get down, you know, moving down our path.

So for you, what choices do you want to make about your strategy that don’t have to do with your ego, but do have to do with what is the best path forward?  What’s going to turn the needle the most?  My husband is the one that’s kind of always talked about this with me, “That doesn’t turn the needle for us, Andrea.  So, it’s not worth doing it.”

And as I started our business and we’ve kept going, I started to realize what exactly he’s talking about because there are times when I have great ideas, I have lots of ideas, but what is going to actually turn the needle on our purpose and getting us closer to the goals that we have, the vision that we have, what is actually going to turn the needle?  And that’s what you need to be thinking about when you’re thinking about your strategy.

Your Community

OK, and then your COMMUNITY.  This is the last piece.  This is about who you serve, not about who you’re leading, not about you being in charge of people.  This is about who you’re serving and you’re going to serve people in different ways.  There are different people in your life who need different things from you and who you want to serve in different ways.  Maybe this friend of yours, for example, maybe they are a great friend you love having fun with them, but you’re not going to talk to them about deep things inside of your heart because they’re not the kind of person that really likes to talk about that stuff.  And they’ve shown you that that’s not something they can handle, so OK, no problem.  I will reserve that sharing these really deeper things for another situation or just, you know, share minimally.

So, with your community, you’re not just saying, who am I targeting?  That is part of it.  You know, who is this?  Who is the person who needs what I have to offer?  This is an important question to ask, not just who needs it, because a lot of times you could say, the whole world needs what I have to offer, which of course I feel that way about Voice of Influence, everybody needs to know how to have a voice of influence, right?  But that’s not the only criteria.  Here, we’re also talking about who is it that not only needs what you have to offer but is open to it and wanting it, and looking for it.  Maybe they have a pain point inside that is driving them to look for an answer and you have that answer.

You need to know who those people are and what those pain points are.  How can you help them to see that you actually do have what they need?  And as I mentioned at the beginning, one of our great purposes at Voice of Influence is really about connecting people’s gifts and expertise with the need in the world.  Well, that is a lot of this community piece.  Who is it that we are here to serve and what is it that they need from us?  Why are they looking for what we have to offer?

For us, for Voice of Influence, we know that there are customer service teams, for example, who want to have influence or who might be feeling like they don’t have influence, that they are just there to answer questions.  They’re just there to clean up the mess.  But really, we’re missing out on such an opportunity to serve and to draw in our customers and build customer loyalty if we’re not helping our customer service teams to really have a voice of influence.

Because if they know what their purpose is, they show up with their style and their message and the offering of the company and they know the strategy and they understand the customer who they’re serving, then they can come to their job with a sense of purpose and they’re going to go the extra mile.  They’re going to do what they can to help.  And all of that is going to lead to building customer loyalty.  That human element that you really can’t control, it’s something you can only release.

And so, this is something that we know that customer service teams that are really looking forward to build customer loyalty, those are the ones that we can really serve.  We can serve them, and so those are the audiences we’re trying to get in front of and that sort of thing.  But at the same time, we also know that there are leaders and executives who want to lead well, who want to do a better job of getting buy-in from their teams.  These are also things that we do at Voice of Influence, and so those are also people that we recognize we serve.

So, my question for you is who do you serve?  Who is it that needs what you have to offer?  This is your community and then the people that aren’t open to what you have to offer, they need something else from you and that’s OK.  You don’t have to be all things to all people and you don’t have to try to knock down every door to make sure that everybody gets what you have to offer.  That’s OK, you don’t need that.  Instead, what you need is you need to go through the open doors.  You need to look for the open doors.

Sometimes you got to knock, but very rarely should you ever knock down a door just to get somebody to take what you have to offer.  These are the elements, the six elements of having a voice of influence.  These are the things that we build into, the things that we address, the things that we help other people to cultivate either individually or in their teams.  And what we want to provide for you here on the podcast, we want to give you the resources to be able to think through these elements for yourself.

When you get pretty clear on these things, then you’re going to show up in a way that has more purposeful that does have a clear message with, you know, more confidence for who you’re here to help and serve or work with or collaborate with or what you’re here to truly accomplish. And so that is what we have created for you moving forward.  We want to offer you podcast episodes that are going to address these elements.  And really most of the ones that we’ve already done in the past do address these elements in some way.

And so the question for you is what are you doing right now?  How is this helping you to grow as a voice of influence in your purpose, your style, your message, your offering, your strategy, or your community?  I just want to thank you for listening.  I want you to thank you for being here.  It is an honor, a deep honor that you would listen to what we have to say here, and I counted a privilege.  I counted a huge responsibility to be serving you in this way and I hope that it’s been helpful.

If you have listened to over let’s say five podcast episodes, would you consider going to your podcast player wherever you listen to podcasts and leave us a review, particularly on Apple podcast.  That would be so helpful for us as Voice of Influence, the podcast and for helping other people to find the podcast.  I’ve not asked for reviews very often and I know I probably should do that more, but I thought, “Well, you know what, it’s episode 100, let’s go ahead and ask you to leave a review.”

So if you have listened to over five episodes, would you go and find your podcast player and leave us a review.  We’d so appreciate it and we will read them.  We will take a look and see what you have to say and you can always email us also at andrea@voiceofinfluence.net. I would love to hear from you, especially if something that we’ve shared with you here on the podcast has made a difference, we’d love to hear about it.

It’s so fun to hear from you and to hear the things that you’re doing in your community, in your place of business, in your families because of what you’ve listened to here and what you’ve heard and, and how you’re applying it.  And so that’s what it’s all about.  It’s about making a difference.  And so we wish that for you.  Go and leave that review on the podcast player that you listened to.  Take these six elements and make your voice matter more.

I know that that comes at a cost to you personally, and I just want to thank you for your courage and for taking risks.

 

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The Value of Bringing Your Diverse Experience and Talents to Work with Colin Crowley

Episode 155

Colin Crowley Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

Earlier this year, I had a great conversation with Colin Crowley and I’m excited to have him back on the show today to talk about the value of bringing your diverse experience and talents into your work.

Colin is the VP of Customer Experience at Freshly, where he directs a two-hundred-person department across five locations in the United States and beyond. He specializes in building customer service departments from the ground up with a focus on scalability, infrastructure agility, technological innovation, and gold-standard quality and efficiency.

Something you wouldn’t know from Colin’s professional biography is that he’s also a playwright and he brings that experience into his work at Freshly and this aspect left me feeling like I just had to have him back on the show.

In this episode, Colin shares how customer experience really sits at the intersection of arts and operations, the importance of both strategy and empathy for customer experience, his personal experience becoming a playwright, how his self-driven learning and curiosity have played a role in his success, the parallels between producing a play and how the corporate environment should be in order to help people understand where they fit in the corporate vision, and more!

Mentioned in this episode:

 

Transcript

People of influence know that their voice matters, and they work to make it matter more.  I’m Andrea Wenburg, and this is the Voice of Influence podcast.

Earlier this spring, I had a really good conversation with Colin Crowley of Freshly.  Colin is the VP of customer experience where he directs a two-hundred-person department across five locations in the United States and beyond.  And when we were talking about how he helped build the customer service department from the ground up and focused on scalability, infrastructure agility, you know, technological innovation, efficiency, quality, and empathy; in that conversation, I asked him about hiring.  And he brought up a really, really interesting point about how helpful it is when people bring their diverse background to the table.  It’s possible that you have heard, maybe, before or all your life that you should stay in your lane and not divert out of your realm of expertise.

But Colin is a playwright, and he brings his experience as a playwright to his job at Freshly.  And in fact, they probably complement one another, and it’s very, very interesting.  I really wanted to have a conversation with Colin about this.  And so, I invited him back on the podcast to do an interview that is really focused more on how we do integrate our diverse experience and the arts even with our experience at work.

In this conversation, Colin talks about how customer experience really sits at the intersection of arts and operations, and how important both strategy and empathy are for customer experience.  We discuss his personal experience becoming a playwright, and how he really didn’t take the normal track that you most people would take through education and whatnot.  He didn’t take that normal track as a playwright or in the corporate world, but how his self-driven learning and his curiosity has really fueled his success.

And in our conversation, he also connects this idea of producing a play and all the players involved and creating that analogy to how it could and should be in a corporate environment with a team, with customer experience, or with a company who needs to have a real clear purpose and vision and be able to help others understand how they fit into that vision.

I am confident that you are going to really enjoy this conversation with Colin Crowley.

Andrea:  Colin Crowley, it is great to have you back on the Voice of Influence podcast.

Colin Crowley:  Thank you.  It’s great to be back.

Andrea:  So, the last time you were here, we were talking about your role with Freshly.  And in that conversation, [there was] the question of how do you hire people who are going to be able to really succeed in understanding the voice of the customer and understanding the team dynamics that are at play and all that.  And you brought up something about bringing in other experiences that you’ve had within your life…  That when people have a broad set of experiences, that they’re able to contribute quite a bit.

And so, after our conversation, I thought, “We’ve got to talk again,” because you have had a broad set of experiences, and you have an education and your experience as a playwright.  And I think that that could be really illuminating for our audience.  So, Colin, would you just tell us how does a guy who’s running the customer experience team at Freshly, how is he also a playwright?

Colin Crowley:  Yes, that’s a good question.  Although I think the more and more you think of it, the more and more it actually melds together and makes sense, I guess you could say.  I’ve been writing for about… probably going on fifteenish years now in a more serious capacity.  I was always kind of writing even prior to that, but not something that was necessarily, you know, fit for anyone’s eyes, shall we say.  So, it’s been about fifteen years in a serious capacity; definitely long before I entered the customer service world or really entered even the workforce in a specially enthusiastic manner where I was more career-driven and what have you.

I think, there’s a bit of a natural affinity between the arts and customer service because customer service itself – when it comes to relationships with people – really is an art as opposed to a science.  Obviously, you can use science to put behind it in terms of helping you be strategic in managing the relationships with customers and just being able to manage people on the phones or in email or in chat or what have you.  But at its core, the ability to be able to detect how someone else is feeling, and be able to respond to that, and help to give them what they need aside from what policies and procedures may be, really fits more in the area of the arts.

You could really say customer service sits at the intersection of the arts and operations in a kind of really interesting way.  Because in order to have a good customer support organization, you really have to have your eyes on both of those two things.  You have to make sure that your agents are empathizing and appropriately understanding customers, and really understanding them almost on an ethereal plane as opposed to a very, you know, a policy-based one.  And at the same time, you also have to be careful about certain operational realities in terms of how much money are you giving away and how much money are you spending on people versus technology, versus this, versus that.

So, there’s also a lot of just pure operational strategy that goes into play, and organizations tend to fail if they don’t get that balance right.  Or either they focus too much on the efficiency factor at the expense of empathy; or they focus more on empathy, but they don’t have enough strategy to make their operation successful.  So, it’s really at that intersection where you get good customer support.

I guess for me, I found the customer support space surprisingly natural when I entered into it, because I didn’t really have any direct experience in customer support management when I entered the space.  And I entered it with kind of cold turkey for all practical purposes, but it ended up being a natural affinity because there’s that balance that I understood from my experience writing plays.

I think plays are especially interesting in the world of theater generally because in the world of theater, you have that same sort of balance between art and operations, and for playwrights, especially.   So, an example of this would be, you know, in screenwriting, for instance, or novel writing.  You tend to have a different circumstance where, in screenwriting, there don’t tend to be realistic boundaries to the stories you can create because Hollywood makes so much money.

So, unless you’re specifically writing for a very small film, which most people aren’t doing – rather, they’re writing for the big game – then you can have as many locations or as many characters or as many what have you as you want because the idea is that if the film does well, it’s going to grow us a lot of money and no one really cares.  So, there’s not much operational restriction on what you write, and you can let your imagination go wild.

And in theater, it’s very different because theaters – unless they’re big commercial theaters – theaters don’t tend to have a lot of money, and they have to be very circumspect about how they spend money.  So, if you want to get your play produced by a local, regional, etc. theater, then you have to be mindful of how many characters you have, and how many scenes you have, and how many locations you have, and things of that nature because it all factors into how much money the theater is going to have to spend producing your show.  And the more money they have to spend producing it, the less likely any theater is going to take it up.  So, you have to write with that in mind, with that practicality in mind.

And with novel writing, it’s, of course, very different because there’s a larger audience for novel writing, and you’re writing more in isolation than you are in theater, which is a very collaborational process where you’re writing something which you know is going to be taken by a director or producer, etc., and then by actors and they’re going to interpret in their own way.  At the end of the day, it’s going to be a process where a bunch of different people work together to get something to happen.

And it’s not all on you, even though you may have had the initial idea, which is also very much how the world of customer support works.  And the world, in general, works where you have to work with different people who have defined boundaries and priorities, and you have to make sure to account for those as you’re going about your business.  For reasons like that, there’s actually a lot of interesting affinity between theater specifically and the customer support space.

Andrea:  Indeed, so much.  I think that describing it as the intersection between arts and operations and being able to apply that too… or at least help us to see how that is the same as theatre and writing for theater,  I think that’s a really interesting connection that you’ve made.  And I can see how being really good at one and being really good at the other and then how that sort of continues to probably sharpen you as you continue to move forward in both genres.

Colin Crowley:  Yeah, I would definitely say that’s true.   I mean, it really, really comes down to, I think you could say, priority because when you’re in a situation where you know you have to balance two concepts that are at least seemingly at variance…  Because most people when they think of, you know, operations, it’s usually at perhaps at the expense of empathy.  Although that’s not always the case, but usually that’s kind of how it stereotypes.

But when you really appreciate the balance and you know that in order to do your job well, you have to get the balance right… it really does make you go through the process of thinking what are the key things that you value when it comes to empathy that are like no-go areas, that are principles by which you will deal with your customers.  And you won’t give those up, even operationally if it may be convenient to do so under certain circumstances.

And similarly, what are those key things in operations that you just can’t let fall by the wayside, knowing that – either in the present or in the future – it’s going to end up crippling your ability to simply deliver the service to the customers or be able to respond quickly enough to their requests, even if the agents you have are really trained in empathy and understanding.

So, it definitely makes you – both in the theater world, yes, and also in customer support – think about what you value and what are the no-go areas in each pillar.  And that’s definitely an important step to getting that balance right, and not flip-flopping back and forth too much or sacrificing what you perhaps should not be sacrificing.

Andrea:  Okay, so one of the things that we do is we help teams and individuals on teams really find their own voice.  I’m curious about your experience in finding your own voice both as a playwright and then how that is also impacted your other work.

Colin Crowley:  Yeah, I think one interesting thing about my experience – both as a playwright and as a customer support leader – is that in both cases, I came into the fields not through traditional routes, I think it’s fair to say.  So, in terms of playwriting, that means, you know, I didn’t officially study theater in college or study drama or go through the process of getting a MFA or anything, but rather, I just loved theater.  And I more naturally gravitated towards playwriting, and I started to write myself, and I started to read other people’s plays.

And of course, in life, a lot of what you learn is what you absorb through reading, even just your understanding of the English language.  So, there’s a lot of reading, and a lot of absorbing, and a lot of trial and error because you try to write this or you try to write that and it doesn’t quite work.  But I didn’t have any avenues that you would typically associate with people who’d come up through more established channels, through the educational system, or what have you.  And because I’m outside of New York City, and I have a family – so, you know, running here and there – and the job and everything, I’m also not able to be very active participant in theatrical groups, which is a typical avenue that a lot of people use to get their works produced.

So, I came into the theater space from a back door.  And the same thing is really true for customer support as well because I didn’t study customer support or have a prior experience before really entering the space a little over ten years ago.  And ironically, or perhaps more coincidentally, I ended up being chosen to start at a company as a customer ombudsman – which was what the title was – which basically meant that I would examine the customer support operations and compare them to industry best practices and recommend changes.

And really, one of the main reasons I got that job was because the CEO of the company liked my playwriting background and the fact that I had been involved in helping to produce one of my first work is – a musical.  And he liked that experience in operations and also liked that balance with the arts, presuming that would mean I would understand empathy and so forth.  So, I kind of entered customer support partially because of the playwriting experience, and went through a similar experience of self-education from there going forward.

So, those two experiences of entering those spaces from backdoors, I think, had been very impactful.  It’s definitely helped me to establish my own voice because I developed it with a lot of self-education and observation as opposed to any sort of training, and that definitely helps you to identify things that matter to you or that you notice that may not be the part of someone else’s curriculum.  And I’m sure that manifests itself in all sorts of different ways.  I think in customer support, one of the ways that manifests itself is because of my playwriting experience, which inherently involves the arts and creativity.  So, that fuels a lot of ideas I have.

So, I find the customer support space to be a very creative one when it comes to understanding, like; how do you structure your organization to best meet the needs of the customers and what sort of teams do you have, what responsibilities do they have, areas of concentration, and how do you route customers appropriately so they get the best help.  And all that stuff to me is really like one gigantic, creative exercise, almost like in theater where you’re kind of arranging people on a stage and you’re trying to make sure that the audience gets a certain impression of people.  And you change that by what they say, and where they go, and how they act.  So that’s influenced my creativity in customer support operations, definitely.

Andrea:  You mentioned that your learning was self-driven versus really being imposed on you by a program, or what have you, somebody else creating the track for you.  You created your own learning track.  Have you always been self-driven in that way?  Do you learn better that way?  What kind of motivated you as you were getting going with both of these things to really learn everything that you needed to learn and make sure that you were getting what you needed?

Colin Crowley:  Yeah.  I mean, I am someone who does prefer self-learning, and it does work very well for me because I just inherently am curious about things.  And prior to the customer support world, I was involved in a think tank space because I actually studied, at first, history and political science, and then national security studies.  So, my initial vision was that I was going to enter, like, the think tank world and so forth.  And I did briefly before moving from Washington, D.C. up to the New England area.

So, I’ve always enjoyed researching, and understanding, and being able to pick out the salient points from a huge morass of information.  So that is something which I’ve always heavily enjoyed.  I think that’s one of the reasons why self-learning tends to work very well for me, and that, I would say, in combination with experience.  So, that’s how I learned playwriting, and that’s how I learned customer support operations essentially, from starting off from the point of self-research and then complementing that with experience when the time comes.

And also a great resource too, I have to say, is just people.  Not necessarily in a control curriculum setting, but just engaging with people and talking with people and understanding people and being able to hear their different challenges and their different triumphs.  And that also has been very, very significant, but mainly as something which has tempered the knowledge that I’ve gained from my self-learning and from my own experience.

Andrea:  How many plays have you written, plays and everything?

Colin Crowley:  Let me see.  I have written about twelve straight plays.  And straight plays means it’s not a musical – so it’s just a play, play, so to speak.  And I’ve written… let’s see, three musicals, and one point, I did, like, a one-act rock opera with someone.  I dabbled a little bit in screenwriting, but not as much.  So, I only have like one screenplay that’s fit for public company, but I have had some others resting someplace on my computer.  But yeah, the core of what I do is really in the straight play area.  So, I have twelve plays as it stands now, which I’ve composed over the course of the past really about ten years, I would say, for those.

Andrea:  So, where do you find time, do you feel like, to do this other work, to write plays?

Colin Crowley:  Honestly, for me, I’m able to write in smaller, short spurts, which I guess works well because that’s usually all I have.  So, I’m definitely not someone who could sit down at a desk and write all day long, like some people do.  I think it would bore me, and I think I would lack inspiration if I had to do that.  So, I write in short spurts, and my short spurts typically come from my commute into the office because Freshly, where I work, is headquartered in New York City, and I live in southwest Connecticut.  So, I have about seventy-five-minute train ride into and out of the city every day so that ends up being my time to be able to sit down and do some writing.  And then every now and then, I’ll grab some time at night after the kids are put to bed and things like that.

Andrea:  What a great way to use your commute.

Colin Crowley:  I know.  It ends up being very, very productive.  But yeah, it’s good for chill time, basically.

Andrea:  When you’re writing a play, do you already know the ending?  Do you sketch out the whole picture before you begin, or do you start at the beginning or in the middle someplace and just start writing and let it take shape from a more organic kind of like, “I think this would be fun,” or “This might be interesting.”  How does that work for you?

Colin Crowley:  Yeah, I definitely know the ending.  I think that’s probably true of most playwrights, mainly because plays are shorter than something like a novel as an example where I could understand that method working.  But in the course of a play, it’s a shorter work, and you really need to know where you’re going in order to get there because you don’t have a lot of time to meander.  And you have to be more strategic about getting to the point because there’s a very finite time limit on it.  So for that reason, I think it’s very difficult to write a play and not know the ending.

So, I’ve always written plays knowing what the ending is, although I’m not necessarily someone…  It can vary, but I’m not necessarily someone who sketches out scene by scene by scene ahead of time, which some people do.  And sometimes I do that, sometimes I don’t, depending on how I feel about the subject matter.  But one thing that is common is, yes, I pretty much have an idea how it begins, and I would always know how it ends.  And then I would have some ideas of how I’m going to get there just to keep the directional focus on it.

Andrea:  So with your political science and national security studies background, I was looking through your plays.  It looks like there’s a lot of political kind of subject matter.  What would you say your plays are about?

Colin Crowley:  They’re really about a lot of different things.  I would say that I don’t really have a lot of really any real political plays, but I do use history a lot.

Andrea:  Okay, history.  There you go.

Colin Crowley:  But I’m actually not the biggest fan of political plays.  But I use history as a prism for a lot of my plays, and I’ve always loved history.  So, that probably informs, I’d say, at least half of my work and even the other half will have in it…  Even if not in historical incident or event, it may take place in a different historical time period, so some history is brought in that way.  But I try to be eclectic in what I write so I’m not repeating the same story over and over again.  And I try very consciously not to repeat the same story.

So, typically, I’ve even kind of set myself some goals where, “Oh, I need to write this type of play,” or “I need to write that type of play,” just to make sure I’m not repeating things.  So, I’ve written tragedies.  I’ve written a pure farce.  I’ve written a comedy-drama/tragic comedy.  I’ve written musicals.  I’ve written a satirical play.  So, I always try to keep it different, and again very mindfully so, so I’m not writing the same sort of thing.

Andrea:  And why is that so important to you?

Colin Crowley:  Well, I think that it’s important to challenge myself because I don’t want to get into a rut where I am writing the same thing over and over again, where that just inherently has a certain lack of creativity.  Because it’s almost like you’re rehashing old ideas or it’s almost like you take a big puzzle, and you just rearrange the pieces, I guess is one way to describe it, as opposed to building a new puzzle.  And it’s just not as rewarding for me personally doing that.  So, I don’t feel as much of a sense of accomplishment or joy writing a play if I’m conscious that, “Mhmm, I’ve kind of written this before.”  Although, the single exception may be if I’m writing it again and the prior play, I’m very aware has a lot of faults, and I think I need to try it again.  So, in that context, I would say it’s acceptable.  But other than that, it just isn’t as rewarding or fulfilling to rehash the same types of stuff and have the same types of characters.

Andrea:  Well, between that and your desire for self-driven learning and your ability to excel in that, I can see how you really enjoy exploring things that are new and mastering something new.

Colin Crowley:  That’s true, yeah.  And I think that’s another connection with the customer support space too because we’re definitely living in a very fast-changing world, especially with technology.  And that’s been a key theme, like at Freshly that we focus on in customer support is trying to stay ahead of the technology curve, which can be kind of tricky to do because it curves so quickly.  But definitely, always being ahead and thinking what’s next and focusing on opening up new frontiers is a common theme in both – the playwriting aspect for me, but also in the customer support aspect.  And really, I trying to push boundaries where you can to keep things fresh.

Andrea:  On your website, you described theatre as being sort of democratic.  And I thought this was really interesting, and I want to just quote from what you said on your website; “Not everyone can be in a movie, even a small budget movie, but anyone can audition for a local play and be on the stage.”  What does this mean to you and to the world for a theater?

Colin Crowley:  Yeah, I mean, I think it’s definitely an interesting truism and it’s interesting because big commercial theaters, unfortunately, have almost frozen out a lot of theatergoers, because it’s just so expensive to see a show now.  So that’s really unfortunate that a lot of people can’t have the experience of those big theaters.  But really, where a lot of the rising energy in theater is in our local theaters and community theaters, and there’s a lot that goes on in those local and regional theaters that’s really interesting and really gives a lot of opportunities for people to participate in it.

And that’s what I find sort of really uniquely attractive about theatre.  I guess it comes back to the collaboration aspect I mentioned before – about how like in the business world and theater, you have people who have to work together.  And it’s also different from screenwriting in that theater people have very defined roles.  So, the playwright controls the word and you can’t change a single comma, and the director controls this, and the actors control that.  And it’s much more defined than it is in screenwriting whereas a writer, you sell your script so you lose all your rights to it, and you really don’t have any say on anything.  But in theater roles are very defined and that’s more like what it is in the business world, so to speak.

So that’s kind of another interesting analogy there.  But theater is so collaborative where, you know, even though people stereotype it as “acting on the stage”, the fact is there’s so many talents that are needed in theater.  And you really appreciate that when you’re involved in theatrical experiences, when you think of all the people you need for set design – so, you’re bringing in carpentry, for instance – and then you have people with lighting design, and you have sound design, and you have the stage manager.  And you have so many different people with so many different skill sets working on one show that it really provides us so much opportunities for so many different people of different skills.

And I think sometimes people forget that when, again, they just focus on the actors on the stage or the person who’s writing the words.  But when you look at how collaborational it is, and the fact that it’s so much collaboration across people with those different skill sets, it’s almost an interesting microcosm of the universe.  But bottom line, it provides so many opportunities for people to get together and work on a project on a very local level.  And I find that really interesting about theatre, and hopefully, something that we’ll see more about in theater.  But it is a challenge, unfortunately, for theaters to get enough community participation.  And hopefully, that’s something that won’t wane over time.

Andrea:  What I love about that is in what I have seen in theater is that whoever’s working on the show, people from the lighting to stage crew to the person who is the lead of the play, they all seem to have the same amount of ownership that they take in the whole production.  Like, they feel so much a part of it and so proud of their production in the end, and that is inspiring to me.  And they all have to also respect one another.  You, as the playwright, have to respect the fact that the person who’s doing the lighting could ruin everything.  And you know, the way that everything plays together like that is fascinating to me, and then to think of a company and a team like this, that it doesn’t matter what role you play.  It’s going to be intricate and important, and we all have to respect each one, and we’ve all taken ownership in the end product.  I think that’s really inspiring.

Colin Crowley:  Yeah, I think that that’s a great point.  And certainly another great analogy to the business world, and it makes me think of how, like, even when I’m writing something,

I have to be conscious of how it works in the real world as opposed to how it looks on the page.  So, like, if you’re writing a speech for a character to recite, as an example, there’s a difference between what looks good on the page, and what reads well, and what sounds well.  Because when it comes to the speech being spoken, you have to pay attention to things like, you know, “Are the words easy for the actor to say,” and “When spoken, do the words have the right cadence that allows the actor to do something with it,” and things that don’t come across if you’re on a page.

And if you really want a successful experience in a show, you have to be willing to change things based on feedback from the actors.  So the actors say, “You know, it’s kind of hard for me to get this out or say this with this phrasing,” or “The phrasing seems awkward,” because again, whole different world from on the page and on the stage.  Then it’s part of the process working with the actor to say, “Okay, look, so let’s change that so it works for you.”  And it really speaks to how there’s collaboration even on very, very small things like that.

And definitely, also, to your point how it’s also a great analogy because everyone really does have to work together to have a common passion.  Because if you have, like, one actor who has sort of low energy and clearly isn’t engaged, then you see the ripple effects that that has on other people because they all depend on each other for that common energy, especially when you’re actually on the stage doing the show.

And that’s another great analogy to the business world with teams where you really need people not only respecting each other, but also all in and invested and obviously invested, I would say.  Otherwise, you can have an energy gap that impacts everyone.

Andrea:  So, it seems like it would be pretty important that people who are in leadership are able to kind of help define what the production really is.  “What is the product, not just the product of the company, but what is the overarching kind of thing that we are producing for the world?  What’s the difference that we make here,” and that sort of thing so that everybody can get a sense of how they play into the big picture and can be a part of it like that.

Colin Crowley:  Yeah.  And in that regard, I would say that when you look at the role of the director in a theatrical production, that’s really a great analogy in the business world to a good manager.  Because, you know, they have their eyes on everything.  So, they have their eyes on the actors and what the actors say, what the set looks like, and the lighting, and the sound.  And whereas, they’re not the individual master of anything.  They’re the ones who have to put everything together into some sort of coherent whole and work with everyone.

And when you look at how directors work with actors, at least the good directors…  The bad ones tell actors what to do, which is like how a bad manager just tells someone what they’re doing wrong or tells them how they should do something.  Whereas you notice good directors go through almost a process of extended self-discovery with actors.  So, when an actor is trying to understand a role, they tend to help them understand the role through questions as opposed to dictating to them.  So they’ll ask questions about a character’s motivation or how a character’s feeling at a certain time, or even give them questions outside of the purview of the play.  “So does this character have relatives someplace,” or what have you.

So, it’s just kind of an interesting process and very much like what it takes to be a good manager, where you have to be able to work with people, and that you get the best out of people through questioning them and encouraging them to understand their place in the team.  And through that, you bring out the best that they can be, all while having to keep your eyes in all these other areas to make sure that the lighting is fine, the sound is good, and the set looks great, knowing that if one of those pieces fails, that it can impact the entire picture.  And having to care about all those other things – the lighting, the sound, etc. – by working, again, with independent people who are the masters in their respective space and collaborating on what a common vision looks like.

Andrea:  And with acting, there’s so much of a release of one’s, like, just humanity that for a director to come on board and to tell someone how to be or what to do exactly and be exacting in that, it makes it very difficult for that actor to be able to really release the humanity and then truly connect with the audience.  And so, again, just the idea that anybody that’s working on a team is human.  And when we are able to release kind of the humanity of ourselves and be able to connect in a human way within the structure – like you were talking about – of operations, then it feels like a release.  It feels beautiful.  It feels like art like you were talking about at the beginning.

Colin Crowley:  Yes, definitely that’s very true.  And I would say definitely analogous to the kind of the high you get as a customer support person when you really fulfill, I guess you could say, the pinnacle of your calling, which is when you’re helping someone in need – especially someone who’s in a really tough spot – and how grateful they are for your assistance.  And you really feel some purpose in what you do, and it helps you to see what your place is and why you’re there to help people, and bringing out those moments and encouraging them are definitely key.

Andrea:  Is that kind of what drives you in your role with Freshly?

Colin Crowley:  Yeah.  I’d say what’s great about Freshly is… you know, you can work for other companies where you have a useful product that people find a degree of satisfaction in, like shoes or something.  But it’s really kind of a different plane when you have product – meals, readymade meals – that you know is so directly impactful to someone else’s life.  And when you hear stories from customers about how much they depend on our meals to fit their lifestyle, to help them eat more healthy, or you know, someone’s sending meals to their elderly parents because they can’t cook for themselves.  So, it just really brings it home when you’re dealing with a product that’s very, very personal to people’s very livelihood.

And that just naturally fuels a drive in customer support when you hear these cases of customers who really need help.  [It] really helps to kind of center you as to what your purpose is in the organization in the way that I find is more profound than other companies I’ve worked at, where it’s a little bit harder to define where that purpose is and to be able to frame it as impactfully as we can in our specific circumstances.

And of course, it’s never more true than in this current time now when we’re dealing with COVID-19, and so many people are hunkering down and need meals delivered to their door.  So that’s just going to double down for us even more.

Andrea:  When you are writing plays, do you have any kind of message?  Do you feel like that you’re trying to accomplish some sort of transformation that you desire for the audience?  Or what motivates you in actually writing aside from what we already know – which is just exploring the new and discovering and you know, you’re self-learning and all that?

Colin Crowley:  It kind of depends on the nature of the play.  So, there are some plays I’ve written that very consciously were written just to be fun.  So, like, I’ve written a farce that’s been pretty successful.  So, some plays, there’s no intended grave meaning behind them, which in of itself is a good thing because I think that there’s a lot of seriousness and a lot of problems in the world, so sometimes it’s fine to take a break.

But for other plays, most typically, I’m motivated to explore a certain theme that rings true to me.  And that’s typically what inspires me; either that or great characters.  So, it’s usually one of those two things where I like to use plays to explore a certain theme.  And not necessarily even reach a conclusion about it but just explore it.  Or I like to use plays as a way to do a character study, and I guess, through that kind of mine certain commonalities in the human experience.

One example is a play I recently had done out in the Los Angeles area late last year.  It uses a historical framing device, and it’s about Warren G. Harding, who ultimately became one of our presidents, of course, and his nomination process.  But the play, even though it has that historical backdrop, etc., it’s really about fate.  And it’s really about the open question as to whether there is such a thing as fate.  And if so, what is that?  Is that God?  Is that something else, and into what extent does fate control our lives?  Or is what we deem faithful just a result of our own human flaws when we kind of self-limit ourselves by our inadequacies?

So, that’s an example of a play that I’ve more consciously wrote because I was interested in that idea as channeled through this story, and the play is geared towards exploring that issue.

Another play I’ve had some success with about the author Dorothy Parker, and the noted wit.  I was inspired to write just because I was intrigued by this balance she had in her life between this public persona where she was associated with a very witty literary set of people in 1920s New York, where everything was fun and games, and there wasn’t much seriousness about it.  And then at home, she had issues in her first marriage with her husband who had come back from the First World War with what we now know as PTSD and was involved in drugs, and alcohol, and so forth.  And just that juxtaposition of this public persona which was artificially jovial when contrasted with what was going on in her home life and how she managed that.  So that was more of like a character study example that inspired me to write that particular play.

Andrea:  Okay, so I know that you’re a whole being.  You’re a whole person.  You have a family with children, and you work at a company, and then you’re a playwright.  And I’m curious, to kind of help us wrap this whole conversation up, if you were to get to the end of your life and look back and just be really pleased with how things worked out or what happened or what you accomplished, what do you think you will have accomplished by then?

Colin Crowley:  Oh, that’s a good question.  Well, I think, interestingly, I would look at it in regards to those pillars that you mentioned because I kind of compartmentalize my life into those pillars pretty neatly.  When it comes to work, so wanting to do well in my career, and be able to make a difference for people through that.  And then you have the artistic pillar with wanting to do well in my plays.  And then you have the family pillar about wanting to be a good father.

If I would look back on my life, I would say that my ideal situation would be first and foremost to have been a great father and raise great children who are able to contribute to their families and the world in the most productive way possible.  So, just knowing that I gave them all the tools that they needed.  And I would like to feel, in the playwriting world, that…  Success can be transitory in theater, but at least I’d like to be able to feel that I’d got out everything I wanted to say for all practical purposes and that there is at least some degree of exposure to that.  But just getting everything out would make me feel fulfilled.

And in the career space, I would say I would like to be able to know that I had created organizations that had still lasted, like the customer support organization at Freshly.  And importantly, on the people aspect, know that I provided a lot of opportunities to people who came up through that organization to go and do other great things with their lives.

Andrea:  Colin, thank you so much for this really fascinating conversation.  It’s been rich, and really fun.

Colin Crowley:  Oh, thank you.  Yes, it’s been a great pleasure!

Andrea:  And Colin if anybody’s interested in seeing your plays or using your play at their theater or connecting with you in some way, would you like to share anything about yourself for that?

Colin Crowley:  Yeah.  I’m afraid I don’t have anything coming up right now because, unfortunately, COVID-19 has kind of shut down a lot of the theater world for now.  But yeah, I have a website, which is colinspeercrowley.com. So, you can go there, and I have a list of my plays and contact information as well.  So yeah, if anyone would like to get in touch to ask questions about my plays or anything else, then they’re more than welcome to do so.

Andrea:  Awesome!  All right, thanks, Colin.  Thanks for being a “Voice of Influence” for our listeners.

Colin Crowley:  My pleasure. Thank you!

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Key Differences Between Healthy and Unhealthy Influence

Episode 153

Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

Today we’re extracting the key takeaways from the series we’ve done this summer about power dynamics and the abuse of power.

We started this series because we recognized how important it was to directly address the unhealthy imbalance of power and unhealthy use of power.

The first step is to be able to clearly recognize the abuse of power and then to stand up in the face of the abuse of power. In this episode, we’re covering why all of this matters, how to know when we should step in, how to step in without causing additional pain, and so much more.

 

Mentioned in this episode:

 

 

Find our Lifeline resources and information about the course here.

Transcript

Hey there!  It’s Andrea, and welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.  Today, Rosanne and I are back.

Andrea:  Rosanne, you want to say hi?

Rosanne Moore:  Hi, everybody!  Good to be with you again today!

Andrea:  And today, we’re going to talk about the podcast series that we’ve done this summer, about power dynamics and the abuse of power, really.  You know, I think when we started talking about how important it was to look at this and to think about how people wanting influence and things, how it can turn into something that’s not healthy, we really wanted to make sure that we started to more directly address that unhealthy imbalance of power and unhealthy use of power.

So, we put together this series this summer in order to be able to, first, help us all recognize the abuse of power more clearly because it’s so easy to kind of go through life and not actually realize what’s going on when somebody is being taken advantage of or there are unhealthy dynamics within a group.

So, just number one, being able to recognize the abuse of power.  Number two, we really wanted to focus also the importance of standing up in the face of the abuse of power.  So, why does it matter?  When should we step in and how should we step in?  We don’t want to cause additional pain or make things worse for somebody or stir the pot when it doesn’t need to be stirred kind of thing.  So, how do we know when to really engage with it and when not to?  And then finally, number three, to be savvy, to know what to do – how to decide what to do about it.

So, Rosanne, when we were pulling together this episode, we decided to kind of give a summary of the podcast episodes that we had this summer.  First of all, would you take us through the series and just kind of give us an overarching view of what we covered?

Rosanne Moore:  Sure.  Well, in Episode 143, we talked about “Deceptive Myths About the Abuse of Power”.  There were many things we covered in that specific myth, but one of the main things we covered was that coercive control is the core issue of abuse in abuse of any kind.  That’s really the bottom-line issue is coercive control.  When we talked about “Deceptive Myths About Abuse of Power”, the second part – which was in Episode 145 – one of the things that we drew out of that is that abusive people are typically very likable.  And because they’re likable and because they have a good sense of what to offer, they are very effective at manipulating others.

So, it’s really important for us to have the humility to recognize that everybody, given the right set of circumstances, can be vulnerable to deception.  Then in 144, we talked with Dr. Lucretia Berry about racism and the work that she does in anti-racism education.  And I really appreciated that one of the things that she said is that when we’re looking at racist systems, it’s not an accusation.  It’s not about accusing, but it’s recognizing that the systems that we’re all part of have degrees of unhealthy components.  And so it’s just really important that we’re willing to play our part in dismantling the things that are not good and that we are proactive in being educated about what is not healthy so that we can equip ourselves and our children to do better.

Andrea:  That was really good, yeah.

Rosanne Moore:  It was.

Andrea:  And I appreciate that point that you’re bringing up about not being accusatory because I think that was an incredibly valuable piece of what she brought to that conversation was it’s not just about making people feel bad.  It’s about recognizing…  What system is completely healthy?

Rosanne Moore:  Right.  One of the things she talked about was it’s not saying everybody’s, you know, a horrible white supremacist.  It’s that all of us have ways we’ve been brought up in systems that contribute to viewpoints that aren’t necessarily true.  And so being willing to each of us recognize what have I been taught to believe that may not be an accurate perception doesn’t mean I view people disrespectfully….

Andrea:  Or that I am a bad person in general.

Rosanne Moore:  Right, right.  It may just mean that I have a wrong perception of what the reality of somebody else’s experience is.  And so, having the humility to be willing to learn about that is really important.

Andrea:  Mhm, and then onto 146.

Rosanne Moore:   Yes.  So, 146 was Naghmeh Panahi.  She talked about “Finding Her True Voice After Domestic Violence”. And a couple things that stood out from her episode, I think, were that it’s so typical – not just in domestic violence situations, although it’s certainly is common there – but in general, society tends to blame victims of abusive situations.  The burden is put on the victim.  And so, it’s really vital for us not to remain silent, but to speak out and act on the behalf of the oppressed instead of adding to the burden they’re already under and just saying, “Well, they should just be able to get themselves out of it.”  Recognizing that there are so many hurdles and that trauma plays a role in the burden that they’re dealing with.  And so, there’s a real need for people to be proactive in helping those who are being oppressed for whatever reason.

Andrea:  Yeah.  I know that people really loved hearing her story because it was such national and international news.

Rosanne Moore:  Sure.

Andrea:  Her husband having been imprisoned in Iran for his faith, and she spent three years trying to get him freed from that situation.  But even in the midst of that, she was experiencing abuse from him because they’d be on the phone, and he would say horrible things to her and try to control her and try to diminish her in her thoughts about who she is and that sort of thing.  There was so much to just the story itself that I really hope that, as a listener, you’ll go back and listen to that if you haven’t heard it yet.  That story is really compelling.  But then she made so many really good points just like you were saying, Rosanne.

Rosanne Moore:  Yes.  And she talked too about some of her colleagues and the twists and turns that their stories took.  And one of the comments that she made… because she deals a lot not only with domestic violence but with the systems that women internationally find themselves in that are oppressive, religious persecution, and the systems’ customs, social customs in other countries that are very oppressive.  One of the things that she brought out was that all of that is diminishing, but what’s hardest is when it is an intimate partner, it’s the person that you expect to love and care for you.  And everybody else thinks everything’s fine, and you’re living in this private hell that others don’t see.

Andrea:  Which was just so exemplified and like, magnified by her situation where she was in the public eye and was fighting for her husband.  And so to anybody that was an onlooker, you would just think that things were great with their marriage.

Rosanne Moore:  Right.

Andrea:  But that just wasn’t the case.  I remember one of the things that she said was just how she so wanted to be a good wife and she was trying to figure out how.  “How can I be a good wife?  I’m obviously not doing it right because he’s still mad at me.  I’m doing all the things for him, but he’s still mad at me.  He still treats me poorly,” and that sort of thing.  So, that was really, really compelling too.  And then in Episode 147…

Rosanne Moore:  Right.  We had Dr. Debra Wingfield talking about “Why We Need to Understand Trauma and Coercive Control”.  And she really brought a lot to the table in terms of the long-term effects of trauma.  We can often think that, “Okay, if somebody’s had a bad experience, but they’re out of it now, they should just be able to be fine and go on with their life.”  Or you know, “The court system will handle things,” and there’s not the recognition that often the family court system has a lack of appropriate training so that they’re functioning under all these social myths that general society is as well.

But because of the power that they wield, they’re actually codifying injustice instead of bringing justice, and that the impact of that is lifelong for women and children in particular.  That’s where the failure tends to fall most heavily is on the women and children in the court system.  And so, that was really important too, of realizing it’s the injustice… failing to bring justice in a situation like that has much larger social ramifications, and they’re long-term.

Andrea:  Mhm.  Yeah.  Gosh, you know, one of the things that came to my mind when you were sharing that, Rosanne, was just how common it is for people to… you know, we want to believe that the people who are in these positions of power are going to take care of us.   Like, “Well, it got to the courts, so I can relax because they know what they’re doing and they understand my situation,” or “They understand my friend’s situation,” or whatever it might be.  Or going to a pastor – we find that in the next episode that we’ll talk about here – but even going to a pastor or even some counselors and thinking, “They should know exactly how to help me,” or a doctor, you know.  So many different kinds of people who we go to for help, but we don’t recognize their limitations.  And sometimes they don’t recognize their limitations.

Rosanne Moore:  That’s when they’re most dangerous…

Andrea:  Right.  It’s so sad.

Rosanne Moore:  …is when they don’t recognize their limitations.

Andrea:  Right.  But Debra is doing some education and wants to do more education of the court system itself.  So, if the people involved in the court system could have a better understanding of trauma and those dynamics of coercive control, maybe then they would have what they needed to make those, you know, decisions that they need to make.

Rosanne Moore:  Right.  And another thing that Debra brought out too that she mentioned in her episode that I thought was really important – because we are looking at various systems – is that healthy parenting involves allowing a child to experience natural consequences of decisions.  It’s not about manipulating, controlling, owning the child.  You know, so I think a lot of times, wrong views of influence or unhealthy control can get started very early in our families of origin.

I don’t know about you, Andrea, but I know when I’m tired and I’m stressed, I don’t want to take the time with my kids to always engage in healthy ways.  Sometimes I’m just like… I can use shame or I can use my own frustration to pressure them to do what I want instead of training them or engaging them in healthy ways.  And that’s something that I’ve had to go back and apologize to them many times for, of allowing my frustration with a situation to cause me to lean on them instead of teaching them, kind of discipling them, if you will, mentoring them in a healthy way.

Andrea:  Oh my goodness.  I mean, when I finished this interview – like the day that I actually recorded the interview with her – I ended up… this was the first time that I gathered with just a few friends after COVID started and everything, and we gathered in my friend’s backyard.  And we’re talking and I was just feeling the weight of it and how big of a deal coercive control and understanding what coercive control is and the difference between that and what you just described – which was the natural consequences – how big of a deal that was.  I just felt the weight of it so hard and I was just telling my friends, I was like, “You guys, we all have to have a better idea of what coercive control is.”  And just like you said, it’s so easy with kids.  I mean, you know, you grow up with, “Children should be seen and not heard.”  That’s changed a lot over the years, but we’ve been kind of like, “The child should go do what I tell them to do right now without asking.”  I heard that a lot from parents who were parenting and feeling like they should be making their child obey without delay.

Rosanne Moore:  You know, I was thinking about that today, the whole idea of teaching children to unquestioningly obey instead of relationally obey.  It’s a very different paradigm.  If you treat the child as an adversary and control as a sum-zero game, then there’s always a winner or loser and you’re not connecting with your child.  And it’s dangerous too because it doesn’t teach them how to evaluate what healthy power looks like, what healthy authority looks like.  And so it can actually put them in dangerous situations if they’re used to unquestioning obedience.

Andrea:  I think that’s a perfect segue into 148.

Rosanne Moore:   Yes, because in 148, we had Pastor Jimmy Hinton on here talking about “How to Spot a Child Abuser Hiding in Plain Sight”.  And he had the heartbreaking experience of discovering that his own father was a pedophile who had many, many victims, including members of his own family.  And so, one of the things that Jimmy emphasized was that when allegations of abuse are brought forward, it is not our job to investigate.  It is our job to take those allegations and report them immediately to trained authorities who have been taught how to carry out an investigation appropriately. 

I think that too often it’s easy to think of, “Well, the person is innocent until proven guilty.”  That’s actually a misquote – it’s presumed innocent until proven guilty – but we’re not the court of law.  There are authorities that are trained to carry out investigations like that.  And so, it was really valuable to hear Jimmy’s perspective.

Andrea:  Yeah.  Yeah, you even brought that quote up in Episode 149.  I don’t want to go to Episode 149 yet, but when you started to talk about how to support somebody, one of the main things that you said was very similar, which was, “It’s not your place to determine whether or not this person’s accusations are credible.”  And a lot of times when people come with accusations of abuse to a friend or family member, that family member thinks, “Well, I need to go check with that person and make sure, you know, ‘Was that what you meant by this?’”  And I think it similarly came up with this conversation with Jimmy that that is not our place.  And yet that’s how a lot of people feel.  A lot of people feel like they are responsible to that other person as well, especially if they have a relationship with them because they know it could tarnish their reputation.  They know that there’s a lot at stake, and yet we’re not trained to do that.

Rosanne Moore:  And part of it, too, is nobody wants to believe that they’ve been deceived, you know.

Andrea:  Oh, absolutely.

Rosanne Moore:  And so, I think that’s the other knee-jerk reaction is like, “Oh, if these allegations were true, I would know that about this person.  I would have recognized that there was a problem.”  And Jimmy’s point was this was the father that he had adored and looked up to and yet, when the allegation was made, he realized that the person coming forward, it cost them a great deal.  They had nothing to gain and everything to lose by coming forward.  And so he immediately took it to the authorities.  I think every parent should… because we all want to have our children be safe.

And one of the things that Jimmy brought out was that a lot of the things that are done that we think are keeping our children safe are actually not highly effective.  He gave some really good proactive tips about how to keep our kids safe.

Andrea:  He did.

Rosanne Moore:  So, every parent, if you didn’t listen to that episode and you have children or grandchildren, definitely check that one out.

Andrea:  Or if you teach children…

Rosanne Moore:  Right.  Work with them in any way, yeah.

Andrea:  Yeah.  You know, people get trained – teachers and whatnot – they get trained in how to handle abuse accusations or when they suspect abuse, but they don’t get trained in what Jimmy talks about, which is how to spot somebody who might be an abuser.

Rosanne Moore:  Right, how to prevent it.

Andrea:  How to see them ahead of time so that you can see that, “Oh, this person is exemplifying behaviors, that are consistent with somebody who wants to abuse a child.”

Rosanne Moore:  Right.  Yeah, because after the abuse is done, I mean, you want to handle it well, but the damage has already been done.  You want to prevent it if you can.

Andrea:  Yeah, absolutely.  And there were so many things about, again, his story, and it was a really compelling conversation as well.

Rosanne Moore:  Yeah.  So that brings us to 149, and we’ve touched on it a little bit.  We did an episode where you talked with me about “How to Support Someone in an Abusive Relationship”, what can be done if you know that somebody is struggling in an abusive relationship?  How do you help them in a way that’s truly helpful?  So, one of the things we talked about was knowing the limits of your expertise, making sure you get your own ego out of the way so that that’s not clouding your vision.  And the other big thing, I think, we talked about was that that being a good listener so that you can empower the other person instead of trying to rush in and be the hero to take their choices away.  That’s not something you want to do.  You want to empower their choices instead of make the decisions for them.

Andrea:  Yeah.  You know, Rosanne, I think this is a really good time for me to bring up Lifeline because this idea of trying to support somebody in an abusive relationship…  Lifeline – the course that you created – was really created to help people, women in particular, who are in an abusive relationship, but then to help the people that love them to know how to help them best.

And so, you talk about it here in this episode, but then you dive so deep into it in Lifeline in a way that…  I just want to say from the perspective of somebody who listened to the entire thing – because I interviewed you for the Lifeline course – from my perspective of somebody who hasn’t been in an abusive relationship but wants to be supportive to other people, I just want to say that going through all of that material is so incredibly eye-opening and heart-opening, I think, too.

And it made me so much more aware of what I could do or what I shouldn’t do to the ends that you were just describing here; like, you know, not taking over and being the hero for that person, but how to empower them to be able to make their own decisions and using even some of the course material that you created in order to do that.  I just think… Oh man, it was so good.

Rosanne Moore:  Yeah, and I created Lifeline because when I went into the court system, I just thought if I told the truth and presented evidence that I was telling the truth, that I would be believed and I would be taken care of.  And to have to deal with navigating the court system, which was a very different experience than what I had imagined…  There was not a deep devotion in the court system to uncovering the truth, or to protecting me or my children.

And so, I had to learn how to communicate and what the roles of the various people in the court system were.  I was being given all of these decisions that I had to make at a point when I was tremendously traumatized still.  And so, trying to think through those decisions and make long-term decisions – things that were going to impact things for me and my kids for long-term – while I was in the middle of all this emotional upheaval was really difficult.

So, the whole reason Lifeline was created was to take away some of that burden, to help women think through those decisions and not just be inundated with them.  Because you do, you feel like you’re drowning under this mound of paperwork.  And while I found some really good resources – and that’s part of our giveaway, is our resource list – I found some good resources that would help with dealing with the psychological aspects of leaving an abusive relationship.  I didn’t find a lot of practical decision making ones, and so that was why that course was really important for me to be able to share with others.

Andrea:  And you also have shared all of that information before on a very personal level with many women that you’ve walked through this with, and so it’s not like you just went through it and you just created it.  It’s been eight years since your divorce, and you are in a position now where you’ve walked through this situation with many people.  And so, I think that’s important for people to know.  And as you’re continuing to do advocacy work for laws that are going to be more understanding of trauma, and just bringing awareness to that piece of it…

I guess I want people to know… I want you to know, listener, that if you or someone you know has experienced… maybe you’re in an unhealthy relationship and you’re wondering whether or not this might be coercive control, first of all, you can go to our episodes here that we were talking about – particularly 143 and 145, and then this one, 149.  But then also the whole first module of the course is just available for you if you contact us; text the number 44222, text VOILIFELINE.  So, again, the number would be that you call or that you send the text to would be 44222, and then VOILIFELINE, and that will give you access to the things that are just readily available for you.

And then we do have a course that continues – because it’s a lot of information – to help somebody through the process.  So, if you decide that you would like to continue that process, you can learn more about it there.  It’s really highly valuable.  Rosanne, thank you so much for all the work and really, the emotional toll that it took.  It cost you a lot to put it together, and I’m grateful that you did.

Rosanne Moore:  Definitely left it all on the court working on that, yeah.  But you know, as you said, I’ve done this with enough women, and we wanted something that was going to be really broader than my own personal experience that would help women make decisions even if their circumstances were very different from mine.  And so, we tried to cover a broad range of things.

And yeah, whether, if the listener is herself in an abusive situation or maybe is concerned about a friend, check out those resources because there’s a whole lot there for you to be able to just evaluate.  And then if you do decide to get the course as well, to purchase the rest of it, don’t plan to do it all at once.  There’s a lot of pieces, and you can do it over time.  It’s something that you can unfold as you’re able to do.  So, yeah, we just want to provide that for you so that you can take things apart piece by piece over time instead of just drowning in paperwork.

Andrea:  Okay, so moving right along to narcissists.

Rosanne Moore:  That’s a good segue.  Oh yeah, 150, we talked about “When Narcissism Comes to Your Organization”.  And Dr. Chuck DeGroat had just written a book about narcissism specifically in church organizations.  A couple of things I thought that were real standouts from that interview… and I loved listening to you, Andrea, and to that conversation that you had.  You asked some really, really good questions, and I think he really enjoyed being able to engage as deeply as he did.  So, we’re going to touch on a few things, but there’s a lot in that.

Andrea:  It was packed.

Rosanne Moore:  It was.  So, if you didn’t hear it, go back and listen to it.  It’s a really good one.  A couple things that he pointed out, though, is that character matters more than giftedness, charisma, or accomplishments.  That it’s really easy sometimes to let somebody’s charm or their giftedness or their apparent accomplishments make you give them a pass for bad behavior, but over the long haul, that’s going to be more damaging to your organization.  Character does make a difference.  And that was one of the things that kind of stood out to me in what he was sharing.  Another was that there is healthy confidence.

We go back to the original question we talked about, “What is healthy influence versus unhealthy influence?”  Healthy confidence is going to empower us to serve others with humility and curiosity, but on the other end of the spectrum, narcissism is fueled by manipulation and self-serving behavior.  So, just as there’s good and bad influence, there’s healthy confidence and then there’s self-obsession.  So that was a really good episode.

Andrea:  Yeah.  I think that was a conversation I’d been waiting to have for probably two years since I really started looking into narcissism.  I’d been wanting to talk to somebody about this, and the opportunity to talk to Dr. DeGroat was just a real honor.  And he shared so much information; in particular, also, about not just the individual and how this is hard for us to recognize, but then also why it’s so hard for a community, an organization to admit that that’s been a problem.  And maybe once a person leaves… they leave, but then it leaves behind still a system that is used to the way that they function.  So, they continue to function in ways that are unhealthy.

And so, I think one of the things that I really wanted to make sure we covered – and he, you know, certainly is all about this – which is just once the person leaves you still need to work on healing.  And whether that’d be an individual or in a system, I mean, there’s still a lot of work to be done to look at one’s self, to reflect, to say, “Is this really how we wanna be?  Is this really healthy?”  It just goes back to that same issue that we keep bringing up, “Let’s look at this.  Is this healthy?  Is it not?  Are we willing to admit it when we’re not and when we’re doing things that are contributing to something that’s unhealthy?”  It was incredibly important, and I’m really glad that we did that. 

Rosanne Moore:  Yeah, it was very good.  And our next one – kind of still along those lines – of what does institutional health and leadership look like.  Episode 151 was with Dr. Neil Schnoor; “Institutional Health and Leadership in Difficult Times”, what does that look like?  One of the things that he brought out was that in order to have healthy checks and balances in an organization, there have to be ways to report problems or potential problems without fear of reprisal.  So, you can’t just say, “Oh, we’re gonna have a great, healthy organization,” and not have any system where, when things get off track, it can be talked about without there being any punishment for the whistleblower.

Andrea:  Yeah, that was a really key point.

Rosanne Moore:   Yes, yes.  And then he talked about taking the time to listen and really understand the variety of needs in departments, and the perspective of those in roles that are different from your own, and to value the different areas of expertise that others bring.  And I thought all of that was really, really valuable.

Andrea:  Yeah, and Dr. Schnoor, he is the chief of staff to the president at California State University, Long Beach.  He helps make sure things get done and that they get done well.  And I actually had him for a professor when I was in college doing a music education degree, but he talked a lot about leadership.  He was always about leadership.  So, I followed him through the years.   He was actually on the podcast a couple of years ago, actually… well, three years ago, I think, and we talked a lot about this dynamic of power.

And so the perspective that he brings is one of, you know, no matter how high up you are in the organization, no matter how much power you kind of have, it is vital that you listen, that you care, that you really take on the perspective of other people and appreciate what they have to bring.  So, there’s a humbleness there that if it’s not there, you’re going to miss out on a lot of things that could lead to unhealthy things.

Rosanne Moore:  And I think one of the things that really caught my attention about that episode was the point he made that it’s easy if somebody else is not good at what you’re good at to think less of them and if they’re struggling in an area that it’s kind of your expertise.  Whereas, if you were trying to do their expertise, you would be struggling just as much you know.  We can’t all be good at everything, and that somebody is not less… just the importance of valuing what each person brings to the team.  I thought that was a really good point that he made.

And that kind of leads into our next one which is looking at how things are interconnected.  Dr. Jason Kanz talked about “Being a Voice for Wholeness and Human Flourishing” in Episode 152.  He talked about how it is important to recognize our interconnectedness and interdependence.  If we don’t recognize the reality of that, then we don’t really recognize how important it is for us to be healthy ourselves because our lack of health will impact the system as a whole.

He also talked about how our lack of wholeness often involves wearing masks instead of being authentic and causing us to show up differently with different people, instead of being consistent with all of our relationships.  And that fragmentation can cause us to harm others without even realizing that we’re doing that, that our internal disconnection destroys curiosity and how that curiosity is vital for connection.

Andrea:  Yeah.  He really helped us, I think, to kind of bring it back to ourselves instead of, you know…  We had an opportunity to look at abuse and what those dynamics look like, what’s coercive control, and how do we handle that in a community or in an organization, and then in Jason’s episode, he brought it back to, “But what about you?  How healthy are you?”  Because if we’re not healthy, if we’re really struggling with something and we’re needy in some way, or we’re self-serving and we feel like we have to have power or whatever it might be, we’re going to end up affecting everybody else around us with that negativity.

Rosanne Moore:  Or as you’ve often pointed out, you know, when people are angry, often what’s the sad underneath the anger?  What’s the thing that they’re disconnected from in themselves that they’re really grieving but that comes out of them as anger?  So not being self-aware about our fear or about our sadness or things like that can actually cause us to behave in ways that are going to break connection with other people. 

Andrea:  Mhm.  So, yeah, thank you so much for summarizing for us, Rosanne.  You know, I really hope that everybody will listen to all of these.  I know that in the past, Rosanne, we’ve been kind of trying to find our voice, the things that we really care about as a company and for the podcast – you know, what exactly are we trying to accomplish and what are we trying to share – and this gets to the heart of it.  Like, this is foundational to what we hope to accomplish in the world, which is to help people really connect their gifts with the need in the world and have that influence, but have it in a healthy way.

I mean, really, one of the problems that we see is that people are exerting this kind of influence.  If you’re using coercive control to get somebody to do something, you might get them to comply with you.  You might get them to do what you tell them to do, but then when they walk out the door, they may not ever care about it again.  They may nod when you’re in the room and say “Sure, I’ll do that.”  And then when you walk out, they decide not to.  So, the kind of control, the kind of emotional investment that you get out of others when you’re trying to influence in this way is not what you actually want.

Rosanne Moore:  It’s so true.  And in the weeks ahead, we have some new offerings that we want to share to talk about what we’re doing as a business and the help that we can give our listeners.  One of the big things is, “How do you get healthy buy-in?”  That’s one of the things that you address a lot, Andrea.  And we’ve talked some too about just why you’re passionate about this, how you started looking at this, and why influence matters, and what does it look like to have healthy influence.  And I know our listeners are going to benefit from hearing more about why this has been something percolating in you for a long time, and really, what helps you be a good guide for others in learning how to build teams that are working collaboratively.

Andrea:  Mhm.  So, I’m excited.  I’m excited about the direction that we’re headed.  I’m excited that we have this foundation kind of beneath us as we move forward because there’s so much here that I think anybody that wants to take on leadership, that you care about other people and you want to help them.  I mean, that’s essentially what it comes down to.  You want to help people or you have a mission of some kind, then these are the kinds of things that we want to be able to help you address so that you know about them so that you know how to handle them.

So, thank you for this summary, Rosanne.  It’s been fun to kind of go back and think through these episodes and just the significant contribution they make, I think, to any of us that are wanting to make a difference in the world.  So, again, if you’re interested in learning more about Lifeline and perhaps even getting those resources that are there and available to somebody who is in an abusive relationship, please text VOILIFELINE to 44222 and visit us at our website voiceofinfluence.net.  We are excited to continue with you into the future.

Your voice matters, and you can make it matter more!

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Be a Voice for Wholeness and Human Flourishing with Jason Kanz, Ph.D

Episode 152

Jason Kanz Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

Jason Kanz, Ph.D is a Neuropsychologist at the Marshfield Clinic in Eau Claire, Wisconsin where he lives with his wife and three children. Jason is the author of Soil of the Divine and Notes from the Upper Room: Lessons in Loving Like Jesus, as well as the editor of Living in the Larger Story: The Christian Psychology of Larry Crabb.

Jason talks and writes about the concepts of wholeness, integration, and reconciliation through the lens of neuroscience, spirituality, and creativity. For many of us, there’s always some sort of tension in our lives, whether in a relationship, in our own bodies, or frustration with things happening in the world around us. It also shows up as a sense within yourself that you know that you’re not being truly authentic in every area of your life. If you have been experiencing these feelings, this conversation may help you shift your perspective with three questions that will help you to be a voice of influence that could help heal the great divides that we are currently encountering in our world.

In this episode, Jason talks about what it means to be whole. He shares about the freedom that comes with wholeness, the cost to ourselves, our communities, and our organizations of remaining fragmented, how to live from a place of wholeness and freedom even when circumstances aren’t right, and so much more.

Mentioned in this episode:

 

Find our Lifeline resources and information about the course here.

 

Transcript

Hey, there!  It’s Andrea.  So, when was the last time that you took a nice, big, deep breath and exhaled and just relaxed with a big smile on your face knowing that everything felt like it was right in the world?  Does that happen very often for you?  I mean, if you’re like me, then more often than not instead, there’s always some sort of tension.  There’s always something that just doesn’t quite feel right.  Maybe it’s in a relationship – friction that might be in a relationship – or tension in my own body, or perhaps it’s frustration with things that are going on in the world.  Or maybe it’s just a sense within yourself that you know that you’re not being truly authentic in every area of your life.  It just doesn’t feel quite right.

Well, my guest today is Dr. Jason Kanz.  He is a neuropsychologist who works in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, where he lives with his wife and three children.  He’s the author of four books, most recently, Notes from the Upper Room.  And he seeks to think and write about the concepts of wholeness, integration, and reconciliation through the lens of neuroscience, spirituality, and creativity.

In this conversation with Jason, he’s going to talk a lot about what it means to be whole – the benefits and the freedom that comes with wholeness – and yet the cost that it is to ourselves, to our communities, to our organizations when we are not whole when we’re fragmented when things aren’t quite as they should be.  He talks about how to live from a place of wholeness and freedom even when circumstances aren’t right.  And he also shares three questions that will help you to be a “Voice of Influence” that could help heal the great divides that we currently experience in our world.

If you’re experiencing a lot of tension, a lot of frustration, a lot of that sense of, “Oh, it’s just things aren’t like they should be.”  Well, maybe we don’t have to live like that.

Here’s my conversation with Dr. Jason Kanz:

Andrea:  All right, Dr. Jason Kanz, it’s great to have you with us on the Voice of Influence podcast.

Dr. Jason Kanz:  Glad to be here today.

Andrea:  So, tell us a little bit about what you do.

Dr. Jason Kanz:  So, I am what is called a neuropsychologist, and I often explain it to people that it’s a fancy term for a memory doctor.  And so, part of what I do is my job involves trying to help people figure out what’s going on in terms of how their brains are functioning.  So, I’m trained as a psychologist.  I have a Ph.D. in counseling psychology, but I did additional training in a neurology department so that I can look at how the brain relates to behavior and how it affects how people live on a day-to-day basis.  And especially when there’s something that’s gone wrong; so things like dementia, head injuries, learning disorders, and that sort of thing.

Andrea:  Mhm, that’s really interesting.  So, the patients that you work with, clients that you work with, do they cover kind of the gamut of those three things you mentioned? 

Dr. Jason Kanz:  Yeah.  I work for Marshfield Clinic, which is in Northern Wisconsin.  I’m located in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.  And at the facility that I’m at, I’m the only neuropsychologist who is there, and so that involves seeing a broad range of things.  Sometimes, it’s even questions of, “Hey, there’s something going on.  We don’t know quite what it is.  Can you help us figure it out?”  So, there’s the luxury of being able to see just a broad range of people from kind of all across the age spectrum, all sorts of diagnostic categories, and really, it’s interesting.  It keeps my day-to-day work quite interesting.

Andrea:  Are there any kind of unifying themes in your work that you see come up on a regular basis or…  I’m not even sure what I’m asking you.

Dr. Jason Kanz:  Yeah.  In terms of unifying themes, I think the principal reason people come to me is in regard to cognitive complaints.  The most common thing people complain of are memory concerns.  But again, that can show up in a lot of different ways.  So, it may be that it’s memory, but it could be that a person just isn’t processing as fast as what others might.  It could be inattention.  It could be depression or anxiety.  And so, again, if there’s a unifying theme, it’s there’s generally complaint about, again, thinking, principally memory.  And so I’m kind of asked to solve puzzles on a day-to-day basis.

Andrea:  So, you also have, from what I understand, you have a real interest in personal transformation, how people function as a whole, things like these.  What kind of got you interested in that, and what would you say your interest really is there?

Dr. Jason Kanz:  Yeah, I think that’s spot on.  I think it probably developed partly out of wanting to do my own workaround becoming more whole, becoming more psychologically healthy.  So, in neuropsychology, one of the hallmarks of how a lot of clinical neuropsychology is practiced is there’s often a focus on what we call pathology – so, things that are not working well.  I’m, you know, often called to come in and explain what’s wrong with somebody.

And it can be very… fragmented is maybe a good word.  You know, we tend to take these parts of thinking in isolation.  But over time, as I thought about transformation – particularly as a counseling psychologist – how do I kind of shift the focus a little bit to what makes a person function well?  What leads to human flourishing to success?  A word you will frequently hear me refer to is wholeness.  I think a lot about what makes a person whole.

But again, I think a lot of that has come out of my own background, my own experience with feeling as though who I present on the outside doesn’t always match how I feel on the inside.  And so, you know, I’ve done a lot of reading.  I’ve really engaged in a lot of different activities and practices to try and come to an understanding of what leads to psychological and spiritual health.

Andrea:  So that desire to have integrity between who you are in the inside and who you’re presenting on the outside has been a huge piece of why you’ve moved in this direction?

Dr. Jason Kanz:  I think so, yeah.  And again, that word “integrity”, I think, is key.  You know, the word integrity, the root is “integer” – you know, one – which integers are whole numbers.  And I think that’s exactly right.  One example, one story, I think that really moved me in this direction is we were involved in a church as a family for a number of years – I think, I don’t know, a dozen years or something like that.  And I had been appointed as a lay pastor there and really was burning the candle at both ends, just exhausted, burned out.  And there was so much on my end, so much image management and recognizing that I was not, again, functioning, not feeling the same way on the inside as this person that I was presenting to the church.

And there was kind of this hallmark moment I remember.  It was a weekend.  My daughter, my eldest daughter – who is twenty at this point – she was at church and she had kissed her boyfriend good-bye on the cheek, and I saw red.  I became very angry.  I pulled her into an office, and I just dressed her down.  And she later confronted me and said, “You’re not a safe person.  I don’t like being home when you’re here,” and it crushed me.  And it really made me reflect on that, you know, I talk about being this loving person who wants to be grace-filled, and yet one of the people closest to me doesn’t experience me that way.  And so, for me, that was cataclysmic.  It really moved me in the direction of wanting to do my own work, I think, even more deeply than maybe what I already had.

Andrea:   Mmm.  There’s nothing like family, especially children, to kind of showcase our inadequacies on things that we actually care about. Oh, shoot.

Dr. Jason Kanz:  Yeah, without a doubt, you know.  And I have thanked her for doing that, for having the courage, you know, to say step in and confront me for my own brokenness, my sin – for lack of a better word – against her.  You know, I think that she was really brave in doing that.  And I actually had asked her permission to write about it.  And I think, I don’t know, two years ago now, I wrote an article for Fathom Magazine that I titled I Became What I Hate, which dealt with the subject of shame, and that I was using this notion of shame to control others while I was preaching against shame.  And so, there was this real disconnect between who I was and who I said I was.

Andrea:  Do you feel like you were able to kind of identify why you did that?  Why you were doing that with her?

Dr. Jason Kanz:  Um, for me, I think so much of it was around the notion of image management.  If people somehow saw me as a bad father… and there was nothing that she did, in that instance, that would suggest that I was a bad father.  But I think, for me, there were those internal messages that said, “If others see her, for example, kissing her boyfriend, that will reflect badly upon me.”  And so, there was a real sense of, I think, fear, maybe shame around that.  But I think that was just one example of maybe more stuff that was going on in me and recognizing the disintegration of many parts of myself that was showing up, I think, in a lot of burnout.

Andrea:  Do you see that a lot, the connection between image management and the fragmentation of people and who they are?

Dr. Jason Kanz:  Absolutely.  I think one of the principal things that affects us as humans is that we tend to wear a lot of masks before the world.  We don’t live from an authentic place where we’re consistent between groups of people.  And again, that gets back to your word integrity.  You know, I think we don’t often or maybe typically live from that place where we are consistent from situation to situation.  And I see it frequently.  Now, I think it shows up differently for different people.  What might be my mask that I wear before the world might be different than yours or different from someone else’s.  And I think that’s a real barrier to becoming whole people is living from that fragmented place.

Andrea:  So, one of the reasons why we really wanted to invite you to be on the podcast was because we wanted to ask how does this fragmentation of an individual or lack of wholeness or lack of health of an individual person, how can that really impact the whole, the group, a systemic wellbeing, whether that’d be in an organization or a family unit or a country…  You know, how does the individual impact the whole?

Dr. Jason Kanz:  Well, I think one of the first things that becomes important as we ask that question is whether, as individuals, we are disconnected from the system or whether we are an integral part of the system, and in the opposite direction, whether the system is an integral part of us.  And I think very commonly – especially in Western cultures with which I’m most familiar – I think we have a sense that we are somehow independent of systems; that our behaviors, our thoughts, feelings, emotions, you name it, don’t really have a significant effect upon the system.  But in reality, we are all deeply embedded in multiple systems.

And I think when we begin to recognize this interconnectedness or interdependence, it helps us to begin to recognize that our own health, the work that we are doing has an effect – positive or negative – on the system of which we are a part.  And again, I think you’re exactly right.  I think that’s families, countries, communities, and we are all very likely part of multiple communities.  And to recognize that we have an impact on that.

Andrea:  Mhmm.  How would you say that neurobiology can have that impact on a system?

Dr. Jason Kanz:  Yeah.  So, one of the things that I’m interested in is there’s a field that’s called Interpersonal Neurobiology, and it was first proposed back in the early ‘90s by a guy named Dan Siegel.  And Dan Siegel is a psychiatrist at UCLA, and he really wanted to understand what is the mind.  And so, he began to ask that question, and really, as he kind of pressed further into that, inviting a lot of different people into the conversation, not just physicians – not just scientists, but artists and social workers and physicists and chemists – recognizing that the brain is not an isolated organ.

I was mentioning earlier that as neuropsychologists or as a clinical neuropsychologist, there is often this fragmented approach to how we look at brain functioning.  And part of that is a just kind of an effect of the types of testing, types of examinations that we do is what historically has been called a localizationist the approach, which again, you’re looking at focal parts of the brain.  But this stuff that Dan Siegel is talking about is suggesting that the brain is inherently a social organ.  We are made for connection.  We are wired to connect with other people.  And there’s all sorts of interesting data about – even on a cellular level – what are called mirror neurons, where my brain responds to something that you are doing just by observing it.  And it helps us to see that there’s this, again, deep sense of interconnection.  It’s the primary way in which we engage with one another.

And so, neurobiologically, when we begin to understand that our brains are not just an organ that moves our bodies around or helps us think or feel, but really helps us to connect deeply with others – those who are close with us, those who we are in community with.  And Siegel would argue that it goes even beyond that to humanity in general, and I think he’s onto something with that.

Andrea:  Why is that?

Dr. Jason Kanz:  Well, I think if you look at some of the stuff that’s coming out of quantum physics… and this is what Dan Siegel talks about, is that there can be evidences that, you know, one cork on one side of the world can have an immediate impact on something on the other side of the world.  So, it’s universality, right?  I mean, it’s this idea that we are much more interconnected than what we might think or imagine.

You know, in kind of common literature or common culture, I think we hear this term, the Butterfly Effect.  And you know, the things that I do and think have a greater impact on others than I think what we imagine that they do.  And when we begin to understand things in that way that we are not only a part of systems but a global system, it begins to change how we think about interacting with others, how we, again, show up in the world.  And I think when we begin to understand that, this interconnectedness, it can have a positive effect on not only brain health but system health.

Andrea:  How do you know if you’re fragmented or if you’re whole, you know?  How does one kind of recognize that this is even an issue for themselves individually?

Dr. Jason Kanz:  That’s a wonderful question, and I don’t know that I have a perfect answer for it.  I think I would suggest a couple of things.  One is maybe the question is not, “Am I fragmented,” but “How am I fragmented?”  And so, I think, a recognition that all of us, to some degree or another, have this disintegrated self.  And so, I think that’s one piece.  I think we become aware of it either through intentional work on our own psychological and spiritual health or for example, in my case, what really brought it to a head was a crisis moment.

And I think sometimes we can have these times of chaos, these times of crisis that knock us off our feet and make us say, “There is something really wrong and I don’t know what it is.  I don’t feel successful…” maybe not successful but feel whole or complete.  “And I want to know what it is that’s wrong and how do I begin to dig into that a little bit to find out what is wholeness?  What is integration?”  Again, I think we can see that in a couple of ways.  Nobody would, I think, invite chaos or crisis into their lives, but it sure is a good revealer when it does go wrong.  And so, I think those are a couple of ways in which we begin to recognize that.

Andrea:  Okay, so I can definitely see how a crisis moment would bring that to light or the self-reflection that you were talking about.  But once you get to that point, once there is a crisis, and you’re thinking, “Wait a second.  Things don’t feel right, and I want to be more integrated or want to feel more whole or be more healthy,” in that sense, where does somebody start?

Dr. Jason Kanz:  You know, I think part of it begins in beginning to ask questions of ourselves of, “How do I show up in the world?”  “How do I show up if I’m at home?”  “Is that consistent with how I show up in the office or if I’m out with friends?”  And to begin to look at those, the ways in which we interact, “Is there consistency between how we are showing up in different places?”  Maybe one of the best ways we can do that is by inviting other people into the conversation and to be able to ask questions like, “How do you experience me?”  And you know, maybe not ask everybody that but those who are in our lives on a day-to-day basis, to be able to say, “Are there things that you see in me?”  Or “How do I impact you?”  And to be able to ask those questions vulnerably without retaliation – because I think our heart’s desire when we hear bad things is to snap back – but to hear them graciously.

One of the big questions that I’ve asked repeatedly in the last several years is this question, “Is it possible I’m wrong?”  And I think there’s a lot tied up in that question to be able to say, “You know what, I may not have all of the answers about someone else.  I may not even have all of the answers about myself.”  And so developing a curiosity about ourselves, inviting others to share their observations, I think are both really good.  Again, that importance of community; good community is really hard to find, I think – to find people who are able to speak into our lives with honesty and conviction without destroying us or further fragmenting us.

You know, I think that I’ve been blessed with a couple of men that I meet with pretty regularly, where we can be rigorously honest with one another.  And again, I think that if we find communities like that, we should treasure them because they help us to grow in wholeness.  And we can’t do it on our own.  So, I think those sorts of things are really useful in cultivating wholeness.

I think one of the other things that I would say is, again, neurobiologically, so many of us operate kind of in a single track of thinking.  We tend to operate from a very logical, linear approach to life, you know.  So, we’re looking for answers.  And when we are looking for answers, we’re less able to simply be curious.  We are less in touch with our emotions.  And so, beginning to pay attention not only to what are we thinking, but what are we imagining, what emotions come up for us, and take intentional times and focus on those things.

Dan Siegel talks a lot about what he calls Time In.  He has a process called The Wheel of Awareness where you spend a period of time first kind of focusing on what’s going on in your body.  And then you begin to focus on these other things – these images and thoughts and feelings – and not with any judgment about them, but to just notice them.  And when we do those things, it can begin to foster that wholeness, foster that integration that we’re shooting for.

Andrea:  So, some of what you were just describing I recognize for myself – but then I’ve certainly seen it all around me – is that it’s very difficult to go through that process of asking questions like, “Is it possible that I’m wrong?”  And so, my question for you would be, can you remind us why it’s worth going through that?  What’s the cost?  Because there’s a lot of cost involved…

Dr. Jason Kanz:  Without a doubt.

Andrea:  …with this kind of self-reflection and stuff.  So what is the cost on the other side if we don’t?

Dr. Jason Kanz:  Well, I think the cost on the other side is we end up damaging other people.  We end up with relationships that are fragmented.  I think of – again, back to the story with my oldest, you know – if I had just said, “You’re all wet. Just back off,” and not heard her, that would have had created a much deeper schism in our relationship.  And that can happen all around us.  It happens in marriages, it happens with children, with friends, in communities, in organizations, or companies.  When we are unwilling to do that work, it can have this deep fragmenting or dividing effect.

But I also think that moving toward wholeness, moving toward deeper psychological health is a gift to ourselves.  We aren’t living as flourishing people if we are trying to hobble along in this fragmented place, in this disintegrated place.  It takes a lot of emotional effort to continue to try and be different people in different places.  And so, I think the long-term effect is, I think, it emotionally can have a really deep impact upon us, just in terms of… maybe not swinging into mental illness, but just not flourishing, not being all that we were created to be.

Andrea:  Hmm.  I think I’ve personally described it as almost like a feeling of freedom.

Dr. Jason Kanz:  Yeah.

Andrea:  Because with fragmentation, it seems that there comes these, I don’t know, walls or you know, constraints that make us try to consistently project that image that you were talking about before.  That image management is so much work, and so there is such a freedom in not having to do that anymore.

Dr. Jason Kanz:  Absolutely.  You know, I waited until I was in my mid-forties to get a tattoo.  And my first tattoo, which is on my right forearm is the Hebrew word “shalom”, which a lot of people think means peace.  But if you dig into it, it actually has a deeper meaning.  It has a meaning of flourishing.  It has a meaning of wholeness.  It’s the way things should be.  And I think that’s what we’re shooting for.  But my second tattoo, which is on my other forearm, is the Hebrew word for freedom.  And I think those two ideas go hand-in-hand, absolutely; that when we can live from that authentic place that true self, it creates in us a deep sense of freedom where we don’t have to worry so much, we don’t have to hide so much.  And that’s living.  I mean, when you begin to taste that, it reminds you or teaches you, “My goodness, I can’t believe I’ve lived this other way for so long.”

Andrea:  Yeah.  The idea of shalom being the way that things should be… I think that one of the costs that there is to actually confronting that you’re not feeling shalom or you’re not feeling whole is the grief of realizing that things aren’t as they should be.  Because we so want them to be the way that they should be.  And it seems that we construct these ideas in our minds of the way that things should be, and we try to fit it all together with where we’re at right now so that I don’t have to move, so I don’t have to change.  And one of the most difficult things, I think, for people to do is to confront that, “Dang, this is not the way it should be,” because then you have to grieve.

Dr. Jason Kanz:  Right.  I think there’s a grief piece, definitely.  Because I think we say to ourselves… we grieve the fact that we’ve not been whole so far, but also we look around at the world around us and recognize that it is still not the way we want it to be.  Even ourselves, even as we do this work and do it for a long time, there’s still fragmentation, there’s still disintegration.  And I think that alone brings grief or sadness.  And it’s good to acknowledge and recognize that.

But I think one other thing that just came up as you had said that was the importance of trusting the process that we’re going through.  I think, so often, we want to have, “Five Steps to a Better You”, and we want them to be accomplished in six weeks or six hours.  And that’s simply not reality.  We are all on a journey, right?  And it’s going to be lifelong, and we will continue striving after wholeness.  The task, I think, that we face is how do we live from a place of freedom and contentment in this moment while recognizing that there is ongoing work to do?

Andrea:  Mmm.  Okay, can you answer that question?

Dr. Jason Kanz:  Some days, I feel like I can.  Boy, I think for me, I have to remind myself regularly of my inherent goodness, remind myself of who I am.  I think that it’s really easy for me to get sucked into a shame spiral of, “I’m not there yet so I should feel horrible about where I’m at,” when in reality, you know, I am in a good place.  And I have to be intentional about doing that.  And when I can come to that place, it allows me to then to look forward to the future and say, “Okay, I can do this today.  I can do this tomorrow.”

Every year, I choose a word of the year.  I don’t do New Year’s resolutions, but I choose a word that I want to kind of marinate in.  And my 2020 word has been “presence.”  And it’s really about trying to be in the present moment, paying attention to what’s going on around me without fretting about the future or overthinking the past, and that is easier said than done, I find.  But I think when we can come to that place, that place of subtleness, it helps us to make sense of the already and the not yet.

Andrea:  Do you have any suggestions for how you’ve seen it done, or how you’ve done it, or [how] you recommend people remind themselves of who they are?

Dr. Jason Kanz:  I think we can do the work of looking at, “What are the positive traits?”  I’m very committed to the idea that humans all have inherent value.  I take the approach that every person is uniquely and inherently valuable as a child of God.  I think when we can begin to see that reality about us – that we are valuable, we are loved – that we can begin to see that benefit… or not benefit.  That’s not the word… the goodness within us.

Curt Thompson, who’s a friend of mine – who also does some work on interpersonal neurobiology – does this exercise where he has people imagine themselves on either a beach or somewhere that is seems peaceful and calm.  And when they are able to put themselves in that place, imagining… for him, as a Christian psychiatrist, [he] talks about Jesus coming up and saying to him, “You know, you are beloved. I’m so glad you’re on the earth,” and to be able to sit in that space while Jesus is saying those things.  If you can’t do that, pick someone whom you have experienced as loving or comforting and saying those things to you.  Even if you can’t hear them yourself, to be able to hear another say them about us, I think, can also move us in the direction of self-acceptance.

Andrea:  Mmm.  Okay, I know that you’re into art. 

Dr. Jason Kanz:  I am.

Andrea:  You write poetry.  You paint with pallet watercolors.  Talk to me about how art helps us feel more whole or be more whole.

Dr. Jason Kanz:  Well, again, I think that ties back to that idea that so many of us get stuck on the word-based part of life.  We don’t really think about left brain, right brain so much, but Dan Siegel talks about left mode versus right mode.  And he talks about left mode being that very binary, black and white, looking for correct answers.  But to foster that other side of the brain to the right mode processing is to foster things like creativity, maybe not having all of the answers.  And I’m very convinced that it’s good for us to begin to engage that creative side.

I was interviewed for a Christian psychology journal a couple of years ago, and that was what they had wanted to talk about was the notion of creativity and art and how that affected my work.  And for me, it has been a transformative thing to begin to express myself creatively.

Brené Brown has talked some about this idea of Creativity Wounds.  And for a lot of us, usually around the fourth or the fifth grade, we begin to hear this message that we are not creative, that we’re not talented as artists, but that really misses the point.  You know, I think it’s about self-expression.  It’s not about creating a perfect product.  So, for me to be able to step into that place where I can write more emotively or paint… I love to do watercolors.  Part of the reason I love watercolors is they invite more freedom.  You know, if I color outside the lines, it’s not a big deal.  And so, for me that has been, again, I think, an important part of fostering wholeness for me.

But again, I know that there are watercolorists who are far superior to me.  I know that there are poets who are far superior to me.  But for me, it’s the courageous step into doing those things and at times, sharing them with others and inviting them to do their own creative expression.

Again, I think those are things that really can begin to pull together or integrate our minds and our brains.  So, you know, I think that’s the case.  I think connecting with nature is something that a lot of us miss.  Some people live in places where it’s much easier to do that than others.  But again, I think when we have this sense of connection with not just the people in our circle but with the world around us, I think it really helps to bring a lot of these pieces together.

Andrea:  If wholeness is the longing of a human heart, how does that really impact our opportunities or the way that we influence others?

Dr. Jason Kanz:  You know, I think that’s a good question.  I think we have an opportunity to engage people, even with that question.  You know, we all exist in this world and know that something is amiss.  You know, maybe we think it’s politics.  Maybe we think it’s what’s going on in the media.  Maybe it’s what’s going on in our family of origin.  And there’s a lot of different, I think, contributions.  But what the common thread is there is that we all experience the idea or the notion that something is wrong, something is broken.  And I think to help people identify there’s brokenness and it hurts and it’s painful, and that the next step is to say, “All right, so if that’s the case, what is it you’re longing for?”

And when I’ve talked with people about this, it doesn’t matter what background they come from, whether they’re religious or non-religious.  Religious tradition doesn’t seem to matter.  Old, young, man, woman; it doesn’t matter.  When there’s this idea of wholeness, it seems to resonate with people.  Because there’s this desire for something complete, for integrity, again, to go back to the word that you had said earlier.

When we help people to see that, I think it allows us to be able to interact back and forth, to invite them into conversations about, “What does it mean to be authentic?  What does it mean to live consistently, to live in this place of freedom?”  It allows us to share parts of our story, again, to foster not just our individual wholeness, but this relational wholeness.  And again, ideally even beyond our small communities to larger communities; state, world.  I would love to see that continue to move in that direction.

You know, I think, to be able to identify that longing and invite people along on the journey.  Now, one of the challenges, I think, for us is that even though there’s this common longing between us, sometimes I think we fail to recognize that we each maybe bring different tools to answer that or to begin to address those longings.  You know, so not every person is a neuropsychologist.  We have artists, and we have bakers, and we have mechanics, and we have moms.  Everybody has their own story.  Everybody has unique gifts and strengths.  And I think they’re all important as we have this kind of communal conversation about moving in that direction of integration or wholeness.

Andrea:  Hmm.  So, Jason, I want to ask you one more question.  But before I do that, would you share with the listener where they can find more information or your blog, or how they can follow you?

Dr. Jason Kanz:  Yeah, so I have a blog, jasonkanz.com, and I’m pretty active on Twitter @dockanz and same on Facebook.  I try to let people follow and interact with me.  I’m pretty active on those places and try to interact with people as they are having questions, have ideas, and would love to have people connect with me in those places.  I think my last book that I put out – which is Notes from the Upper Room: Lessons in Loving Like Jesus – I touched some on this notion of wholeness as well, and would love to have people connect that way, too.

Andrea:  Yeah.  So, it would be great to hear people get your book and learn more about wholeness in that way and be able to then interact with you on Twitter or something.  That would be fun to see.

Dr. Jason Kanz:  Yeah.

Andrea:  Okay, so in wrapping things up, when you think of wholeness and some of the divisions that we’re really feeling right now – particularly in the United States, perhaps around the world – how can somebody be a “Voice of Influence” that would promote wholeness in that environment?

Dr. Jason Kanz:  That’s the real challenge, isn’t it?  I think I’m going to come back to that question.  I’m actually going to share three questions.  Again, people who know me know that I have the three questions.  The first two come from a guy named Greg Coco.  And they are, “What do you mean by that,” and “How did you come to that conclusion?”  Generally, conversations go much better if we are asking questions rather than asserting ourselves.  And then that third one is, “Is it possible I’m wrong?”  And I think that brings in a level of humility to the conversation.

I also think that we can be a “Voice of Influence” when we recognize our deep interconnectedness.  It seems that so much of the world in which we’re living now is what I’ve called an “against mindset”.  Somebody’s got to be right; somebody’s got to be wrong.  Up and down.  Powerful versus the weak person, as opposed to what I would refer to as a “with mindset”, which I think operates from the assumption that we are all part of the human race.  We’re all longing and all seeking after wholeness.  And when we can shift our mindset and begin to engage from that place where we have curiosity about what other share – not so we can correct them but so that we can learn and understand – I think we can have a profound influence on the world around us.

Andrea:  Mmm.  Good word.  Thank you so much!  Thank you, Jason for being a “Voice of Influence” in the world and for our listeners.

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Institutional Health and Leadership In Difficult Times with Dr. Neal Schnoor

Episode 151

Dr Neal Schnoor Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

Dr. Neal Schnoor is Chief of Staff to the President at California State University, Long Beach where he operates in various functions in support of meeting the mission of the University. Dr. Schnoor was also my professor when I attended the University of Nebraska at Kearney, and he taught me as a music education major and in a leadership class.

I still remember being in that class and being struck by his conviction about leadership and really calling us to be great leaders so when I started the Voice of Influence podcast, I really wanted to bring him on to share his voice. That was about three years ago and it was such a great conversation that when we decided to do this series on understanding power structures, I knew I wanted to talk to Dr. Schnoor again and have him share his perspective.

In this episode, Neal discusses how checks and balances help to maintain healthy power structures within an organization, how to lead in a healthy way, what you can do as a leader to create a culture that supports your team at every level, the most important aspect of a good leader, especially when faced with situations like the current pandemic, and so much more.

Mentioned in this episode:

 

Find our Lifeline resources and information about the course here.

Transcript

All right!  So, today I have with me Dr. Neal Schnoor.  Dr. Schnoor was actually my professor when I was in school at University of Nebraska at Kearney.  He was band teacher, and he taught me as a music education major.  He taught a leadership class.  And I just remember being so struck by his conviction about leadership and really calling us to being great leaders that when I got to start this podcast, I decided very soon that I wanted to talk to him.  I really wanted to bring his voice onto the podcast.

We did an interview about three years ago.  It’s called “Perhaps it’s Time to Stop Leading and Focus on Influencing.”  It’s Episode 14, and I really love that conversation.

When we decided to do the podcast series on “Understanding Power Structures,” I definitely wanted to talk to him again because his perspective comes from that of somebody who is the chief of staff to the president of a major university.  So, we wanted to look at what does this look like, understanding the power structures within an organization and how those checks and balances come into play.  How does that work exactly?  How do you have a healthy organization and maintain a healthy organization?  How do you lead in a healthy way, especially when we’re faced with things like COVID-19 and social injustice and unrest?

So, that’s the conversation that you’re about to listen to.  I am thrilled to bring you this conversation with Dr. Neal Schnoor.

Andrea:  All right, so Dr. Neil Schnoor, it is great to have you back on the Voice of Influence podcast.

Dr. Neal Schnoor:  It is a pleasure to join you, Andrea.

Andrea:  So, can you tell us where you are now, what you’re doing?  What’s your position and role, your perspective?

Dr. Neal Schnoor:  Sure.  So, I started a new position a year ago at California State University at Long Beach, and I’m chief of staff to the president.  Too long to explain what that all means, and everywhere, chief of staff is a little different.  But in general, my job is to ensure that the office runs smoothly, that we work with the executive team and meet the mission of the university.  It’s the best way to say it, changes every day, and love the kind of pace and difference every day brings.

Andrea:  So, you have a very up-close perspective on what it looks like to really be at the home of an institution, and even make sure that things are running well, that sort of thing.  We are talking about this… you know, in this podcast series, we’ve been talking about “Understanding Power Structures.”  So, given your position and the institutional-level kind of perspective that you bring, could you share with us how much energy and effort do you think does or should a healthy organization put into making sure that it’s actually healthy?

Dr. Neal Schnoor:  Well, you know, defining the word healthy, I guess, would be an issue, but in terms of structures, you know… each leader that comes to an institution – and I’ve been in higher education, two institutions – the leader really does put a stamp on it, and they bring certain expectations.  And while you’ve clearly got in our structure a provost or some title there that oversees the academics, you need someone overseeing the business and finance and operations.  You need someone overseeing student affairs.  You’ll need someone with the foundation fundraising and alumni-relations technology.

Generally, those are the baskets you’re going to have and at most institutions, you’ll see that, but they also put their own flavors on that and have smaller or larger groups.  So that part of being healthy, you know… what you see on paper is just the description.  It’s really what happens behind the scenes that really matters.  It’s how we work together and how we collaborate and support one another.

I really would focus and draw people – you know, especially in the current climate – health and wellbeing are really challenged right now.  For folks that are very social, and they’re removed from those support networks and trying to support those through telehealth, telecommunications, those are big pushes for us right now.  So, I really am glad, I think, really only in the last five to ten years have we seen people get really serious about providing support for mental as well as physical wellbeing.

Andrea:  And why do you think that that shifted?

Dr. Neal Schnoor:  Well, you know, some people would say we live in a greater, stressful environment, and I think in some ways that’s true.  I just think there’s a realization that, you know, we bring people on board and the hiring process – which we may talk about moving forward; I think it’s so critical – and you get them on board and then what?  You know, more people than not just say, “Go, here’s the keys and have at it.”  Very little transition, very little onboarding, perhaps not enough oversight; sometimes too much oversight, not giving them the freedom.

But I think we want to take care of our people because it’s way easier to cultivate and grow someone you already have hired and has passed your review than to let them suffer, you know, and go through that process a lot.  But you will see in some organizations just a tremendous amount of turnover.  It’s not always bad, but better to support, develop, and train the wellbeing of our employees than to have this constant turnover.

Andrea:  So, do you mind if I ask what does that onboarding or that continued support look like where you’re at?

Dr. Neal Schnoor:  You know, it’s really hard…  So it helps where I’m at.  It’s different.  I’ve been at different institutions and it takes on different… depending on whether it’s corporate or whatever.  But mainly what you want to do is once the person is on board, that process is there, start connecting them with the people that they’re going to work with and/or lead.  It sounds crazy, but people have to move their house, they have to move their family.  I mean, the sheer number of things that a new employee coming on board… you got to bring a set I-9 Form and it’s got to be in person, and “You got to fill out this.  We got to have you fill out this in order to get your email account.  You can’t have this until you have your email account.”  It is a laundry list.

So, there’s some of that that happens.  But it’s hopefully getting engaged with who they direct report to and start explaining and helping them understand a little about the culture and how things operate, connecting them with the people in their unit and starting to have those conversations.  And then again, it’s not about just running on day one.  It’s about being comfortable to assume the position and then you really start engaging one-on-one and in groups to learn.

Some people are more formal about that and then on the other end, it’s, “Well, I expect you should be able to do that.  I hired you, so go.”  And I think anywhere toward the first rather than the latter is a step in the right direction.  A lot of it… I had a lot of training in HR in safety and privacy and technology, security.  There are just a lot of trainings that have to take place.

Andrea:  So, from the perspective of the institution, how does an institution guard against the potential abuse of power?  And you and I had a really interesting conversation about power previously.  When we’re talking about the abuse of power – maybe it’s an abuse of authority – certainly, you have professors, you have I assume, a hierarchy of how people report, that sort of thing.  How does the institution handle and guard against that abuse of power?

Dr. Neal Schnoor:  You know, one area, if you look at it from a larger organization that would be similar between public and private, is really to have two functions.  And I’ll jump to you really need to have a culture built around compliance.  And being transparent about and a tone set from the top that, “We will function in accordance with laws, statutes, and regulations, as well as ethical norms.”  Then there’s the other side of that, which is an audit function.  And you know, I think some people are surprised [when] they read in the paper that there’s this financial issue happened at an institution.  They think it’s the Wild West.  I can’t begin to explain to people who aren’t in this business the literally tens of thousands of statutes, regulations, policies that we operate in compliance with.

So, there can be abuses of power – I’m not ducking that, we’ll get back to it – but the good news is that there are audit functions.  So, for instance, every year, organizations have to have a fiscal audit, and those audits will catch things right away.  Most people will say, “Oh, you got caught!  Somebody did something wrong.”  Again, reflect back to what I said, literally tens if not hundreds of thousands of policies.

And so it’s possible that a trigger on a technology thing got tripped, and now all of the taxes were misapplied by thirty-two cents and that adds up to a hundred million dollars and the audit will catch that, and the audit will go back and require those things to be fixed.  So, there are built-in good things if we use them to avoid those power things.  We can dive into that.  I think another thing I’d mentioned at this point would simply be those two functions have to work hand-in-glove.  And in many places, they’re sort of against each other, and people in the organization have sort of sense that those are the bad guys.  So, that’s natural in a way, but I would also call our compliance and audit people to up their people skills.

Let me give you an example on the compliance front.  So, I had a dear colleague who is an expert in compliance, and I’m not joking with you.  Pick any area, and to be an expert in it takes a career.  And then the laws change and the regulations change and the system policies change – they have to make all those changes.  So, what compliance people need to do is they need to continue to do pertinent, continuous training on the big picture items.

But here’s how it plays out.  Now, you’ve got a faculty member whose job it is to prepare and deliver classes.  They’re also recruiting students.  They’re also doing their research, scholarly productivity.  They’re engaged in the community.  It is not possible…  Yes, they need to be trained on the big things, but dotting the I’s on even the most recent Title IX policy, which just changed and is being implemented, they’re going to come to you as the expert and say, “I need some help with this.  I think there could be an issue here.”

This colleague, who lives in this world and is an expert on it, one day said, “What’s wrong with faculty members?  I thought they were supposed to be smart, and they don’t know anything about fiscal policy.  They don’t know the steps you’re supposed to go to make sure that you pay people on time,” all these kinds of things.  And you know, I talked with them about it, about everything I just said.  They have a full-time job, they can’t also be an expert and all this.

And at one point, it became negative and said, “Well, I just don’t think they’re as smart as people think they are.”  And so I said, “Well, great.  Answer this question.  What was Wagner’s use of secondary dominant chords?  What primarily did he use them for, especially Neapolitan chords?”  And she looked at me like I was talking Greek.  I said, “No, I seriously want an answer.  If you’re so smart, what did romantic composers use secondary dominant chords primarily for what purpose?”  I said, “These are not stupid people.  These are some of the brightest people on the planet, but they’re not an expert in fiscal policy and all those things.”

So, I spent too much time on that, but I just hope there are some compliance people.  I’m on your side.  It’s a tough job.  Audit, even tougher.  They see you as, you know, the inspector general coming, and that makes them very nervous.  So, the more people skills you can have, the more you can say, “I’m here to do it.”  Because I’m telling you, 90%+ of the time, even the audit function, the person didn’t do it purposely wrong.

Andrea:  Right.

Dr. Neal Schnoor:  They simply violated one of those little tweaks and in 90%+ of the cases, they’re mitigated very easily.  You have to follow through and make sure they get done because it’s not on everyone’s front burner.  And then, of course, you have those cases of wrongdoing which gets back a little to the abuses of power, where we may go next.

Andrea:  One of the things that came to mind when you were using that example is just the idea of strengths in general, gifts that we have to offer each other.  A compliance person has that to offer, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that everybody is going to always be able to do what they’re able to do.  It just means that the compliance person themselves has that to offer.  That’s their contribution to the university, to the organization.  I think sometimes we just expect people to understand us and give us what we want, like compliance.  Maybe it’s not always about… like you said, it’s not always intentional that, you know, somebody doesn’t do it.  Maybe this is something that you have to offer them.

Dr. Neal Schnoor:  Yes.  You really hit on something there.  One of the things that I’ve done multiple times in my role – having been a faculty member and then in administration and a dean and those kinds of things – is I have noticed this very rare phenomenon, and folks can reflect on it; we tend to think everybody else knows what we know.  I mean, it’s just second nature to you and your job now doing all you do.  But if I walked in to record a podcast, I would need training.  I don’t know how to do that.

So, even in these big areas, we start from the understanding that the other person knows what I’m doing… and you just nailed it.  Part of it’s walking and saying, “I’m here.  I’m the audit officer.  The purpose of my job is to look into…”  Just give them a little background, that can even help.

Andrea:  “And I’m for you as long as we’re working together to make this right.”

Dr. Neal Schnoor:  Sure.

Andrea:  Okay.

Dr. Neal Schnoor:  Yeah.  And if it goes the other direction – we start finding negative things – it can become adversarial, but it needs to be done.  And, again, as long as the culture of the organization is supporting that, it’ll be strong.  Moving more to your question about leadership, it can be a little bit vexing.  But I’d offer a few black and white things that I think… and you know me, I’m a gray guy.

Andrea:  Are you referring to the healthy leadership?

Dr. Neal Schnoor:  Yeah.

Andrea:  I don’t think I actually asked that question.

Dr. Neal Schnoor:  No.  I’m looking more at that managerial level.

Andrea:  Okay.

Dr. Neal Schnoor:  So, where I want to say a couple of things that we can do that I think are really important are to make sure that our policies are clear, that they are accessible.  So, I’m the employee; I can look it up, and I can find it, and I can read it.  You won’t believe how many institutions you go to – they don’t even know where those policies are.  They can’t find them.  So, they wonder what’s happening, and they need to be regularly updated.  We talked about training; really good training must be continuous and ongoing.  In short, we have to eliminate single points of failure.  And in a single point of failure – the easiest way you can think about that – if there is one person that signs off on the check, and there is nobody else that has to approve that you’ve just created a problem for yourself.  You’ve created an opportunity for an employee to do something wrong or even the appearance of doing something wrong.

So, there’s always got to be this sort of dual authentication, no matter what.  And if you think about they say, “Okay, well, you get all the way up to the president; who’s looking at them?”  Probably the system chancellor.  In a corporate world, the board is looking over the shoulder of the CEO.  So, it goes all the way to the top that there shouldn’t be single points of failure.  And the last thing, while lately in the country… I won’t get too political.  There have to be at least confidential if not anonymous reporting mechanisms.  That’s how you stop abuse of power.

If I, the employee down the chain, fear retribution because I’m going to report something even criminal – let’s go to all the way there – with someone in the organization, I won’t report that potentially if I fear I’m the one that’s going to get fired.  So, there must be 360 reviews and opportunities for confidential reporting to a compliance officer, to audit, and then they have to dispassionately look at those.  We know that there can be cases where someone falsely accused somebody, but that’s why the whole process, in total, does work and that fights those abuses of power you’re talking about.

Andrea:  How does someone know when they should report something and when they shouldn’t?

Dr. Neal Schnoor:  Well, here would be my initial take.  That’s why I like the confidential and/or anonymous, and if folks don’t know that – confidential means somebody knows it’s you.  Somebody who read it knows it’s you.  Anonymous means you can make the report, and there’s nobody on this planet can know.  So, there are options for both and there are pros and cons to both of those, but I’d say report it.

Andrea:  If in doubt.

Dr. Neal Schnool:  If in doubt, report, and then it’s up to our folks, and I’ve dealt with many of them.  We have had some very wrongful accusations, and it comes out.  If your person, you know, takes every complaint at face value and dispassionately and thoroughly reviews those, investigates those, the truth does come out.  It really does.  So, the truth can exonerate the other person and no one needs to really know about it even.  So, if in doubt, report.

Andrea:  Do you have any thoughts for somebody who might be in an institution that’s not so healthy, that they’re not so confident that there isn’t corruption up the chain of command perhaps?  Maybe they’re not really sure if their report will actually be taken seriously or if something will happen with it.  How does somebody approach this idea of reporting and following up with it when they’re in that kind of a situation?  Do you have thoughts on that?

Dr. Neal Schnoor:  Yeah, well, it’s just a tough situation.  I’m not going to joke with you.  If the culture is that bad that you don’t have a… you know, for instance, my first example would be to go to your manager and ask them, or at the very least, is there any trusted colleague?  You know, let’s say you’re feeling something about sexual harassment but you’re a little afraid to say anything to your boss because maybe they’ll think you’re a troublemaker.  Is there anyone in the organization, a colleague, that you work with that you might talk to them as a place to start?

But we’ve got reporting mechanisms through our equity and diversity office through our HR office, through any supervisor, manager, or dean.  So, it wouldn’t have to even be within, say, your unit.  Maybe you could report it through another because you fear that.  There should be a compliance and audit function and so on, and those ought to be confidential resources.

So, I’m only challenged because there is really no good answer for that person if the culture is so bad that complaints are ignored.  But I will tell you that some avenues you can pursue there is outside the organization.  Whether it’s a public institution or a private institution, they have to operate in compliance with federal state employment laws.  And so you can go to the state level, you can go to the federal level and issue complaints.

And that has happened before, that a person doesn’t feel comfortable, and they make a complaint with the Nebraska, you know, Office of… you name it, disabilities or so on or so forth.  And they will take up the complaint for you.  So, it makes me sad that there are institutions that employees feel like they do not or cannot report, but in those cases, you really can find external advocacy as well.

Andrea:  If you’re somebody coming into a situation where maybe you’ve been hired in a position like yours or an upper-level position to kind of make a change in health…  There needs to be a healthier environment here, healthier perspective on the way that we listen to people, the way that we work with people.  What are some of the initial things that somebody should think about when they are the one that’s coming in to help set the tone and make the changes?

Dr. Neal Schnoor:  Well, I mean, the best I can say… because every day there are people that genuinely feel like they’re not heard.  And I will say that’s the one thing, to go in and say, “I have five things that I’m going to do here.  They’re foolproof and they’re going to fix something that’s wrong…”  Listen, listen, listen, listen, what are people really saying?  I’ll give you an example so it’s not such a hot issue because people jump to, you know, criminal activity and sexual misconduct and so on.  But in every organization I have ever worked, you do a survey and everyone says, “We have to improve communication.”  I guarantee you; I’ve never seen that not come up in the top three in any culture.

You know what, I have not been successful yet at convincing anyone on a larger scale… and I’m not putting our groups down.  We got people on campus that do, but back when I was a dean, everybody, “Well, let’s send more memos out.”  Wait a minute, you didn’t ask them what that meant.  So, we have more meetings and we send out more bulletins, and I don’t think people are saying when communication’s bad that x,y,z is happening.  I think they say, “You aren’t listening.”  And so, it’s not a pretty answer.  I don’t have easy answers.  But the answer is to listen, to engage genuinely with people.  You better have a thick skin because they’re going to say some things, but that’s when you start hearing their issues when they do let loose and become a bit more emotional.

So, it’s all about listening and validating, honoring that they feel this way, not arguing with them right away.  You don’t know if it’s true or not.  It’s true in their world right now.  So, I’d like to go into a long thing, “Well, then you need a strategic plan.  You need to put together a blue route.”  There could be a thousand different answers, but I just leave it with people, “Are you genuinely listening or as soon as they say a word like ‘more communication’, you start pinging off answers that you think will communicate better?”

So, you know, when they say, “I’m uncomfortable in the workplace environment,” you’ve got to dig a little bit.  It could be that they’re feeling underappreciated.  It could be that they’re feeling underpaid.  It could be that they want to do more and feel like they have more skills and are asking you for professional development.  But you won’t know that if you just go, “Uncomfortable,” and don’t listen further.

Andrea:  Hmm.  I love that.  It’s hard.  It’s hard to not feel easily offended.  It’s hard to stay curious instead of making assumptions and that sort of thing, but it’s imperative in that kind of a situation.  Love that.

Dr. Neal Schnoor:  Yeah.

Andrea:  You know, we’re facing so much right now with COVID-19 and a lot of the spotlight on social injustice and in particular, racism.  When somebody is a leader of an institution, they have some sort of leadership capabilities or position, what does healthy leadership look like in such complicated times?  Especially when things are getting dicey and when there’s this kind of social unrest, perhaps even inside the company, inside the organization.

Dr. Neal Schnoor:  Well, I mean, it is truly a time for courageous leaders.  And really, sort of brave decisions have to be made that you’re going to be lucky if you get 60-40 approvals anymore on almost any decision you make.  And I don’t mean that, again, as an either/or proposition.  But if you take the COVID situation, are you delivering courses on campus or not?  And some people will look at it from a student perspective.  I’ve heard very intelligent people.  I could cite the articles.  We come from a system that our chancellor early looked at all of the information, his whole team thought it through and said, “You know, we’re gonna continue to offer instruction, but let’s minimize the people on campus for the safety of everyone.”

We have another institution across the country that said, “You know, we’re doing a real disservice by not having classes.  The students that are in class are 99% healthy.  It doesn’t affect them very much.  They’re gonna do great.”  But in each case, there’s not an either/or.  What about the faculty that are sixty-five?  What about the students who go home and care for a mother or father that has cancer, diabetes, so on?  It is just there are so many factors involved in that one alone, and neither of those people are right or wrong.  They’re using the best information in the region and locality they’re at with guidance from health.

So literally, what sticks out from that, you have to be brave, you have to listen.  There we are again; those leaders are listening.  They’re gathering experts who aren’t afraid to debate and differ and offer them different viewpoints.  And ultimately, the leader has to decide the direction.  Then they have to set the policies, the procedures, the plans, and of course, each decision creates fifteen more decisions, and on and on and on.  But you really have to have built into your culture the ability to disagree professionally, to allow voices to be heard and not let any one leader within that structure over-dominate.  And then just continue to look…

I will also say that there are just some plain restraining factors.  So, I’ll give you a silly example.  So, somebody says, “Oh, we’ll be able to clean the rooms better than we ever have before.”  And that’s great.  I’m not disagreeing with them.  And I’ll say, “Great, so do you have the staff to do it?”  “Well, I don’t think we have enough staff, plus with the budget reduction, we won’t have them.”  “Do you have enough product to clean?”  “So, we’re gonna have people use Lysol wipes and clean their office space”  “When can we get Lysol wipes?”  “Oh, maybe January.”  So, if you back up, “How does that help us in August?”  So, these are things that everybody’s working through.  But if their supply chain is good, and they’ve got a plan, and they’ve reduced this, then they may be able to start up.

So, I just tell people I know it’s a tough time, say, the COVID front.  I hope they just, at least, in the back of their mind… governors have the hardest job that I’ve seen in my lifetime.  There are no good answers.  And if we don’t start up the economy, people are not getting medical screenings and they’re losing their jobs.  So, these answers ended a long, long time ago.  With the social thing, you know, all I’ll say at this point is I think it’s always wonderful.  You know, I take it back to, you know, once we have to lay the axe to the root of the tree of liberty once in a while.  And when people feel like they’re not being heard – worse, that they’re being treated terribly unfairly – then absolutely – it’s what our country is founded on – should protest and have their voices be heard.

And while they’re the toughest situations, I’ve always found through life, the toughest situations lead to growth.  And I hope we grow and learn.

Andrea:  Hmm, so true.  And what you’ve said about culturally establishing this, “It’s okay to disagree…” you were talking about that in terms of COVID earlier and then you were also talking a lot about listening.  Those seem to also apply here in this idea of social unrest.  If we can have a conversation and disagree, how do we do that in a healthy way?  And how does a leader demonstrate that or kind of lead the way in having a healthy conversation?

Dr. Neal Schnoor:  Well, I think we’re seeing it all around the country.  I mean, we’ve got several leaders that are stepping up and doing that.  We’re seeing it right on the street with protesters and different mayors and so and so, meeting face to face and talking and doing it in a reasonable manner.  And reasonable is not the right word… Doing it in a respectful manner to one another, both directions.  I don’t think it’s that hard.  We’ve talked about the listening – to be open, to honor, and truly listen to that perspective – but then, Andrea, I think, you know, we’ve done this.  We’ve done this, not just on this issue; we’ve done it on others.  And I think what’s loud and clear this time is, “Not again!”  Have we learned nothing?  Have we gained nothing?

So, there are going to need to be some sort of actions that come out of this.  And so different mayors have already announced things like, “We’re gonna look at reinvesting to handle the income in unequal distribution.”  And it really has turned upside down.  And to provide better educational opportunities; you’ll see any number of initiatives already coming.  But there needs to be practical, visible, helpful, not just reactionary…

And again, I go back to my example.  Just think about that simple word “communication” that had so many permutations.  We have to involve the very people that are expressing this to us to be engaged in that conversation.  And the leader is going to have to be that very flexible but firm in-between making sure the voices are heard.

But, again, making sure the voices are heard.  We can’t just have the city hall just ring off five things they’re going to do.  Did you engage them in that discussion because that, again, is just sort of explaining to people again in another way, and it’s just not good.  It’s not good.

Andrea:  So, in kind of wrapping things up here, Dr. Schnoor, when you think of somebody being a “Voice of Influence”, do you have any advice, any suggestions for us in how we can better be a “Voice of Influence”?

Dr. Neal Schnoor:  Well, there’s just so many things.  We had a whole podcast we looked at that last time, and you’ve had so many guests having a different facet on it.

Andrea:  It’s always interesting to hear what people have to say, though.

Dr. Neal Schnoor:  It is good.  Today, I’m sitting here looking at leaders, and I think you just have to have tremendous courage.  I would go with what you said; find your real skills, your real talents and chase those and offer your unique voice.  But don’t get too lost in why you’re not the voice for everybody.  Here’s something I will tell you that the greatest leaders, no matter how great they are, absolutely – and somebody out there can call me and tell me if they found somebody that’s different – they’re great because they have great people around them.  They are supported by great people.

I didn’t say everyone was a martyr or a saint or whatever, but they assemble a team with the unique talents.  They’re able to supervise effectively, to guide, to listen to that advice.  That team works well together, but none of these decisions… there’s this false idea that if we get “super CEO” in… that’s a new model we’re really stuck in; go hire a superstar.  I guarantee you that the company doesn’t go well if you don’t have great work programs, if you don’t have good supervisors all the way throughout the level, and that’s functional everywhere.

So, how do you become a “Voice of Influence”?  Hone your unique talents, your unique skills, and then I’ll just add the other part just so it’s not all sunshine – that’s not easy to do.  Sometimes we can’t see our unique skills, but I’d also say be quiet.  You’re not an expert on everything.  So, when you’re sitting around the table – and I’ve got an expert in counseling – listen more than you talk.

Well, I read a tweet and it said, “Good grief!  Keep the tweet to yourself and listen until you really have something thoughtful to add.”  But we often have people that assume they’re experts at everything, and they want to influence everything.  So, I think it’s a time if you think you want to step up and be a mayor or you want to be a president of a campus, you not only have to have skills in crisis.  You have to understand the academic mission.  You have to be able to engage with donors.  You have to engage with politicians.  You have to be able to eloquently give small, you know, addresses.  You’re asked to pin articles.  If you don’t have all of those skills, everything I just mentioned, there’s an expert helping you underneath that.

So, being part of that machine and bringing it together is the thing that I love, and having those pieces work together.  I think that’s a unique skill I have.  So, everybody has got to work to find it.  But the word I’ll leave with or if there’s a follow-up from you is we need to listen more.  And I mean, really listen, and then follow up with questions like you’re doing, rather than asking the first question and then deciding whether I like or dislike the bursar, whether they’re Democrat or Republican, or whether they agree with it.  Engage a little bit deeper and have a thoughtful dialogue.

Andrea:  And that’s why I keep asking this question.  I love the timely response.  Thank you.  Thank you for being a “Voice of Influence” here for our listeners today, Dr. Schnoor.

Dr. Neal Schnoor:  It’s an absolute pleasure, and thank you for the work you’re doing.  It’s so important.

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When Narcissism Comes to Your Organization with Dr. Chuck DeGroat

Episode 150

Dr Chuck DeGroat Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

Dr. Chuck DeGroat is Professor of Counseling and Christian Spirituality at Western Theological Seminary Holland MI, and Co-Founder and a Senior Fellow at Newbigin House of Studies, San Francisco. He is a licensed therapist, author, retreat leader, and spiritual director. Chuck has been married to Sara for 25 years and has two daughters. Chuck is also the author of the new book, When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse.

Today we’re tackling the subject of narcissism, the systems that allow it, and how to deal with it. This conversation is applicable to organizations of all kinds but we take a deeper look at how it shows up in churches specifically, and in organizations that have a similar structure and culture. I think you’re going to find this to be an incredibly rich conversation.

In this episode, Chuck shares how it feels to be on the other side of a narcissist, how to recognize the narcissistic bite, vulnerability versus fauxnerability, what happens when we are complicit with a narcissistic leader, why we protect people in power, how to use our voice even though it may feel narcissistic, and so much more.

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Transcript

People of influence know that their voice matters, and they work to make it matter more.  This is Andrea Wenburg, and you’re listening to the Voice of Influence podcast.

All right, we’re tackling the subject of narcissism today.  What’s really interesting about this conversation is that we’re talking about not just narcissism itself, but also systems that allow narcissism, that are susceptible to narcissism, and how to deal with it.  There is much going on in this conversation.

The person who is with me here today is Dr. Chuck DeGroat.  He is a Professor of Counseling in Christian Spirituality at Western Theological Seminary, and co-founder and a Senior Fellow at Newbigin House of Studies, San Francisco.  He is a licensed therapist, an author, retreat leader, and spiritual director.  Chuck has been married to Sara for twenty-five years and has two daughters.  He has a new book out called When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community from Emotional and Spiritual Abuse.

This conversation is certainly applicable to organizations of all kinds.  But we do talk about some of what goes on in churches, specifically, and in organizations that have that kind of a structure.  I think that you’re going to find this an incredibly rich conversation because we tackled a lot.  We talked about what narcissism is, how you know if you’re sort of on the other side of narcissism.  He talks about the narcissistic bite and fauxnerability – which is a fake sort of vulnerability – different characteristics that people who have narcissism… those characteristics that they display, and what happens when we are complicit with somebody who is a narcissistic leader.

So, why do we do that?  Why do we like how we feel around that person?  And why do we protect other people in power?  There is so much here.  We discuss whether or not it’s possible for a narcissistic to change and how people can kind of determine whether or not their impulse to lead, to have influence, to be up on stage, to have their podcast… whether or not that is narcissistic, and whether or not we need to be concerned about that or how we handle that without completely refusing to use our voice.

So, how do we use our voice even though it may feel like, “Could it be narcissistic?”  These are really, really interesting things that we talk about in this conversation, and I think that you’re going to get a lot out of it.  I highly recommend that you check out Dr. DeGroat’s book, When Narcissism Comes to Church.

Here’s my interview with Dr. Chuck DeGroat:

Andrea:  Chuck DeGroat, it is great to have you on the Voice of Influence podcast.

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Thank you so much.  It’s good to be with you.

Andrea:  You have just written a book that’s just been published When Narcissism Comes to Church:  Healing your Community from Emotional and Spiritual Abuse.  This is such an important topic.  What led you to write this particular book?

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah, that’s a good question.  The safer version of that story really goes back to the work that I’ve done over the last fifteen years or so.  I do a lot of psychological testing for people who are pastors and ministry leaders and church planters and organizational leaders.  And what we’ve seen, particularly, in the church – and I know your audience is broader than that – but what we’ve seen, sadly, in the church is that a significant majority of people going into ministry test in what we call the Cluster B, or the DSM-5 calls the Cluster B personality disorders, which feature narcissistic tendencies.

And so that’s a primary reason to sort of diagnose and explain why that is, particularly in church and ministry contexts.  The larger reason is actually more personal.  I mean, it goes back to my days in seminary in the mid-1990s, in my own arrogance, in my own certainty, in my own sense of being God’s gift to ministry, and recognizing that that was painful for people in my life and for my wife and doing my own work in counseling.  And so that’s been really important.

Andrea:  Let’s start with defining narcissism, though.  Our audience is somewhat familiar with the term, but would you do that for us?

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yes.  So, when we think about narcissism, just to kind of click off a few characteristics, we often think of the classic grandiosity.  Alongside of that, there’s often a kind of interpersonal attention-seeking that goes along.  We, more often than not, see that those who are diagnosably narcissistic show very little empathy.  In other words, they’re really just not able to connect with the basic needs and emotions of another person.  And then often, because they relate in these ways, there are impairments in their relationships and in their work.  And so, there are ripple effects within organizations, churches, and so forth.

But one of the things I say is that might be kind of a classic caricature of narcissism, but it is more complicated than that.  But yeah, more often than not, we see this in attention-seeking, grandiosity, lack of empathy, and impairments in relationships.

Andrea:  And what does that look like when you’re on the other side of that coin when you’re the person who is experiencing the narcissism?

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Mhm.  It’s crazymaking.  It can be really confusing because – and I’ve been under narcissistic leaders and I’ve experienced narcissism in organizations – oftentimes, you’re drawn to a narcissistic leader.  He or she may be inspirational, influential in your life, they may cast vision that is exciting and impactful.  And yet when you experience what I call narcissism’s bite, you will experience it as you’ll feel kind of crazy.  You’ll wonder, “Is it me or is it that person?”  “Maybe it’s me, maybe I’m missing something.”  “Maybe I did something wrong.  After all, he’s so powerful and everyone loves him.  It’s got to be me.”

Andrea:  Yes.

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  So, you second-guess your own reality often.

Andrea:  Narcissism’s bite you said?

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Mhm.

Andrea:  What does that tend to look like?

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah, it can be a little tiny bite sometimes and it can be a big bite.  Oftentimes with the smaller bites, it looks like what we call emotional abuse or spiritual abuse.  These are like tiny, little knife blows over the course of many years.  It might be a cutting kind of remark or critique.  It might be pulling the rug out from under you within a project.  It might be sort of whispering in the ear of a colleague about how you’re not doing your job.  It might be any of those kinds of things, but eventually, when it comes back to you, it’s kind of like, “Ouch, that hurt!  I thought I was doing well.  I thought that he liked me.”  And so the bite can be something of a confusing ouch, in which you say to yourself, “I’m just not sure it happened.  I thought I was playing by the rules.”

Andrea:  And then you just feel completely confused about what’s going on.

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah, yeah.

Andrea:  The term gaslighting comes to mind.  So is that how you would define gaslighting or what is that?

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah, I think so.  I think that phenomenon of gaslighting is, it’s a word that we’re using or a descriptor that we’re using more and more to put words around that experience of feeling crazy and confused.  I remember years ago when I was under the leadership of a narcissist.  This was someone who’s well respected and a number of important circles had raised lots of money, had influence.  And I remember that there were these ouch moments, you know, what I described as the narcissistic bite, right?  There are these moments like this where it was kind of like, “Ouch, that hurt,” or “Why did he say that to me?” or “Is he not confident in my abilities?”

But more often than not, I had this sense of, “It’s got to be me.  There’s got to be something wrong with me.”  And there would actually be times where he’d come to me and he’d say, “Chuck, I’m just not sure what’s going on with you.  You’re not as sharp as you used to be,” or “You’re not as engaged,” or “Last week, when you got up in church and you gave that announcement, you weren’t as charismatic as you usually are.”  And, so those of us on the other end of this gaslighting that you make mention of feel as if we’re going crazy.

Andrea:  Right.  As though you’re not sure what your reality really is anymore.

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Mhm.  That’s a really good way of putting it.  And I think there are times where we find ourselves in that space, and I’ve seen people leave.  My primary context is more like ministry, Christian organizations, and things like that.  And I’ve seen people leave ministry, leave pastoring, leave organizations with their tail tucked between their legs, questioning their own reality until they get them in with a good therapist and begin to identify like, “Oh, it wasn’t me.  Actually, I was doing as well as I could have, but I experienced the bite of a narcissist.”

Andrea:  Okay.  That’s so important.  So, now, what does somebody do when they’re in that situation?  Maybe they have experienced the bite of the narcissist.  How do they heal from that? Are there any particular steps that people take or that you just find a good therapist?  What are some of the things that you suggest?

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah.  Yeah, that’s a great question.  And really it does begin by defining reality.  As you mentioned, they begin to question reality, right?  And so, you’ve got to find a space, a place, a person in which you begin to define reality rightly, and, oftentimes, that’s a therapist.  I’ll often say to people who call me, write me say, “Hey, I think I’m in a narcissistic organization with a narcissistic pastor.  Do I confront him?”  And I’ll often say, “No, don’t do that at all.  Actually, step back, and take care of yourself first.  Define reality, get clear on what’s going on.  Begin to tend to your own wounds, and heal your own wounds, and then make that decision as to whether or not you want to engage, but only after doing some clarifying work in therapy.”

And, oftentimes, as a therapist, when I’m doing this work with someone, it’s just not one session, it’ll often be weeks and sometimes months before they can begin to get clear on, “Oh, this actually happened to me.  And, now, I’m beginning to connect the dots and I’m beginning to realize I’ve been in this…”  Like, I was talking to someone earlier today who was in an organization with a narcissistic leader for thirty years, and it took twenty-six years to wake up to it.  And so this can take a long while.

Andrea:  And I would imagine that tending to your own wounds… like, you have to first recognize what the wounds are, and I suppose that’s part of that defining reality and seeing what it is.  I’ve certainly seen it happen where people don’t even realize that they are hurt, that they’ve been hurt until they start to see it in their body, and in the way they react to other people.

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah, that’s right.  And they don’t realize it even in their body.  And so I’ll ask them, “So, how do you feel?”  Or “How do you experience this in your body?”  And they’ll say, “I feel okay, fine.”  And I’ll say, “Well, you got to give me a little more than that.”  And it’ll take a while for them to actually get in tune.  So, I have to ask specific questions like, “What about your sleep? Has your sleep been disrupted?”  “I don’t sleep at all.  I don’t sleep well at all.  I’m constantly ruminating on stuff at work.”  Or “I’ve had this pain in my back for like the last five years, and it just doesn’t go away.”  Or “I’m dealing with heartburn and acid reflux all the time over the last three or four years since I’ve been working in this organization.”  “I’m constantly down,” or “I’m constantly anxious.”  And, yeah, what is amazing is that at the outset, people often can’t identify those feelings or those symptoms.  They’re so disconnected because they’ve been in survival mode for so long.

Andrea:  Right.  And they’re not even sure that… like we were talking about before, they’re not sure what their reality is.  So, I can see why it would be super helpful to have other people’s perspective if it’s a really good, you know, therapist or even friends, as well, to be able to say, “No, you’re not crazy.  You are normal.  They’re not normal.”

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah, just to reflect back and say, “That doesn’t sound healthy.  Let’s have a conversation.”  Yeah, definitely.

Andrea:  Okay.  So, it seems like we tend to exempt people who are in leadership who tend to be really talented and charismatic, attracting people to the cause, that sort of thing…  We tend to exempt those people from accountability when it comes to the narcissistic bite, if you will.  I mean, that’s what I see.  Is that what you see, and why do we do that?

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  I think that that’s a great observation, and I think you’re right.  In large part, we protect those in power and people in power protect those in power.  When I tell stories, by the way, I always kind of conflate different stories as to kind of conceal the identities, right?

Andrea:  Sure.

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  A few years ago, in a situation in which a prominent pastor was revealed to be abusive, and it stunned me because I knew the community and I knew some of the people involved.  But I knew that some of the people involved, who I had some love for and respect for, that they helped cover it up and protect this person.  And I knew them well enough to know that, like, that’s not…  At their core, I know that these are good human beings, and yet, when you get into those positions of power, and you become self-protective, and you develop relationships of loyalty, you call in favors, right?  And so, “We do exempt this person because, you know, he’s had so much of an impact.  He has born lots of fruit in his ministry, or you know, he’s been so successful in his organization.”

And so, we don’t want to go after those folks, you know, because it seems like they’ve done a good job.  This is where we have to, again, name reality.  We have to name the pain.  Where there is narcissism, there’s always a debris field of abuse: spiritual abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse at times.  So, this is where we need to name reality and tell the truth about what’s really going on and the impact.  And I remember, going back to that story a few years ago, as I talked to some of those people involved and said, “But do you realize the debris field?”  And as they recognized the debris field, there was this sense of profound shame, like, “Oh, I allowed this to happen.  I’m so sorry.”

Andrea:  That’s got to be really painful to see when you have allowed something to happen.  I would imagine, that with the self-protection that you were mentioning before, that part of what we’re protecting ourselves from is the idea that we’re wrong.  The idea that God might not be who I thought He was if this pastor isn’t who I thought he was.  Do you see that as well?

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah, I do.  I do, and I think there are lots of reasons why we find ourselves maybe covering up or complicit.  I remember a number of years ago being kind of in the middle of a situation where I found myself there.  And during that time, I liked proximity to the narcissistic leader.  And I didn’t know or think that this person was narcissistic, but I liked it because of how I felt around this person.  And then when others started to come forward and say, “I had this experience and this experience and this experience,” it was hard for me to begin to connect the dots and recognize that this person who I respect and who has high confidence in me and who has encouraged me is also a really flawed human being who has hurt others.

And so there are a lot of reasons why we’re not entirely clear right away, you know.  At the time, I had a license in counseling.  I had a Ph.D. in psychology, right?  I’m supposed to know these things.  And yet, what I want to say to your listeners is, let’s have some kindness for ourselves and offer ourselves some grace because sometimes we have blind spots too.  And then if we do find ourselves in a place or position where we’re complicit, then let’s own it, and recognize how our participation has hurt other people and really be honest about that.

Andrea:  Wow, your statement: “I like how I feel when I’m around this person.”

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah.

Andrea:  Gosh, I’ve seen that.  And of course, I’ve felt that, and I’m sure other people felt it around me when I’ve been, you know, unhealthily handling influence.  But that is really important because a lot of times we make our decisions based on how we’re feeling around somebody.  We think that that is a good thing to feel good, you know, “I love how I feel when I’m with this person.”  But what are the feelings that we should be attuned to, that would kind of trigger to say, “Wait a second, I need to take a step back because I’m actually feeling…” whatever it might be, whether it be indignant or…  What are some of those things that we should be watching for?

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah, you mean like when we kind of find ourselves in the middle or maybe even a little complicit?

Andrea:  Yeah.

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Well, that’s tough because we’re not always aware of our feelings in that moment.  I think what I often tell people is be aware of the “high U” experience.  So, what I mean by that is it can be like a roller coaster, being around a narcissist, because you experience these high highs and then these low lows.  And so be aware of being on a kind of perpetual, year-long, five year-long, however long it takes adrenaline high where you’re riding this wave, you know.  So the narcissistic leader announces some big new program or initiative for the company and you’re going to be involved and you’re riding the wave up.  And there’s a party and the drinks are flowing.  And I’m feeling really great about myself and I belong.  And then he comes to me three weeks later and says, “You really dropped the ball on this,” and now I’m feeling really low.

And, oftentimes, you know, I look back to my own life ten, twelve years ago when I was in that place, but oftentimes, I’ll find that when people come to me, it’s sort of like, they’re somewhere, probably, riding close to the low part of the roller coaster.  Now, they’re recognizing that they’re on the outs.  But as they document their experience over the last two years, or five years or ten years, there was a sense of, if I ask, “Well, what was it like? What did you feel?”  “Well, it felt so good for such a long time and I was riding such a high that I really, you know, wasn’t as healthy as I could have been.  And I was eating too much and drinking too much and making a lot of money and doing a lot of great stuff, but now I realized that I was kind of lost.”  And lots of folks who I talked to will talk about feeling lost, feeling alone, feeling like there wasn’t any ever real connection.  It was more like trauma bonding with this person.  And there was never really a sense of, like, we knew each other or we were connected to one another.

Andrea:   Hmm.  Trauma bonding.  Can you explain that?

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah, trauma bonding.  Yeah, it’s a kind of false intimacy where you develop a relationship around your frustration with a scapegoat or someone else.  And, so, you know, for instance, just talking to someone recently who really did life and relationship like this for a long while, and she and a co-worker had a bad experience at another company and they both came from that company.  And they both reported to the same narcissistic boss.  And so they would often get together and they’d talk about how terrible it was in this other place.

And they thought that they had a relationship.  In fact, they’d get together at times for drinks after work and share life stories with one another until the narcissistic leader picked one over the other for a position.  And then there was a sense of, “Oh, we didn’t have a relationship.  All we were doing was we were just kind of raging with one another about our shared experience of anger at another person.”  And that’s not really intimacy.  That’s not healthy intimacy.  That’s a kind of false intimacy that’s born out of pain.

Andrea:  Okay, raging about another person because of something that they did that we don’t like.  Boy, does that happen a lot!

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yes. Yeah.  Right.

Andrea:  So that, in particular, sounds like a really important thing to be attuned to in ourselves when we’re doing that and then to ask those questions around, you know, “Is this healthy?”

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah.  I love that phrase that you just used, “to be attuned to ourselves”, right?  And to recognize… and I have some shame about this, that I haven’t recognized this at different times over the years.  You know, you just said it.  We all find ourselves in conversations like this, and you know, it’s a half-hour in and I’m going off on someone who I’m frustrated with, and then I have this moment of clarity.  And this happens more often than you think, I have this moment of clarity where it’s like, “What am I doing?  What am I participating in?”  But it feels powerful if we’re honest.  It feels powerful.

Andrea:  And like you said, the adrenaline high.  There is an adrenaline high when you feel that kind of indignance.

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  And the reality is, for many of us – and I’m one of these folks – if we look at our own stories, we realize that we experienced some kind of pain, trauma, and abuse in our past.  And so, the power of that moment of scapegoating another or raging about another, there’s a kind of power because you feel seen, you feel heard, and you feel empowered in your speech.  And I realized that in a way that for me is a really sad and troubling way of getting needs met.  It’s not ultimately how we healthily get our needs met, but it’s something that we commonly do. 

Andrea:  Let’s move toward the system.  So, your book talks about healing your community; not just the individual, but also the community.

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Right.

Andrea:  How do we know when we’re in a situation… or how do we even recognize the difference between a leader who just has a lot of influence and a narcissistic leader?

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Oh, that’s a good question.  Yeah, because they can look a lot alike, right?  And the thing about it is, oftentimes, when I get talking about these things, people will come back to me and they’ll say, “So, you’re saying that a leader can’t be charismatic or influential or inspiring.”  And I want to clear this up and say not at all.  I think they can be all of the above.  But those who are narcissistic manifest this cluster of attributes, and you know, we talked about it a little bit earlier.  There’s that grandiosity, that attention-seeking, that lack of empathy, and ultimately their influence is not in service of others.  It’s really in service of their own ego.

And, so, I’ve met some of the most gifted, charismatic, influential folks who are humble and self-aware and curious.  And in fact, I had someone come to me who said, “You’ve just written a book on narcissism. Am I a narcissist?”  And I said, “No, actually, just the fact that you’d ask that question tells me that you’re probably not narcissistic,” because those who are, are deathly scared of asking that question.  So, where there is curiosity, where there is wonder, where there is humility, self-understanding, we don’t see narcissism, although we may see some of the features that look like narcissism in some contexts.

Andrea:  I love that list that you just gave; the curiosity, the humility, and… self-understanding, is that what you said?

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah, right.

Andrea:  I can see how it would be really helpful to see that that is how you know that somebody is more healthy in terms of their influence.

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah.

Andrea:  So, when it comes to the system, what is a narcissistic system?  Is there a narcissistic system, and what creates the system around somebody to make that happen?

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Oh, yeah.  Do you have a two-hour window to talk about this?

Andrea:  I sure do!

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah.  This is complicated because, you know, it’s one thing to deal with a powerful, influential, narcissistic leader.  It’s another thing to deal with a system.  That’s where it’s sort of… it’s invisible.  It’s like, you know, we’re recording this in the midst of COVID-19 right now, you know, and it’s a virus.  It’s in the air.  It’s invisible, you can’t see it.  And you know, my context – as I mentioned earlier – is often Christian circles context, organizations.

And I remember a few years ago, a friend of mine who got a job at a very large Christian organization and almost immediately recognized that there was a problem.  Like, this organization that was actually devoted to caring for others featured people higher up in the organization and middle management, who were all consumed with being the best, doing the best; “We’re better than that organization. We’re more unique. We’re more special. We’ve got more influence. We’ve got more power.”

And I mean, this was literally in the air, in the waters that they swam in.  And I remember my friend calling me, saying, “What do I do?”  And I came in, I did some consulting with them and there was a slow recognition over time that because of a history of leadership there and because of their quick rise to power and influence in their particular sphere, there was this sense that even though it was a Christian organization, you’d think it would feature humility, and deference to others, and self-surrender, and that those things were not evident at all.

And as the community began to realize this, it really took the higher-ups the leaders, the vice presidents – as they begin to realize this – there was this kind of collective humbling like, “What have we been doing?”  It was really powerful to see, but boy, it’s really difficult.  I mean, I mentioned already that we can take two hours.  I don’t think I fully answered your question, but I mean, it really takes some time and some real significant effort and intentionality to draw out the depths of systemic narcissism.

Andrea:  You mentioned a couple things there that sounded a little bit like a group of people who believe that they are the hero, that they’re going to come in and save the day.  Maybe that they are right and everybody else is wrong, that sort of thing.  And is that in line with what you were saying?

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah, that’s right.  That’s right.  And I think that there’s a collective sense of… I’m thinking of, now, a megachurch where when they came to grips with this, the way they told this story was, “We really thought…”  Keep in mind, Christian context again, they really had this idea that like, “God has blessed us more than God has blessed anyone else in the area.”

Andrea:  Yeah.

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  “And you can see it because our church has grown.”  And you don’t need God in the picture necessarily to think that, you know, “The market has blessed our organization more than any other organization.”  So, we can all sort of have this narcissism sort of implicit or explicit in our collective system.

Andrea:  Right, because we have had more success or we are blessed more or yeah, I get that.  Here we go, I’m making the assumption.  I don’t know that it’s true.  I mean, do you believe that churches are particularly susceptible to narcissistic leaders and becoming a narcissistic system, and why would that be?

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  That’s the ten-million-dollar question.  Why would that be the church of all things?  And the reality is, is going back to the early centuries of the church – if we just kind of take a historical journey backwards – you see from the time of the kind of the Advent of Constantine and Christendom, there has been this conflation of Christianity and power represented in the Christian empire, right?  And so, narcissism is not a new phenomenon.  And I do think that there is this sense of manifest destiny at times.  Like, “God is on our side, and we’re at war with the powers and principalities and we’ve got to win the war.  And we’ve got to do everything that we can to win the war.  We’ve got to marshal our forces.”  And so we use militaristic language.  I can’t tell you how many churches and organizations I’ve learned about that have names, that have some sort of militaristic overtones or undertones, right?  And I remember when I was a little kid in vacation Bible school and church singing “Onward Christian Soldiers.”

Andrea:  Yeah, “I’m in the Lord’s Army.  Yes, sir!”

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah.  There’s this sense that we have to conquer, and look at the damage over the years that has been done in the name of the conquering army of Christ when Jesus himself was a suffering servant.  Peter picks up the sword and cuts off the ear of the centurion, and Jesus restores the ear, you know.  So, I have trouble answering your question because it’s so paradoxical.

But I remember a colleague, an older colleague of mine – who’s been doing assessment longer than I have – once said to me that, you know, “Look at all the men, in particular, who go into ministry who test on the narcissistic spectrum.”  And he said, “Do you think it might have something to do with the fact that you get up on stage and you say, ‘This is the word of the Lord’?”  And I wonder if there’s just something to that that we are representatives of God.  “I’ve got a master of divinity, right?  And somehow, I’m ordained, and I’ve got a Master of Divinity, and I’m special.  God has set me apart.”  It’s really dangerous.

Andrea:  Right.  Oh, man.  And anytime I hear, “God told me,” or “God’s way,” I feel very nervous about that dynamic because it really kind of strips away people’s desire or their thinking that they have the ability to think for themselves.  It’s like, “Okay, so you’ve told me, you’re sort of in a higher-up position than I am.  I assume that you’re closer to God.  You’ve told me that God’s way is this way.  So, I need to conform to that and I’m conforming to what you’re telling me because you’ve said it.”  But is it God’s way?  I mean, it takes away that sense of agency, I think, that people need to maintain in order to really buy-in, I guess, to what God is saying to them, you know…  I don’t know, to faith in general.

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah, that’s really good.  And you know, what’s tricky about that now is that for a long, long time, we’ve given pastors power.  Power to absolve us of our sins, you know, power to speak to us when we come to them for marriage counseling and say holy things.  And now we’re seeing a decline in the church.  We’re seeing a decline in the power and the respect that ministers are given.  And I think it’s directly related to narcissism in the church and the abuse of power in the church.  We’re hearing more and more about ex-Evangelical – people have left evangelicalism – people have stepped away from church, people are deconstructing.  And I think this is directly related to really the absence of Jesus, you might say, in the church, you know, because I think Jesus stands in the middle of the church, and is kind of like, “This doesn’t look a whole lot like Me.”

Andrea:  And “laying down my life and giving up all of my rights as God.”

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Right, right, neighborly love, love for the poor, and you know, suffering servanthood.  So, I do think that we’re at a moment – I’ve said this in the book, I say this in lots of different contexts – I think we’re at a moment of reckoning.  And we’ve got some choices to make about how we’ll show up.  And it’s interesting to me that we are recording this during COVID-19, where you’ve got this big, kind of, anxiety, right?  “How are we going to do church?

We’ve got to get video equipment.  We’ve got to put it online.  And we’ve got to make it look really good,” when some pastor friends who I really respect are saying, “Okay, we’ll figure that out, but what we need to do is we need to move to our neighborhood.  We need to move to people in our community who are struggling, kids in public schools who aren’t getting meals.”  The ones who I think are following Jesus really authentically are thinking about people in the community, people in need, and they’re moving toward the margins.

Andrea:  Thinking about others who… without the goal of… like, they’re not going to add to their power per se. 

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Right, right.  It’s not about power.

Andrea:  Yeah, it’s just about connecting and serving.  Would you say that there are characteristics of an organization that make it more susceptible to becoming a narcissistic system?  I think about things like a hierarchical structure.  What are your thoughts?

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah, that’s good.   I do think there’s something to say about structures, for sure.  Sometimes hierarchical structures, I think sometimes theologies, and oftentimes it has much more to do with psychology.  In other words, how people show up, what they bring, and the baggage they bring.  People in pain connect to other people in pain, and they look for and idolize the narcissistic leader, right?  I mean, you can wrap whatever theology or structure you want around it.

And this is where it gets a little bit tricky at times because people often come to me and they’ll say, “Well, you probably see much more narcissism in non-denominational churches in your work.”  And I’ll say, “No, I see it in places where there’s lots of accountability.  I see it in places where there are level structures and hierarchical structures.  I see it in places where women can be pastors and women aren’t allowed to be pastors.”

I do think those things factor in at times, but I do think that oftentimes, it’s a group of people looking for… the psychological language is they’re“ideal hungry followers”.  They’re idealistically looking for someone to meet all of their heroic aspirations, you know.  Someone really to be God, in a sense, God in the flesh.  And this is easily transferable into all kinds of different organizations and startups.  I lived and pastored in the Bay Area for a while, and you know, the kinds of leaders that commanded the attention at the head of startups, you know, and larger companies in the Bay Area, oftentimes, there were a group of followers who are hungry for that kind of heroic leadership, you know.  And so, it’s a function of some kind of collective psychology as well, too.

Andrea:  Right.  That sense of needing a savior or needing a hero to come save the day and then, ah, phew, I feel relieved that somebody is gonna save this or save me or finally, somebody thinks what I think, and they’re going to take the message further.  And then that sense of relief, it just seems like people just let down their guard then and follow willy-nilly.

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah, I think that’s it.   And I think that this is not a contemporary phenomenon.  I think we’ve been doing it for a long time.  I mean, I’ve been doing this kind of work for over twenty years now, and it’s a shock to me that we’re really not much further along than we were even twenty years ago.  And that’s what?  The advent of lots of information, psychology and understanding spiritual and emotional abuse and trauma and gaslighting.  And we’re still missing it and following leaders who trick us into thinking that they’ve got it all, that they’re the hero.

Andrea:  Hmm.  Let’s move this conversation toward healing.  Let’s say a church then they’ve had a pastor that has displayed this narcissistic bite and has now left, and the church needs to heal somehow.  The temptation is to say that, “Oh good, the pastor’s gone, so we’re better now.”

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yes.

Andrea:  But I know that you would not say that that’s necessarily the case.  So, can you tell us what kinds of steps a system or a church should go through to really heal and not allow that to happen again?

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah, that’s a great question, and again, a complicated one.  Do you have two hours?

Andrea:  I know.

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  So, one of the easier conversations I have with churches that are in crisis is around me coming in and helping them get out of a pretty significant jam with a narcissistic pastor.  Like when they’re really stuck, it’s not hard for a church to make the choice to say, “Come on in, and help us figure out what’s really going on here.”  The much harder conversation is once we get to a place where perhaps that narcissistic leader steps down, and I say to them, “Now, the real work happens, because now you’ve got to ask yourself a question, ‘How did we get into this in the first place? And what implications does this have for our team and for our structures and our organization and our people and our vision going forward?’”  And it’s kind of like what I hear then is, “Thank you so much for helping.  Don’t call us; we’ll call you,” and I’m being serious.

Andrea:  I believe you.  I absolutely believe you.

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah.  And so that’s really… it’s sad to me.  It’s disturbing because what they end up doing… and we’ve seen this recently with quite a prominent example – I won’t name it – but a very large church that went through its own pain, and they develop a job description for the very same person that they just fired.  It’s kind of like, “Really, you couldn’t invest just a little bit more money for someone to come in and help you walk through this next season?”

Andrea:  Do you think that it’s money, though?

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  I think it’s more than money.  I think it’s fear.  Like, all the attention is on narcissistic leader before then, but then I ask them to turn the attention to them and their own complicity in it.  I ask them to look at long-term patterns.  I ask them to look at structures, and I ask them to look at implicit beliefs.  All this comes from the Systems Thinking of Peter Senge, and when we do that kind of work, it’s kind of like, “Wow, now I have to actually ask hard questions of myself, and it was a lot easier to ask hard questions about the pastor.”

Andrea:  Well, if we’re already looking for somebody to save us and to be the hero, then if that hero then becomes… I don’t know, the bad guy, as soon as he’s gone, it’s like… the answer is gone, but also the problem’s gone.  You know, like you’re putting yourself in that position where you don’t matter in this scenario, and you do.

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  You do.  And you’ve learned to live in a particular kind of way for a long time.  I think that there’s a sense of relief.  For instance, when that powerful narcissistic leader leaves, and there’s this sense of, “We’re okay now.  The problem is gone,” when the problem is still there.  It exists in the air, people’s ways of being, their styles of relating and communicating and assigning tasks and programming, all those things have been sort of formed around the habits of the system.  And so, you know, I’m watching as a number of churches that I’ve consulted over the years made the choice not to do this, and now there are different stages of dysfunction, whether or not they’ve hired another senior pastor that’s replaying, or there’s competition and drama amidst the remaining…whatever it is.  There’s a remaining toxicity that they haven’t dealt with.

Andrea:  And they need to read your book and then give you a call.

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah.

Andrea:  Okay, is there a way that we can have healthy influence with somebody who does seem to be a narcissist?

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Well, I definitely think that relationship – let’s just say relationship, period – with a narcissist is really difficult.  I think someone who’s diagnosably narcissistic… and I talked about the narcissistic spectrum.  So, there can be people who have traits who are not diagnosably narcissistic, but if you are NPD – narcissistic personality disorder – it’s really hard to have influence.  It’s hard to have any kind of honest relationship because… the metaphor I like to use is just imagine you’re dealing with the actor on stage, not the real person behind the stage.  And so all you’re getting is the mask, and oftentimes they don’t know anything other than the mask.

So, the short answer to your question is it’s really hard to have influence.  Now, with someone with narcissistic traits, you’ll notice a curiosity.  And the question I like to ask – and this is a kind of litmus test for me – is, is someone willing to ask the question of his or her people, “How do I impact you or how do you experience me?”  And if a leader is willing to ask that question to his or her people and really receive honest answers without a threat of termination or whatever it might be, then I think we’re well on our way to the possibility of health.  But if they shut that down or if they don’t allow people to answer honestly, only answer a certain way, then I’m really suspicious of the possibility of any influence or progress.

Andrea:  Now, I’ve heard you use the word fauxnerability, like fake vulnerability.  It sounds like that would come into play here.  Like, how can you tell whether somebody is being genuinely vulnerable or just playing the game so that you think that they are?

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  You ask good questions.  Wow, this one… so fauxnerability, that’s a term that I came up with – I hope no one else has used it before – but this fauxnerability looks a lot like honest self-disclosure.  It looks like transparency.  It may even look a little bit like empathy, but it really demonstrates none of those qualities and it’s really tricky. And you know, I’ve experienced this, and so that’s why I name it.  I’ve been sucked into it.  How do you notice it?  Because generally there are a number of different things, and the description is kind of laid out in more detail in the book.

But more often than not, when a person who’s fauxnerable, not vulnerable, talks about his or her life, they talk about their life in general terms.  They don’t talk about how they specifically have hurt people.  They may say, “Oh, I’ve made my share of mistakes over the years.”  But they won’t necessarily say, “Yeah, I just had to confess to someone that I’d been a real bully to them.”  You know, they won’t be that specific, right?  And they don’t manifest repentance or real genuine honesty over the course of time.  They may say something halfway honest at one point, but you don’t see that lasting over time.  And so, those are two common characteristics that you see with people who are generally more fauxnerable. 

Andrea:  All right.  Now, I have noticed that a lot of people, but I would say women in particular – this is what I’ve seen more – are pretty sensitive to the urges within them to want to be on stage, to want to perform, to want to lead or speak up with their voice, but they’re sensitive about it.  They’re nervous to share their voice.  They’re nervous to speak up or to lead because of their prior experience with what may or may not have been narcissism.  Or they’re worried about it being unhealthy power, a desire for glory.  I mean, this is certainly me.  So, I’m describing myself, certainly.  But would you help us bring some clarity to that difference between a healthy desire for influence and an unhealthy desire, whether that be on a stage, in a boardroom, or a conversation?

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah, yeah.  Well, I think what we always have to look at is one’s motivations.  And I think there can be and ought to be a healthy desire for influence that comes out of true humility and a desire to connect with others, to meet the needs of others.  And not in an unhealthy, self-sacrificial kind of way, but in a healthy self-surrendered kind of way.  Our motives are always mixed, you know.  And so, when someone comes to me and says, “Wow, I loved that attention that I got on stage tonight when I preached.”  That’s the second thing that’s actually encouraging to me.  Like, I’ll often say, “Thanks for saying that out loud,” because I think that sort of takes the power away from the narcissistic impulse.

I do think for women, in particular – and maybe I’m missing a piece of this – but I think at least a part of what I hear from some women who’ve been disempowered is, “Boy, it’s really tough to get up there and exert an influence when I’ve been so disempowered over time.”  And I know because I’m teaching a seminary where there are a number of women who’ve experienced this and now they’re preaching.  And I remember one woman saying to me, “There is a kind of like, ‘Screw you, I’m gonna get up there, I’m gonna do what I’m gonna do, and I’m not gonna take no for an answer anymore.’”  And what I want to say is if that’s the case, that kind of feisty, edgy, maybe a little angry, just be honest about it.

And I think that there can be actually something beautifully repentant about that as well and honest about that, but just be honest about it.  I think that the more we disclose our lives to one another, our motivations, the more we realize that we’re all mixed.  None of us is, you know, perfect in terms of our own motivations, but I do think those who’ve been disempowered, sometimes it’s like, “I don’t have the benefit of choice or autonomy.  Like, I just get to show up and be humble.  Like, I actually have to fight my way to the stage, and that’s harder.”

Andrea:  Hmm.  Yeah, and I think that if you’re willing, if there’s something… at least what I found for myself, I should say, is that when I have found that I’m willing to be embarrassed in the moment – like, maybe it won’t be perfect, maybe I’ll get rejected – when I’m willing to put that on the line for the message, it doesn’t matter how I get the message out, whether it’s on stage or whatever.  There’s something about that, like you’d said, “You’re not just sacrificing yourself in an unhealthy way, but you’re willing to lay down the ego part of it even if it does end up feeling good.  There’s something about that initial, like, “I’m willing to put this on the line even if I screw up.  I’m gonna do this because I love people more than I’m worried about what they think of me.”

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah.  And that’s where I’d hope and we’d hope, you know, that we’d all end up at some point.  And it’s obviously more complicated than that.  And I want all of your listeners to know that for those of us who have influence, you know, who record podcasts, who write books… I mean, someone actually presumed that I wasn’t narcissistic because I was writing on this.  And I said, “Oh, no, no, no.  You don’t actually get to a place where you publish books, and you speak a lot on these kinds of things without having a little bit of narcissism in you.”

But there is a… people get thrown off by this language, but a healthy narcissism.  I’d rather call it maybe a healthy confidence.  Psychologists tend to call it a healthy narcissism, at times, for young people like your five-year-old, who says, “Daddy, daddy, look at me! I’m doing a handstand,” you know.  But that healthy sense of… for instance, watching some of my students preach for the first time, and that healthy sense of like, “I did really good job. I’m really grateful;  I’m proud of myself.”  There’s something beautiful about that that I think we can celebrate.

Andrea:  Hmm, without going to the top of the roller coaster every time.

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah.

Andrea:  It’s not the roller coaster.

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Yeah, that’s great.

Andrea:  So good.  Thank you so much, Chuck, for your work in this area and for sharing your work with us and being a “Voice of Influence” for our listeners.  Where can they find you and your book?

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:   Sure.  So, I blog.  I’ve got resources and other information over at chuckdegroat.net.  And then the book is called When Narcissism Comes to Church, and it’s at all the major booksellers.  So, you can find it at just about everywhere you look.

Andrea:  Perfect.  Thank you so much, Chuck!

Dr. Chuck DeGroat:  Thank you so much for hosting!  Great questions!  I appreciate it!

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How to Support Someone in an Abusive Relationship with Rosanne Moore

Episode 149

Rosanne Moore Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

Rosanne Moore, my Voice of Influence colleague, is back on this episode to offer guidance on how you can be of help if you suspect that someone in your life is in an abusive relationship.

In this episode, Rosanne shares why the place to begin is with yourself, how to create a safe space for the person you want to help to open up, what you need to keep in mind to empower a woman in this situation, how to support victims of abuse at different stages in their journey, and more.

Mentioned in this episode

 

Find our Lifeline resources and information about the course here.

 

Transcript

Hey, there!  So, this is Andrea Wenburg with the Voice of Influence podcast, The Voice of Influence show on YouTube, and I’ve got with me Rosanne Moore.  We have been exploring on the Voice of Influence podcast.  We’ve been exploring, in particular, the difference between healthy and unhealthy influence.  It’s very important to us, and I think it’s highly relevant and important for us to cover.  And so, over the last few weeks and through the summer of 2020, we have been interviewing people for that on our podcast.  So, if you haven’t checked that out, we encourage you to go to voiceofinfluence.net and find our podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

There are a couple of episodes that Rosanne and I did previously that have to do with myths around abuse and coercive control.  We highly recommend that you see those videos.  And then this particular episode is going to be about helping others who are in a situation like this, in particular, where… you know, finding meaningful ways to help somebody who is actually in an abusive relationship and helping them out actually without hurting and making it worse.

Andrea:  Rosanne, let’s tell them a little bit about what we’ve just created, you’ve created with Lifeline.  Lifeline is a resource to help, in particular, women who are in an abusive relationship or coercive control and how to get out.  Rosanne, would you please give us a little description of Lifeline?

Rosanne Moore:  So, when I was going through my own process of getting out of an abusive marriage, there were a lot of resources that would deal with the psychological impact of an abusive relationship and unraveling that.  I had a pretty easy time finding things that would help me with that.  What I did not find, very readily, was something that would be a practical guide for the daily decisions, the legal process…  Something that would help me understand what to expect in the court system, how to navigate the court system, how to rebuild my life and my home for my children, safety for my children – coming out of a situation like that.

So, I was being asked… and anybody in this situation is being asked to make decisions that will affect long-term living at the same time that they’re trying to unravel major trauma that they’ve been through.  So, I wanted to provide a practical step-by-step guide that would help women tailor decision-making to their specific situation.  Something that would help them think through and not just have this overwhelming situation that they felt like they’d been dropped in, immersed, and were drowning in, at the same time that, emotionally, everything feels up for grabs.  So that’s how Lifeline was born.   It’s a practical guide for navigating coming out of coercive control, navigating the family court system, including divorce, for those who may be experiencing that.

Andrea:  All right.  So, Lifeline is a very robust resource.  And you can text VOILIFELINE to 44222 to get actually the first module for free that has to do with establishing safety and preparing yourself for the process.  You can also find it at voiceofinfluencence.net/lifeline.  So, right now we’re going to talk, specifically, to people who are in a situation where they see others who need help, somebody else.

So, Rosanne, let’s say I just learned that someone in my life is in an abusive relationship or I suspect it even, and I want to help.  I really do, but I’m not exactly sure where to start.  Where do you recommend that we start?

Rosanne Moore:  Okay, this is going to sound a little counterintuitive, but the place to begin is with yourself, doing kind of an evaluation with yourself.  You want to make sure you’ve got yourself out of the way first so that you can see the situation clearly and respond in a way that you’re not projecting your needs or your fears or anything else into what’s going on.  So, you want to do a little bit of self-evaluation.  You want to recognize, “What are the limits of my experience and knowledge?”  It’s okay to have limits.  Everybody, to some degree, has limits.  I’ve been through this myself.  I have walked through the situation with other women as an advocate, but I’m not a professional counselor and I’m not an attorney.

And so, even in Lifeline, the counsel that we give is how to choose those professionals.  It’s not to take the place of these professionals.  So, know the limits of your experience and your knowledge and don’t pretend to be what you’re not.  If you want to be a supportive friend, there are ways to do that very meaningfully, and it matters, and that’s a crucial role.  But you don’t want to pretend you’re law enforcement.  You don’t want to pretend that you are a counselor with years of experience in domestic violence if this is your first gig.  You don’t want to do that.  

So, recognize your own limits first.  Recognize that this situation is not about you.  You’re not the hero.  You don’t need to come in and save the day.  You’re not the judge, who if this person tells you something you need to determine whether or not it’s really accurate, whether what she’s saying is true or not.  You’re not her judge.

Andrea:  Oh, okay.  Hold on just a second.  I think that that might be one of the things that causes people probably to hesitate on helping somebody else because they’re not sure if they should believe or not.  So, can you expand on that a little bit?  Like, why shouldn’t I be the judge?  Shouldn’t I know or shouldn’t I try to figure that out before I help?

Rosanne Moore:   So, the first thing to realize… and we’re going to have a resource list that’s specific to helpers.  We’ve got a resource list for a woman in the situation – and a helper would benefit from the things on that list as well – but we’re going to have a resource list specific to helpers as well.  One of the things you need to know about abuse is the vast majority of the time – like 98% of the time – the person is telling the truth, and they’re not exaggerating.  They’re actually minimizing.  So, the little piece that they’re telling you or the thing that they’re searching for words to tell you – which is even more common – the situation is probably far worse.

And so, if you shut them down by responding, like, with investigative questions, that is not helpful.  They’re already struggling.  They’re living with somebody in a coercive control situation.  You’re living with somebody who’s constantly trying to reshape reality to gain control over you.  They’re constantly, basically, lying to you about your perception of what is real.  And so, if you have an outsider who’s like, “Well, are you really telling the truth?” the person just shuts down.  Like, they’re already overwhelmed.  They’re already traumatized.  So, you need to go into with the assumption, “This person is asking for help.  They are distressed.  I’m going to assume that they are telling the truth.”

Part of the reason you can assume to do this is… because people automatically go, “Oh, no, you’re supposed to presume innocence until proven guilty.”  All right, you’re not a court of law.  Nobody’s going to jail because of what you do, okay?  So, that’s not your role here.  Again, this is back to knowing your limits of what your role is.  You’re not the jury.  This is not a court of law.  You don’t have to presume that she’s lying.  You need to give her the presumption of innocence, that she’s telling the truth.  You need to begin there because if she is lying, that’s going to come out over time.  And the fallout from that is, at worst, you can go back and you can apologize to the person.  It’s not going to be a big cleanup because everything is against a victim of abuse coming forward.  Everything is in place to protect against false accusation, okay?

I know that’s an unpopular idea.  On the rare occasion somebody gets falsely accused, is that a horrific thing?  Yes, it is.  But there are ways to clean that up.  You get it wrong – you assume she’s lying – and you handle this badly, you could get somebody killed.  I mean, it’s that serious.  So you need to go into this, and you don’t rush into this.  And again, this is about knowing your role.  You don’t have to be the judge.  You listen, and you look for ways to support.  You don’t have to be the arbiter of what is true.  You start with, “How can I listen and be supportive?”  You don’t have to be the great savior and rescuer.  That’s not your role.

Again, what a woman in this situation needs is not somebody else to come in and take over, even with good intentions of rescuing.  What she needs is to have someone who helps her gain clarity so that she can use her own agency to make decisions.  That’s another reason why you don’t need to be the judge.  She needs to be able to have her own agency.  And if you come in and you tell her what you think is real and what[‘s] not, that’s pretty arrogant for one thing.  You don’t know what happened behind closed doors, you know.  You don’t need to be the expert for her.

If you have years and years of experience in working with domestic violence, you’re an expert and experts know not to try to take over.  They listen well.  They handle that well, okay?  But don’t come in as if you’re the expert.  And don’t come in – for those who are spiritual – don’t come in as the voice of God.  I’ve seen that happen a lot in religious circles.

Andrea:  Right, sure.

Rosanne Moore:  I want to give a quick example of a situation that I saw where this was handled very, very badly.  And it was not from wrong intentions.  The intention was to help.  The intention was good.  I knew the person who did this.  Their stated intention was to help with justice and protect the oppressed, but they didn’t know enough.  And so they went in and they had a need to be the hero.  They had a need to save the marriage for the sake of the church. 

Andrea:  Like a personal need, like a desire to be the hero.

Rosanne Moore:  Right, right.  And it wasn’t something they recognized in themselves, but everything they said and did revealed that that was the driving force in what was going on because they weren’t listening well.  They made assumptions when the abused woman tried to disclose what was going on, and there was evidence that what she was saying was true.  The response was, “I know that that’s your opinion that he’s abusive, but I don’t believe that’s real.”

Andrea:  Whoa!

Rosanne Moore:  How arrogant is that?  They hadn’t been there for the things that she had been there for, you know.  How arrogant to tell her that the situation she was in – that they were not present for – was just a figment of her imagination when there was a lot of corroborating evidence that what she was seeing was real and true.  But they didn’t ask good questions.  They needed the marriage to be fixed because they needed to feel like they were the ones who had saved the marriage.

Andrea:  Why does somebody feel like they need to be the one to save it?  What’s behind that?  I mean, I’m sure there’s a lot more than just a little bit, but can you just give us a snippet?

Rosanne Moore:  All right, so if it’s a family member, family members don’t want the disruption for the children or for the family.  They don’t want the embarrassment.  You know, there are a lot of reasons why a family member doesn’t want that kind of disruption in the family relationships.  It’s messy.  Same thing can happen with close friendships.  They don’t want to take sides.  It’s messy.  It’s disruptive.

In this case, it was religious leaders, and so as religious leaders, their focus was on, “Well, God has ordained marriage, and they made vows before God, and God hates divorce.”  And they had all of these things in their head so that they weren’t recognizing safety for the victim is the primary goal, not saving the marriage.  If it turns out that the marriage can be saved and it will happen only if the abuser deals with his stuff… which is not something you can control and is not something that necessarily is going to happen simply because he says he wants it to happen because he can say right words; actions have to be there.  But you can’t control that and so that cannot be your goal.  What you can make as a goal is doing everything possible to help the victim be safe.

And along with that, her safety and well-being is the point, not your comfort level.  That’s the other factor.  It feels messy, you know.  People are afraid of being wrong.  Well, what happens if you’re wrong?  You can always go back, and you can say, “Hey, I totally blew it and I’m sorry.”  And you know, is it disruptive?  Is it hard to recognize that you’ve made a mistake and come back and take ownership?  Well, guess what?  That’s maturity.  Sorry, you know.  None of us get it right all the time about everything.  But if you’re looking at percentages, you’re going to be far more likely to be wrong if you don’t listen to her than you are if you do.

So, if you just from sheer percentages standpoint, it makes sense that you assume she is telling you the truth and you support her accordingly.  And that doesn’t mean over time as things unfold if there’s evidence that she’s lying…  And evidence is not the same as things look disruptive because if she’s traumatized, it’s going to be messy.  Her timeline is not always going to be right.  She’s going to say contradictory statements.  She’s going to seem confused.  All the things that people look at and say, “Oh, well, she’s changing her story.  She must be lying.”  That’s actually an indication that she’s traumatized, and she is telling the truth.

Andrea:  Right.  And if she’s turning into drugs and alcohol or some other behavior that you would normally look down on…  Maybe you need to look at that, maybe I need to, we need to look at that as evidence of her need for help.

Rosanne Moore:  Yeah.  I mean, if you think about the fact that a coercive control relationship is basically a hostage situation…  It’s a socially and legally mandated hostage situation where the person that you had entrusted your life to turns out to be your greatest danger.  That’s pretty freaky, you know, for anybody.  That’s the stuff of horror movies, quite frankly.  If you think about it, horror movies are usually based on finding out that the person you trusted is actually the one trying to kill you, right?  And so, for her to be in that situation, of course she’s going to be looking for ways to numb the pain or to numb the fear.  Not everybody turns to drugs or alcohol or whatever.  But if she does, that doesn’t necessarily mean she’s the problem and she’s lying.  That may be a secondary issue that’s come because of what she’s been through.

Andrea:  Right.   Okay, obviously, safety then is a huge piece of what I should be worried about or should be concerned about when I want to help somebody.  One of the things that I think I and many others who want to be supportive might struggle with is how do we do that without actually making things worse?

Rosanne Moore:  Right.  So, begin by listening, okay?  If you’re suspecting that somebody is in a high control relationship, you’re getting a sense that something’s not right.  She’s being very isolated.  He may seem very charming and very nice, but she looks shut down.  The smile is always pasted on, but there’s something in her eyes that you see that is dying, okay?  Those are all indicators something’s not right.  You don’t want to automatically assume, “Oh, okay, she’s an abused wife.”  You want to do what you would do in any situation where you see somebody suffering.  You see indication that somebody is suffering.  You want to ask how they’re doing.  You want to ask good questions that show that you are concerned and you are available, and you don’t want to assume that you have information or understanding that you don’t have, okay?

So, when she gives you a little piece of information, you don’t want to automatically assume you know what that means.  You want to probe further.  “How did that make you feel?”  “Then what happened next?”  “Does that happen often?”  “What kind of thing makes that happen?”  I had a situation with a friend that I had not seen in several years, and I crossed paths with her in a public place.  And I was just chatting, asking how the family was, but I could see in her face that something was not right.  She had been a very vibrant person before.  She was very subdued, very shut down.  I didn’t know if she was just tired or whether something was going on.

And so, as I asked, you know, about her kids, how she was doing what was happening, the things she started sharing indicated, “Okay, things are not going well at home.”  And so, I began asking just gentle questions about, “How long has it been like that?”  “What kind of help have you been able to get so that you’re not alone in this?”  And the more she talked, the more I thought, “Oh, this sounds like an abuse situation.”  Now if I had said, “Are you being abused?” that would have freaked her out.  First of all, we’re in a public place.  It would have scared her.  If she hasn’t come to terms with that and she can’t put words to that yet, that would have been like, “Whoa, what are you talking about?”

And so, my question to her was just a gentle, quiet, “Are you safe at home?”  And her eyes filled with tears when I asked that, and that was the point when she opened up and she shared more.  That question, “Are you safe?” that’s not like a tool that you want to just automatically pull out of your belt and use for everything.  But know that that’s an underlying thing you want to find out.  If you’re concerned about somebody’s well-being, in some way you want to indicate a concern, “Do you feel safe at home?”  And that might not be just physical safety.  That might be emotional safety because in a lot of situations, there’s no physical violence, but there could be sexual violence – but they don’t think of it as that.  There can be financial control.  There can be soul violence, like the person is being attacked at an emotional and psychological level all the time.  And so, it’s like their spirit is being annihilated by the other person.

So, you want to ask that question about safety.  And that gives an opportunity for them to share in a gentle way what’s going on.  If they haven’t come to terms with the word abuse yet, if you ask about safety, it may help them connect emotionally with what they’re actually dealing with at home.  And if they have come to terms with, “All right, there is abuse, but I’m afraid.  I can’t talk about this freely.  I don’t know who understands, who’s gonna believe me.”  I mean, like, “Who’s gonna believe me?”  If you ask that question about safety, then that’s an indicator to them, “This is the person I can talk to about this.  They’ll get it.  They will get it if I talk to them about this.”

One of the things that’s really common with people who are abused is they’ll talk about the difficulty in their marriage.  They usually don’t want a divorce.  I mean, that comes much later.  But if they’re in the early stages of processing, they will bring it up as a marriage issue that they’re trying to figure out what they need to do differently.  And as you ask questions and as you listen, what a lot of people make mistake of doing is they give marriage advice before they’ve asked questions to find out, “Is this actually a marriage issue?”  If this is an abuse issue, it is not a marriage issue.

Andrea:  Right, right.

Rosanne Moore:  Yeah, and so you want to actually find out what is going on.  Chris Moles, he works a lot in domestic violence circles, and he works with abusers as well as with victims of abuse.  And the analogy he gave is, “If you don’t accurately assess what’s happening in the relationship, it’s like hearing the sound of clopping hooves on the road and assuming that a horse is coming towards you when you actually have a zebra.”  And so, what happens a lot of times is people… they project their own relationships into something that somebody says about the marriage, and they try to give marriage advice…

Andrea:  Or their experience with somebody else.

Rosanne Moore:  Exactly.

Andrea:  It’s all about their own experiences, though.

Rosanne Moore:  Exactly, which is why getting yourself out of the way first and asking good questions is going to be primary to being a good helper.

Another thing you want to do is often… because if she hasn’t figured it out yet, she’s going to be blaming herself a lot.  She’s going to be talking about the situation and looking for a resolution. And she’s going to be very focused on what she can do differently because she’s always trying to figure out what she did to make him so angry, why the relationship is not working.  He’s constantly telling her it’s her fault.

And so, telling her it’s not her fault directly is not going to be effective.  She’ll just tell you more reasons why she should have been able to make him happy somehow.  And she hasn’t figured out why yet, but somehow it’s supposed to be her job and make it okay.  So, what works far better is if you listen to that and you ask about how she felt in the situation.  And then you give her an analogy like, you know, “If your sister were in a situation where this kind of behavior was happening to her, how would you respond?  If your child came to you with this kind of a situation, how would you respond?”  And usually she’s very clear about, you know, she would be loving and supportive.

So, then the question is, “Okay, so if you weren’t treated that way, that’s not something you did wrong.  You deserve to be treated with love, just like you would treat your child or your sister or that other person you care about.  You treat them with love.  You treat your husband with love, so why would you not also be worthy of that?”  And that frees her to begin thinking differently so that she’s not blaming herself.  It also kind of gives her some language to be able to describe situations so that she’s not just carrying all of that load and doesn’t have any words.  That’s a big part of abuse.  You live with this constant sense of something’s not right, but you don’t really have words for why it’s not right.

Naghmeh [Panahi], when we had her on just a few weeks ago, that was something she talked about in her relationship.  It was like cancer; you know something’s bad that’s going on, but you don’t know what it is.  And that’s very common in abusive relationships.

Another thing you want to do in terms of listening well and in maintaining confidentiality, make sure you don’t take anything she says back to the abuser.  You do not want to do that because she will pay for it later.  He will come back, and he will punish her later.  And she will not be able to tell you anything in the future.

Andrea:  So, don’t try to fight for her.  Don’t try to confront him or anything like that.

Rosanne Moore:  Or even go “get his side of the story.”

Andrea:  Oh, wow, yeah.

Rosanne Moore:  That’s not your job.

Andrea:  Right.

Rosanne Moore:  Because you got to understand abusive people don’t say, “Oh, yeah, I’ve been abusing her.  Like, I feel really bad about that.”  They don’t do that.  They give you a very plausible-sounding story, and they’re very good at taking a lie and wrapping it in a veneer of truth that sounds plausible enough that you then want to level the playing field and you want to assume that, “Well, it was probably just a misunderstanding,” something like that.

Andrea:  Right.

Rosanne Moore:  If a person is afraid all the time in their own home, you do not have a level playing field.  It’s not just a marriage issue.  That is not what’s going on.  So that’s why asking questions, finding out, gauging what her level of fear is, and even if she’s not able to give you specific examples… because trauma does that.  Trauma makes it very difficult to communicate and to analyze situations like that.  And so you don’t want to breach her confidentiality with the abuser, in particular.  You want to help her make decisions.  “What do you need?”  “Okay, so you’re saying this is going on and you’re not feeling safe; what do you need?”  “Would it help to talk to somebody at a domestic violence hotline?”  “Have you thought about getting counseling by yourself?”  Don’t recommend marriage counseling.  Don’t do that.

Andrea:  It’s not a marriage issue.

Rosanne Moore:  It is not a marriage issue, and it will set her up to be punished in private at home and shut down and isolate her.  So, find out what she needs and you can start that process with her.  As she begins to come to terms with what’s going on, she’s going to feel grief and she’s going to feel anger and it’s going to feel messy.  And keep listening.  Don’t try to tamp that down for her.  That is a necessary part of her regaining her agency and her autonomy.

Andrea:  Be that safe space for her to explore that, probably, or express it.

Rosanne Moore:  Yeah.  So, if you want to be a good helper, you need to be a good listener while she’s processing.  A big part of healing is having a safe space with somebody who’s a caring listener, who will let you voice the ugliness and the anger.  And she has reason to be angry.  And she’s had to keep all of that inside and all of that tamped down.  Does that mean she needs to be angry forever?  No, but if she can’t bring it out and process it, it’s going to make her sick physically.  It’s not going to go away.  She’s got to be able to process it safely.  And you want to process your own emotions elsewhere.

When friends start hearing that someone that they love… or a family member that they love is being treated horribly, they’re in a lot of horror, and it brings up a lot of emotion for them.  They’re angry.  They’re horrified.  They feel guilty that they didn’t recognize it sooner.  They feel, like, just off-balance, like, “How could I not have seen this sooner?  How did I get deceived in this?”  So, you want to continue getting yourself out of the way by processing your own stuff, but you want to do that separately from your friend or family member.  You don’t want to ask them to help you process it.  They have enough on their plate already.  Process your own emotions elsewhere, get help with that.  And you don’t want to try to jump in, take over and say, “Well, I’m going to tell him like it is!”  You will escalate things further, and you could create a potentially extremely dangerous situation.

When you’re dealing with a high-control person, it’s like a tug of war thing.  They’re always looking for a battleground, always looking for a game of tug of war.  They don’t have to win.  All they need is somebody to pick up the rope.  So, if she’s trying to de-escalate the situation and you go over and you try to pick up the rope on her behalf, he’s won and she’s going to pay for it.  She is going to pay for it.  You have just empowered him.

Andrea:  Can you say that again? 

Rosanne Moore:  So, your idea of confrontation and of saying what is true and bringing him to account, all of that kind of stuff rises up.  It’s understandable.  You want justice, right?  You want justice for the person that you love.  But all of that stuff in you that rises up and wants to come in, make sure truth happens and he has to face what he’s done, it’s going to come back and punish her.  It’s wrong to do that.  You don’t want to do that.  That puts her in a more dangerous situation.  And quite frankly, it’s not your place.  If the time for confrontation needs to happen, that’s for her to do.  It’s not for you to do.  She’s lived with the situation a lot longer than you have, and if there comes a time for her to do that, she’ll know when she can do it safely.  But you don’t know enough about this.  You don’t know enough about the dynamics, and you could create a much more dangerous situation for her out of your need to vent.  So that’s not helpful.  It’s very dangerous, actually.

Andrea:  Okay, all right.  So, what is the process of really helping somebody get out of this situation when it feels really dramatic?  It feels like, “Oh my gosh, this is such a big deal.”

Rosanne Moore:  Yeah.  So, if you watch it on TV, right, it’s always the drama.  In TV or movie or whatever domestic violence stuff, they always make that conflict really high and make it really dramatic, and big rescue, and all these big emotions.  The reality is the best way to help is to restore her agency.  It’s very practical.  Everyday things of taking her from a place of having no agency to her having restored agency.  Not you going in and rescuing, but her being able to pick up her agency to have a voice again.

So, transformation is actually going to look very practical.  She’s going to need housing.  She’s going to need food to eat to keep up her physical strength.  And in a high drama, high emotional situations, sometimes she might forget to eat.  She might need to be reminded of that.  She might need you to bring a meal so that when she’s working on paperwork for court, she doesn’t have to think about supper for her kids.  That’s covered, you know.  She’s going to need rest.

When you live with somebody who is not safe, you don’t sleep well.  You’re always on high alert.  You’re dealing with PTSD issues.  So, when you get out of that, your body is depleted.  You need physical rest.  You’re exhausted.  Plus, there’s all these emotions that you’re processing, and so that’s draining physically as well, so you need physical rest.  She’s going to need transportation.  I mean, does she have transportation?  If she doesn’t, she might need that.  That might be something she’ll need help with.

She’s going to need legal protection.  She may need childcare.  She would benefit from counseling.  If that’s something she wants to pursue… don’t push it.  When she’s ready for it, it can be offered as a safe place for her to unpack this, rather than “Oh my gosh, you are so messed up.  You need counseling.”  Instead, it’s, “You’ve been through a very traumatic event.  I think you needed a safe place to be able to talk through this with somebody who’s gonna care and be able to be there for you and understands what you’ve been through.”  If it can be presented like that.

I sometimes talk to people who’ve been through stuff and counseling has been pushed at them as if, “You’re broken and you need to go get fixed.”  And yeah, yucky, you know.  Nobody wants to feel like they’re the broken, messed up person that everybody looks at and thinks less of.  And I know with my own kids… my daughter at one point said she was sitting in the counselor’s office waiting to meet with her counselor and she said a man in his forties came into the waiting room while she was waiting for her turn.  And he was obviously very anxious about being there in the waiting room.  And he was chatty, and he finally said to her, “So, does this feel weird to you that you’re at a counselor’s office?”  And she said, “No, my mom says it’s kind of like going to the doctor for your primary care visit.  You know, your well-child checks and stuff like that.  It’s just you need to take care of your heart and your mind as well as your body.”  And she said he got this look on his face like that was a completely new thought.

Andrea:  That’s great.

Rosanne Moore:   But really, that’s how you want to present counseling.  Like, “You’ve been through a very traumatic event.  You are a strong person who has survived this, but I think it would be really valuable for you to have a safe place where somebody else could take care of you, rather than you having to always hold it together.”  And then giving her permission for self-care, because she’s been in a relationship where all resources have been poured into keeping him calm, like trying to keep him from blowing up or keep him from punishing her in some way.  It may not always be explosive anger.  It may be covert manipulation.  But all of her resources have been basically focused on trying to keep him from acting out.

And so, giving her space… like, she needs self-care.  She needs a chance to recover taking care of herself.  I know when I was at the point where I was filing for separation, my youngest son was three years old, and one of the self-care things that I did before I filed… because assets were going to be divided, you know, based on that.  And all of those years, I was still wearing maternity clothes.  He was three years old, and I was still wearing maternity clothes because we weren’t going to spend money on me having clothes.  It didn’t matter that they didn’t fit.  You know, it was just we weren’t going to spend money on me.  They weren’t worn out so I should just keep wearing them, right?  So, self-care for me was buying clothes that actually fit, that were non-maternity clothes, so things like that.

And then work – she’s going to need work at some point.  But that may need to come incrementally.  She’s been through a really traumatic thing.  And so having to take on, if she hasn’t been in a full-time job, to have to suddenly take all of that on at the same time she’s got all of this upheaval [going] on…  You know, sometimes people have unrealistic expectations of somebody who’s been highly traumatized and they expect them to just, you know, be responsible and all of that.

Well, you wouldn’t expect somebody who had been in a car wreck and needed months of rehab for a physical injury from a car wreck to just be able to walk into a new job and start something new and take care of themselves.  You would recognize that they needed help getting to that point of independence.  It’s the same thing here.  She’s going to need help getting to financial independence, and she needs permission to do that rather than pressure.

I had a friend… she was a mother of seven, she had five children still at home when she found out he was a serial adulterer.  And there were drugs and other issues involved.  

But she got pressure from other people because they knew she was under financial pressure.  He wasn’t paying child support and alimony the way it was supposed to.  And they said, “Well, you just need to go get a job at the grocery store.”  And she’s like, “For $8 an hour, so I’m not gonna make very much, and I homeschool my children.”  And she had children with some learning needs that homeschooling was the way that she needed to go with those, and they were all traumatized by what they had been through.

So, the expectation was for her to go get a low-income job to supplement this.  That was a church group that the person was in that said this to her.  A better response would have been for that church group to say, “Hey, how can we, for the next six months, help you get on your feet?  You know, give you some space to heal, and maybe give you some budgeting advice?”  “Maybe help you sit down and figure out what kind of work could you do that would actually meet your financial needs, so you’re not doing a minimum wage job and wearing yourself out with long hours of work, but still not having enough to really provide for your family’s needs.”

So, those are some very practical things.  And then of course, Lifeline – this brings us back to Lifeline.

Andrea:  Sure, yeah.

Rosanne Moore:  If you want to help, realize that Lifeline is going to have a lot of things that will help you understand better how to help her.  That resource list, having a basic understanding of how abuse works, what it does to its victims, how abusers manipulate; those things are going to be really important if you want to be an effective helper, and there are resources for that on the helpers list.  And then Lifeline itself… if she’s in a place where she’s wanting to get out, she may not have the $25.  We’ve tried to keep the program really inexpensive to make it affordable.  We’re talking twenty videos and worksheets that are essentially a workbook that will give her very practical help.  You could help cover that cost of that for her.  So that would be another really practical thing that could be very transformational.

Andrea:  Thank you, Rosanne.  I’ve got one more question for you.  And this might be repetitive in some ways, or you might decide that your answer is something you’ve already said or it might be something a little different.  But when somebody wants to be a “Voice of Influence” in the case of supporting somebody who is in a controlling relationship, what summary advice do you have for them?

Rosanne Moore:  Two things.  One is learn as much as you can.  So, listen well, like I said.  We talked about this already.  Not just listen to her, but also try to look at that resource list.  And it’s kind of like the race thing, right?  I know our family is looking at the ways that we can be more sensitive to those who are minorities and who experience life differently than our family does because we’re white.  And so, listening to them rather than telling them what we think is a really important part of that.  So, I would say listen well and try to learn, go to that resource list.

The other thing that you can do is understand that she has constantly, in her head, a litany of accusation that he has poured out on her for all this time.  He has undermined her perception of reality.  And so, you don’t want to come in and try to be the voice of reality to her.  But when she says things that you realize are from his influence – like, that he is giving her a negative view of herself – you can challenge those gently.  Not directly, but by asking questions.  “Why do you think that about yourself?  Do you want to know what I think, what I see in you?”  You want to reaffirm the good things that you see about her.  Your best way of being a “Voice of Influence” on her behalf is to help her find her voice again.  See in her what she can’t see in herself right now.  And so, you don’t want to come in and be a voice for her as much as you want to call out of her the voice that has gotten lost in all of the other noise.

Andrea:  Mhmm, absolutely.  Thank you so much, Rosanne.  That gets to the heart of what we do at Voice of Influence is helping other people.  When you want to be a “Voice of Influence”, the thing that you do is you help others express their voice and do it in a respectful way and all that. Anyway, I really appreciate you and your “Voice of Influence” on behalf of those whose voices have been oppressed, those who are struggling to figure out what to do next.  Thank you, Rosanne, and thank you for helping us to know better how we can help without hurting and have that meaningful impact in that way.

Rosanne Moore:  Thanks for the opportunity to talk about this again.

Andrea:  Of course.  Again, you can find the resources that Rosanne talked about and get access to Module 1 of our course Lifeline by texting VOILIFELINE – all one word – to the number 44222 or go to voiceofinfluence.net/lifeline.  All right, we’ll see you soon.

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How to Spot a Child Abuser Hiding in Plain Sight with Jimmy Hinton

Episode 148

Jimmy Hinton is a full-time minister and safeguarding specialist with Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment (GRACE), who researches deception techniques of child molesters and specializes in abuse in plain sight.

In 2011, Jimmy’s sister confided in him that she had been sexually abused when she was a young child by their father, a former Minister of 27 years. Jimmy and his mother reported his father to authorities, which resulted in his confession of 23 victims, and a conviction of 30-60 years for sex crimes against children.

In this episode, Jimmy shares the story of how his sister confided in him that she was sexually abused their father, why he immediately went to the authorities, the fallout from that experience, three things that that can help you identify concerning behavior and potential abusers, how parents and organizations can be more proactive about protecting their kids, and so much more.

Mentioned in this episode:

Find our Lifeline resources and information about the course here.

Transcript

Hey, there!  So, today’s episode is incredibly important for people who have kids, who work with kids, or who just care about kids.  Today, I am interviewing Jimmy Hinton.  And in 2011, Jimmy’s sister confided in him that she had been sexually abused when she was a young child by their father, a former minister of twenty-seven years.  So, Jimmy reported his father to authorities, which resulted in his confession of twenty-three victims and a conviction of 30 to 60 years in Pennsylvania State Corrections Facility.

Jimmy researches deception techniques of child molesters and specializes in abuse in plain sight.  Jimmy is a full-time minister and safeguarding specialist with GRACE – that’s Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment.  We talk about and I invite him to share more about that story of how his sister confided in him and he went to the authorities.  And kind of the fallout from that; the emotional fallout, his personal experience with that with people who were helpful to him in that process as well.

He also shares three things that he believes would help anyone to be able to better spot concerning behavior and potential abusers.  So, he looks at everything through the eyes of the abuser.  He has spent a lot of time talking to his dad who has shared with him a lot of information about what it’s like through his eyes as an abuser himself, and so he is looking at all of this through [a] very savvy, kind of well-informed perspective.

And then he also talks about three things that organizations and kind of even parents really can do to be more proactive in protecting kids beyond just background checks, which can be helpful but don’t catch everything.  So, please take in this information and consider what it would look like for you to be a “Voice of Influence” for the vulnerable, for kids.

Here’s my interview with Jimmy Hinton:

Andrea:  All right, so Jimmy Hinton, welcome to the Voice of Influence podcast.

Jimmy Hinton:  Thank you.  Thank you for having me.

Andrea:  Let’s start with your story because we know it’s a big reason for why you’re doing what you’re doing now.  So, can you tell us a little bit about what you do now and how you got to where you are right now?

Jimmy Hinton:  Yeah.  So, I am a full-time pastor.  I’ve been since 2009, and I also do trainings across the country, mostly with churches.  But I’ve trained police departments, the military, and schools so I’m kind of all over the place.  That all started in 2011 whenever my youngest sister disclosed to me at the age of twenty-one that when she was very young, she was sexually abused by my father.  That was the first time ever that we have heard any kind of an allegation of abuse.

We grew up in, by all means of the definition, a normal home, you know, a normal Christian home.  We loved and adored my father.  He preached at the church that I’m preaching at now for twenty-seven years, and I went in a ministry because of his example.  So, you know, needless to say, we were incredibly shocked whenever my sister disclosed.  My mom and I reported that to the police immediately, not having any idea how many victims there might be out there.  And he subsequently confessed to twenty-three victims – all prepubescent – over the course of about 40 years of his life.

Andrea:  Wow!

Jimmy Hinton:  Yeah.  So, then the following year in 2012, he was given, essentially, what amounts to a life sentence.  So, he was given 30 to 60 years in Pennsylvania State Prison.  So, you know, what started my path on this journey is just being haunted by the fact that he had abused so many victims, hundreds of times each, and we didn’t have a clue.  We had no idea that this abuse was going on right under our noses by the very man who we looked up to and loved and respected.

So, you know, I started really digging into every book that I could find on child sexual abuse and just trying to understand how abusers operate, you know, what’s going on in their mind, what are they thinking of, and more specifically, how do they view us.  How do they get away?  Because all the research that’s out there – 90% of the research at least – it’s all about how we find the abusers or how do we spot the abusers.  And it’s really ineffective.  And even people who write this stuff will tell you it’s very ineffective when push comes to shove for actually identifying abusers who are among us.  And I wasn’t okay with that.  That really bothered me that that’s the acceptable standard for training people how to detect abusers.

Andrea:  So, you’re saying like detecting them after they’ve already abused?

Jimmy Hinton:  Or just spotting them in general – when they’re sitting in our pews, when they’re teaching in our schools.  You know, it’s incredibly difficult.  This is one of the most sophisticated crimes that exists, and the training just isn’t adequate.  So, you know, I really wanted to flip that perspective and say, “Instead of looking for the abusers, why don’t I train people to look for us, you know?  To look through the eyes of an abuser and what is it about us that makes them know that they can not only do this but get away with it right in front of us?”

So, I started really focusing on deception techniques and you know, very specific techniques that abusers use.  So, I focused less on behavior and more on actual techniques.  So, basically, you know, I liken this to what magicians do.  And it’s basically pulling people up on stage with the magician and standing beside them and showing them “the tricks of the trade.”  You know, how do they actually rehearse these techniques, because abusers are very rehearsed.  They’re methodical in the way that they carry out their techniques in order to abuse their victims.  It’s not accidental that they get caught very rarely.  I mean, very rarely do they get caught.  So that’s a little bit about my background and how I got to where I’m at.

Andrea:  Wow!  So, now you’re doing these trainings, and you also have a connection with another nonprofit, right?

Jimmy Hinton:  I am a trainer for GRACE – Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment).  And then I also serve on the board for Porch Swing Ministries – it was a nonprofit started by one of my friends and she focuses on really providing support for people who’ve experienced church abuse.

Andrea:  Okay.  All right.  So, I’ve got a number of questions for you.

Jimmy Hinton:  Sure.

Andrea:  First of all, with your story and how your sister came to you and told you that this had happened to her, you said that you and your mom reported your dad immediately, even though he was somebody that you had always looked up to and all of this.  And I know that abuse victims or survivors often feel like they’re not believed right away, and yet it sounds like you believed your sister right away in the face of somebody that, you know, was so well regarded in your life and in your family.  How did that happen?  I mean, how did you actually believe your sister instead of your dad or whatever?

Jimmy Hinton:  Yeah.  I didn’t realize until I started doing this how rare it is for people – especially, in the religious communities – to believe survivors of abuse.

For me, it wasn’t this big aha moment.  I just have always respected facts.  Even though I’m kind of an emotional person, I try not to let emotions sway logic, okay?  So, when my sister was sitting before me, clearly she was in distress, clearly something had happened.  She didn’t give me a lot of details.  You know, it’s not like I had a whole lot to go on.  The details that she gave were very sketchy, very generic.  I knew that some form of sexual abuse had taken place, but that was it.  But the fact was she had zero, absolutely zero reason to make that up.

You know, like me, she had loved and respected my dad; like the rest of my siblings, she loved and respected him.  She had absolutely zero to gain by making that up, absolutely nothing.  So, I did, I believed her immediately.  And I didn’t want to, you know.  That’s not something that you’re like, “Oh, okay, this happened and now I’m gonna march into the police station.”  You know, it was a grueling discovery to find out that she had been abused by him and that potentially there were many more victims out there.  It was an awful, awful process.

And I’ll say this, you know… I’m a mandated reporter in Pennsylvania and believe it or not, I didn’t know that whenever I reported.  This was all pre-Jerry Sandusky, pre-Bill Cosby, you know, where we’ve shined a lot of attention on this notion that we’re mandated reporters, all clergy are mandated reporters.  I didn’t know that at the time.  So, I think it’s important for people to realize I didn’t report because I knew that I had to by law.  I reported because I didn’t see any other option for getting a fair investigation into these kinds of allegations.  It was the only option that I saw on the table.

Andrea:  What was it like?  Did you confront your dad, or did your sister talk to your dad, or did you guys have conversation with him before he was arrested?

 

Jimmy Hinton:  None of us confronted him and that was really strategic because in my mind, I didn’t want to tip him off and give him all kinds of wiggle room to, you know, back out or to know which one of his victims had rolled on him.  You know, I didn’t want to give him any room to be able to back out of any confession that he would potentially give.  So, in the meantime, you know, when the police actually questioned him, they brought him in for questioning, he had no idea that it was I who reported him.  And so as soon as he left the police station, I was the first person that he called to confide in.

And so, you know, I had to sit there and listen to him pouring his guts out about how he was in big trouble, and he had messed up, and he was probably going to spend the rest of his life in prison, and he doesn’t know which one of his victims told.  And you know, he was really distraught when I talked to him, and I just had to sit there and listen to it and pretend like I didn’t know anything about it.

Andrea:  Hmm.  Do you mind if I… I am asking you all these personal questions before we get to the kind of the strategic things that you teach about.

Jimmy Hinton:  Oh, it’s okay.

Andrea:  But what was it like to realize that somebody that you loved and respected… because I’ve heard you talk about it on your podcast about how much you thought he was like a hero.  And what was it like for you to go from feeling like somebody is a hero in your world to realizing what he really was?

Jimmy Hinton:  Yeah, it’s instantaneous identity crisis.  So, within seconds, I mean, your entire world changes.  And I knew that the second my mom and I stepped over the threshold at the police station, our lives, our family’s lives would never be the same again.  Regardless of the outcome, nothing in our lives would ever be the same again.  And we had to be willing to do that, which we were, but all the unknowns just come flooding in.

And you know, for me personally, there was an instant identity crisis where everything that I thought I knew about my dad was now in question.  Every memory that I had growing up with my dad was a positive memory.  I literally didn’t have bad memories because I didn’t have a bad upbringing.  I mean, my dad, he was always kind.  He was compassionate.  He was giving.  He was supportive.  I have letters that he wrote me when I went off to college, just encouraging me and saying how proud he is of me.  You know, that was my experience with my dad.  And now there was this other side where the person who I admired, who was a hero of mine was an abuser of the worst kind and he did it to my own family members, to his own flesh and blood, his own children.

So, it just really messed with me on so many levels.  And then there was a spiritual crisis as well, because, you know, I was two years into my ministry, and I went into ministry because of him.  And now everything that I thought that I knew about God, everything that my dad taught me about God was now in question.  And it just really messed with me on so many different levels.

Andrea:  Sure.  How long do you think… or maybe you’re still struggling in some ways for some of these things, but how long was it before you kind of regained some sort of sense of equilibrium, if you can call it that?

Jimmy Hinton:  Yeah, it probably was at least three or four years.  And it’s just, you know, so many ripple effects because in the process of this, we’re still dealing with so many family crises, you know, and he left so much carnage behind.  He had victims in my church that he was abusing up to the time of his arrest.  So, it’s not just within my family, it was within my church.  And I mean, just so many layers and components to this.  You know, he would write me letters from prison and be like, you know, just kind of matter of fact, “Just so you know what you’re dealing with whenever I go away for good, here are the names of some of the victims.”  And he would just rattle them off like it was just, you know, “Here are their names, good luck.”

You know, so there are no words to express the vast amount of carnage that he left behind.  And so trying to wade through that while you’re still trying to figure out your own identity, you’re trying to figure out who God is, where God was…  You know, I was trying to figure all that stuff out while I’m leading a church and while we have victims in the church.  I mean, there’s so many layers to this that it’s so hard to put into words.

Andrea:  Through that process, were there people around you that… I’m sure that there were plenty of such situations – I would imagine, I have never heard you say this – so, I would imagine that there are times that there were difficult conversations that were not very helpful for you.  But were there ways that people supported you that was actually really helpful and nourishing for you through that time?

Jimmy Hinton:  Yeah, there were.  And I had a core group of probably three friends from my church.  And these guys are guys who never ever… they never judged, they never probed and asked me inappropriate questions.  They never told me… even though I could tell some of the things that I was telling them, you know, because my heart was bleeding out, and you know, there was stuff that I heard that there was no way to process it and the only way to process is just to talk about it.  And I didn’t want to go into therapy.  That just wasn’t an option that I really wanted to explore at the time and so my therapy was just to talk about it.

And I could tell there were times where things that I told them really were too heavy for them.  I could just see it on their faces.  And they never told me to stop and they never said, “That was just too much,” or “We’d rather you not talk about this,” never once.  And so those three guys really became an anchor for me and just helped me to process that grief and that trauma.  And I probably traumatized them a little bit in the process, but you know, we remain very good friends.  I mean, these guys, I can lean on them for anything, and that’s been a godsend for sure.

Andrea:  That just makes me think of how important it is for us to share in one another’s burdens.  I mean, it’s going to be a burden for somebody who’s going to hear the things that you had to say.  Of course, it’s going to be a burden, but it’s almost like you were able to spread it out a little bit.

Jimmy Hinton:  Oh, yeah.  And I think that’s because, you know, the ripple effects come in waves.  So, the thing that kept going through my mind is just when you think things can’t get any worse, things will calm down for about a week or so then the next big surprise comes, and you’re like, “Oh, yeah, of course, they can get worse, you know, and this shouldn’t be a surprise anymore.”  So, those ripple effects kept coming.  But it was in those moments where the waters had kind of calmed a little bit, where you can kind of come up for air and just take a breath and you just prepare and you brace for the next wave that’s going to come and hit you.  And you know, that’s been a process for years.

And I’m at the point now where I’m so conditioned and calloused that nothing shocks me anymore, nothing surprises me.  And I don’t think that’s a bad thing because I’m able to really think through and process and use my brain and use logic.  And you know, it’s really what doctors who deal with the crises do, you know.  Like, trauma doctors, they don’t panic when they’re in the operating room.  They might panic after, but they’re trained to be really calloused to what they’re seeing because the human brain can’t comprehend that level of trauma.  But they have to because it’s their job.

Andrea:  Okay, thank you for sharing all of that.  I want to get into some of your expertise on this now.   So, you’re talking about basically abusers hiding in plain sight, you know, the deception techniques that they use.  Could you share with us at least a few of those deception techniques that are really common that could help us to better understand?

Jimmy Hinton:  Yeah.  So, I always try to think what’s the most practical thing that I can tell churches or police departments or the military or whoever it is that I’m training; you know, what’s the most important takeaway that I can give people that they can put into practice right now today?  So, I’ve basically boiled it down to these three things.  And this is a way oversimplification, but it sticks with the people, they really get it.

You know, I tell people when you walk into a room – and people can see this with me – like I just go into this hypervigilance mode.  I’m not paranoid whatsoever, but I observe.  And I think observation is really important because that’s what abusers do.  The minute they walk into a room, they go into a hypervigilance mode because they’re hunters, and they’re looking for their prey, and they’re looking for vulnerabilities, which all of us have.  So, I go into that mode as well.  So, when I walk into a room, I’m looking for people in the same way that they’re looking, which helps me identify the abusers a lot faster.

So, I tell people, you know, watch the eyes, watch the hands, and listen to the words.  So, for all people who are in the room, watch the eyes.  Well, why watch the eyes?  Because abusers are scanning and they’re looking and they’re gawking, and if they’re a sexual predator, they’re eyeing up their victims and they’re having sexual fantasies about those victims.  And the reason we don’t see sexual predators – child sexual predators – when we walk into a room is because we’re not expecting it and the abusers know that.  And my dad has talked a lot about this to me since he’s been in prison.

And I always say every female that I ever present to when I ask this question, “Do you know what it feels like to be sexually undressed by a pervert?”  Every single woman can identify with that.  They know what it’s like to go to the shopping mall, or to go wherever and have somebody sexually undress them with their eyes.  There’s no misinterpreting that look.  They know what it looks like.  They know what it feels like.  They can tell when somebody’s stalking them at the shopping mall and walking behind them, and they know what that feels like.  And most people can identify a pervert in a shopping mall who’s checking out teenage girls or, you know, into adulthood or whatever.

But once we get to prepubescent children, we lose the ability to be able to spot those perverts, even though the look that they give to those little children is the same exact look that the pervert at the shopping mall is giving as he’s gawking at women and teenage kids walking by, you know.  So that was a big eye opener for me when my dad really unpacked that and he was like, “You know, I’m able to spot other perverts because I am one.  That’s how I think.”  He was like, “The problem is you people don’t think that way so you’re not able to see it, or you’re not willing to see it.”

So, watch the eyes.  If there’s somebody who’s on my radar because of how they’re looking at people, the next logical thing is you watch their hands because abusers always are testing their victims by touching.  That’s one of the most important techniques.  And they’re benign touches at first, you know, a touch on the shoulder, a hug, a sideways hug or whatever.  They’re constantly touching their victims to see how they physically respond to that touch.

And you know, most of us have these automated responses where we don’t realize when we shrug off a hug, but the abuser does.  They can feel it, they can sense it, and they can feel your shoulder tenses up, or they can feel if you kind of lean into it a little bit.  Those are automated responses that our body has – those physiological responses.  So, I’m watching the people. Where do their hands and fingers, where do they go?  Do they glide across somebody’s shoulder?  Do they massage them as they’re hugging them?  You know, are they touching all over?  Do they touch around the waist?  Did they let their finger slide across the butt whenever they hug adults and kids?  You know, where are their hands?

And then next one, listen to the words.  Abusers are always information mining.  They’re constantly asking questions or better yet, framing in a way where they’re telling us to tell them something about ourselves.  So, a question like that would be this, “Tell me about yourself?”  That’s seems really benign, but it’s such a manipulative statement and it’s very tactical.  That’s not a question.  That’s a statement.  They’re telling you, “Tell me something about yourself.”  And usually we feel flattered by that.

So, we’ll start to talk about what?  What’s the very first thing that we start to talk about when we’re making a small talk with people besides for the weather?  Our kids, right?  How proud we are of them that, you know, “I have a ten-year-old daughter and she’s at the top of her class,” and on and on and on.  We talk about our kids, and what are they getting?  All kinds of information about your belief system, about what information you’re willing to divulge, about what your kids interests are, what their ages are, what they wear, you know, on and on and on.  And we got so wrapped up in talking about ourselves that we forgot to ask that person anything about themselves.

And I look for people who don’t reciprocate because normal conversations – if we’re genuinely interested in meeting somebody and getting to know visitors or whatever – would reciprocate.  You know, we’ll ask them about where they’re from or what they do or whatever.  You know, we’ll ask them, not demand that they tell us, but then we’ll reciprocate.  We’ll talk about ourselves.  That’s a normal conversation.

So, I just look for some of these indicators that shows people are being manipulated.  And if they meet all three of those criteria – you know, if their eyes are wandering and they’re undressing people with their eyes, if they’re touching all over people and can’t keep their fingers and hands to themselves, and if they’re manipulative in the way that they converse with people – they are so high on my radar.  It doesn’t mean that I’m saying they’re an abuser, but they’re very high on my radar.  And I’ll let other people know about it and why they’re on my radar.

Andrea:  Okay.  I have some more questions about how do you let people know about it?  What does that look like without, you know… I don’t know.  Is it possible to go too far in warning others?

Jimmy Hinton:  Yeah.  Yeah, I think it’s definitely possible to go too far.  And an example of that is, you know, first of all, saying that somebody is an abuser when you have absolutely no evidence that shows that.  You know, I think we need to be very careful.  We also need to be careful not to become paranoid and start pointing at people and saying, “Oh, they could be an abuser.”  You know, I think that’s why it’s really important to have very specific pieces of evidence that substantiate somebody who crosses boundaries.

And if somebody’s crossing boundaries, I think it’s more than fair to tell other people, “Hey, I’ve noticed that this person is just touching all over this person and you know, when they give hugs, they’re rubbing their shoulders.”  And maybe there’s nothing there, but you know, it’s my duty to tell people that, “Just be cautious, be aware.”

Andrea:  Who do you tell?

Jimmy Hinton:  When I do trainings at churches, I tell the leadership.  One of the things that I do is a facility walkthrough.  And I observe both facility and find vulnerable places within the facility that abusers would migrate to.  But I also observe people, and you know, 100% of the time, this has never failed.  If there’s somebody who sticks out or shows up on my radar, I will tell the leadership, I’ll say who it is and why they’re on my radar.  And 100% of the time, they said, “Oh, we’ve had a lot of problems with that person.”  You know, and then they’ll just list all these boundaries that this person has crossed.  But the problem is they’ve never been trained to know specifically what to look for and so it just feels gossipy to them.  And so nobody ever says anything, you know.  All these people have all these issues where this person has crossed so many boundaries, but nobody’s ever spoke up about it.

Andrea:  Yeah.  Yeah, because none of them are really huge that you can really point to.

Jimmy Hinton:  Right.  And abusers keep it that way, you know.  They keep things very ambiguous because, you know…  I could share with you so many letters that I got from prison where my dad talks about this.  He unpacks it and he’s like, “The more ambiguous you can be in your behavior, the more it works to your benefit because people don’t have anything specific to hang their hat on to actually accuse you of anything.”  That’s by design.

Andrea:  When you’re mentioning the testing, abusers testing by touching or whatever and they noticed the response, the physiological pull back, what is an abuser’s technique from there?  Like, do they continue to push that boundary or do they realize that, “This is a person who’s not going to want to, you know, like submit to whatever I am trying to accomplish”?

Jimmy Hinton:  Yeah.  Yeah, typically, you know, my understanding, my experience is that if somebody has a negative physiological response – you know, if they tense up, if they pull back – they’re usually not going to take it any farther than that.  You know, they’re looking for a path of least resistance when it comes to victimization.  And so, you know, we think of vulnerabilities as the kid who grew up in a foster home or who has negligent parents.  You know, when I read the research, I’m like, “That’s not really who they’re targeting.”  Like, all of us have vulnerabilities.  Every single one of us has vulnerabilities and an abuser can find those vulnerabilities really quickly.  And you know, what they’re doing, what it comes to is a matching game.

So, they could find a vulnerable child, but have a parent like me who’s incredibly observant and who’s going to let people know, “Hey, you’re violating boundaries. Get away.”  Not that my kids could never be abused because I think that’s really dangerous territory to say, “Well, you know, I’m trained and an abuser would never target my kids.”  They might, but the point is what abusers are doing is they’re playing this matching game.  So, they’ll find a vulnerable child, somebody who’s – in their mind – pretty easy to offend, to abuse and then they’ll match that kid to the proper parents.  And so they begin all these testing techniques on the adults too.

And that’s why watching the hands, watching the eyes, listening to the words, that’s all very important because they start touching all over the kids right in front of the parents and that’s very intentional.  They’re seeing not only how the kid responds, but they’re seeing whether the parent notices or not.  You know, do the parents eyes… can they maintain eye contact with the parent, or do the parents eyes keep going to where the abusers hands are?  And it’s anything from a touch on the shoulder to rubbing hair to patting them on the head and letting their finger slide down the victim’s hair, you know, on and on and on.  These are all fairly benign things, but they’re all 100% intentional.

Andrea:  So, it sounds like, as parents, we should be more defensive of our children in situations like this.

Jimmy Hinton:  Yeah, and have conversations with our kids about what their boundaries are and what they can do if somebody is violating those boundaries.  Because, you know, abuse doesn’t feel like abuse to a kid.  For one, they don’t have a sexual context to really understand that what’s happening to them is abuse.  You know, and I just think it’s really important to talk to our kids and say, “Okay, what are your boundaries?  What’s your no zone?  What makes you uncomfortable?  And what do you do if somebody gets into that no zone and starts making you feel uncomfortable, starts doing things that just make you feel uneasy?”  You know, what’s the process?  What’s the procedure and have those conversations with our kids.

But also, as parents, we need to be incredibly vigilant.  And we need to watch if somebody walking up and touching my kid on the shoulder, maybe they just wanted to tap my kid on the shoulder.  I’m not going to tackle somebody to the ground because they tapped my kid on the shoulder, you know.  But I also know what techniques abusers use.  And so if I see this pattern of somebody gawking at one of my kids, and then they walk up and they try to force a hug on my kid, at that point, I’m going to physically intervene.  I’m going to physically break them away from my kid and reprimand them and say, “You don’t touch my kid like that.  You know, I don’t want you hugging my kid.  I don’t want you stroking my kid’s face.  I don’t want you stroking their hair.  I don’t want you rubbing their shoulders.  That’s not okay.”

And I’ll probably say it loud enough so that other people hear it, which kind of embarrasses the person and it catches them off guard.  And again, maybe they’re an abuser, maybe they’re not, but they’re going to know good and well when they’re done with me that they violated physical boundaries and they’re not going to do it again to my kid.

Andrea:  So tiger mama or tiger daddy needs to come out.

Jimmy Hinton:  Yeah.  I mean, again, we don’t need to belittle people and be rude and demeaning.  But yeah, absolutely and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Andrea:  Sure.  Yeah.  Oh, man.  Okay, so background checks are something that organizations, companies use to figure out who’s going to work with their kids and who’s okay to work with their kids or not.  Do you feel like those are sufficient then?

Jimmy Hinton:  Not alone.  They might catch people who have spent time in prison, who actually got caught which is the vast minority of abusers have ever been caught.  And even the ones who have been caught, rarely do they get charges that, you know… a lot of times they’ll find loopholes or they’ll find sweet plea deals, and so there’s no criminal record that follows that person.

Andrea:  Hmm.  So, they need to also do what?  I mean, is that when an organization needs to have this additional training that you give and have an idea of what it looks like; the hands, the eyes, the words, that sort of thing?

Jimmy Hinton:  Yeah, training.  And good training is a very good component that’s married well to background checks.  You’ve got to be properly trained.  And you know, I kind of harp on this whenever I go places, and some people don’t like it and I’m okay with that.  But I say teaching people to report people after they’ve spotted this red flag behavior stuff is not prevention, so stop packaging that as prevention.  Making a report… by the time you pick up the phone and you’re making a report, that means that somebody has crossed the threshold of reasonable suspicion and that means that most likely if that person is an abuser, you’re way too late.  That is not prevention.

You know, I relate it to airplanes, right?  Picking up the phone and calling 911 after you see a big mushroom cloud coming up from behind the trees is not preventing that plane from going down.  Look at all the measures that we do through the FAA to screen people, to do to do background checks, to ask questions of people as they go through the TSA checkpoints.  We have a rigorous system.  There’s a reason why it’s safe to fly.  It’s not by accident that it’s safe to fly, and we don’t do any of those things.

When we hire people, we allow the person to tell us which people we’re going to call if we even call their references at all.  We never call anybody else.  We’re like, “Oh, okay, they have two glowing recommendations by these people they hand-selected – they chose them.  They have two glowing recommendations; come on through!  Come on in!  In fact, we’re going to hire you and pay you money to be here.”  We have terrible screening processes. So, I think we need to start there, but we also have to have a really good ability to fire people.

Andrea:  Oh, tell me more about that.

Jimmy Hinton:  You know, we talked about screening, and I’ve seen abuse training where they talk about screening.  Screening, screening, screening, we’re going to screen people.  Okay, that’s great. That’s necessary.  I’m all for it.  I’m 100% behind that, but let’s talk about the ability to fire people too.  We should have clear written policies that spell out what the boundaries are; physical boundaries, emotional boundaries, communication boundaries, all these things.  We need to spell those out in written policy, and then spell out the consequences for people who violate those boundaries.

And if somebody’s violating those boundaries and doing it over and over and over again, we shouldn’t say, “Well, maybe we just misinterpreted what they were doing.”  That’s not acceptable.  Can you imagine TSA operating that way?  “Maybe we just misinterpreted, you know. Come on board,” right?  TSA is very serious about stopping people who they think are even potential threats, and we don’t do it.  We don’t do it in the workplace.  We don’t do it in our schools, especially.  We get these strong unions that back our teachers and make it nearly impossible.  I could point to teachers in my own school district, the school that my kids go to that have violated so many boundaries with students, and they’re still on staff.  That’s not acceptable.

Andrea:  Hmm.  No, absolutely not; or volunteers too, I’m sure.

Jimmy:  Sure, right.  So, yeah, we need to be willing to fire people, to get rid of them, and to have substantiated reasons.  You know, it’s not just like, “I have a bad feeling so we’re gonna fire this person.”  That’s not fair.  All of us would probably be fired at different points.  But we have to have very clear boundaries that are spelled out, and we have to understand deception techniques on how abusers operate and how they violate those boundaries and why they violate those boundaries and how they get away with it.

Andrea:  Jimmy, I’m going to ask you how people can get in touch with you, and then I’m going to ask you one more question about what it looks like to be a “Voice of Influence” in a situation like this.  So I’m giving you a little fair warning here.

Jimmy Hinton:  Sure, okay.

Andrea:  So first, can you tell us if somebody is wanting to have you come to a training with their group or they want to learn more about what you do or your podcast, can you tell us more about how people can get in touch with you?

Jimmy Hinton:  Yes, so the easiest way… and this is not because I’m a narcissist.  It’s because I am not a marketer, so my website is about as simple as it gets.  It’s my name, jimmyhinton.org.  That’s the easiest way.  All of my resources are tied to the website.  So, the podcast is on the homepage.  It’s a very simple layout.  That’s by design.  It’s easy.  I have a tab on the services that I offer.  There’s a page for speaking, and there’s a contact form directly on there if people want to contact me and inquire about speaking.

Andrea:  And you have patrons for your podcast.  Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Jimmy Hinton:  Yeah, so we wanted to find a way to fund our podcast and to improve it.  And you know, we looked at sponsors and we didn’t really like that route.  And so we decided to go to the route of Patreon, so it’s patreon.com/SpeakingOut.  And we love it because we got people who already listened to the podcast, and they sign up at different tiers.  And then we offer different rewards for each of those tiers.  So, they’re actually getting something.  It’s not like a nonprofit where you give money, you know, you make a donation, and then who knows where that money winds up.  We tell people exactly how that money is being used.

They’ve gotten to see our studio be built, you know.  Our patrons have seen this process and they’ve been part of that process.  And then they give us all kinds of feedback.  They’re part of our community, and so a lot of our episodes are really shaped by our patrons.  They really help us with the content.  And at the top tier, we even bring patrons on as guests.  So, we’ve had multiple patrons beyond as guests to the podcast, and it’s just fun.  It’s really neat and we’ve gotten to know people and we feel like they’re part of the family, so it’s really cool.

Andrea:  Hmm, that’s the Speaking Out on Sex Abuse podcast and it’s with your mom, right?

Jimmy Hinton:  Correct.

Andrea:  Yeah, yeah.  Okay, so in conclusion then, when somebody wants to be a “Voice of Influence” for those who might be survivors or for the vulnerable, really, what is your advice for somebody who wants to be a “Voice of Influence” in this sphere?

Jimmy Hinton:  Three words; start where you are.  Four words, I miscounted – start where you are.  I never dreamed that I would be doing what I’m doing nine years ago.  You know, nine years ago, I was in a little small town.  I reported to the police.  I just went on this quest to really understand how we all missed it, and I just started blogging about it.  I started speaking immediately about it and it kept progressing and you know, there is no silver bullet.  There’s no magic to it.  It’s just doing what’s right, starting where you are right in your own community, right within your own family, right within your own school district.  And you know, just following your heart and doing what’s right.  We know right from wrong; all of us do.  Whether you’re Christian or not, whether you’re male, female, young, or old, it doesn’t matter.  We know right from wrong, so just start where you’re at.

Andrea:  Great!  Thank you so much for being a “Voice of Influence” for our listeners today.

Jimmy Hinton:  Absolutely.  Thank you.  It’s an honor to be on the show.

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Why We Need to Understand Trauma and Coercive Control with Dr. Debra Wingfield

Episode 147

Dr. Debra Wingfield Voice of Influence Podcast Andrea Joy Wenburg

Dr. Debra Wingfield is an Author, Speaker, and Trainer for family abuse prevention and intervention treatment.  She practiced counseling for 25 years with domestic abuse victims, offenders, adults, and children from all types of dysfunctional family systems. She’s also provided family court advocacy since 1993 and would love to be able to train those within the court system about trauma.

In this episode, Debra shares what the courts miss in cases of domestic abuse due to not being sufficiently trauma-informed, the societal impact that misconceptions about abuse can have, what it means for the rest of society if we don’t actually address these misconceptions and have the correct understanding about trauma, the difference between parenting with coercive control and parenting in a healthy way, and so much more.

Mentioned in this episode:

 

Find our Lifeline resources and information about the course here.

 

Transcript

All right, so today I have with me Debra Wingfield.  She is an author, speaker, and trainer for family abuse prevention and intervention treatment.  She practiced counseling for twenty-five years with domestic abuse victims, offenders, adults, and children from all types of dysfunctional family systems, and she’s provided family court advocacy since 1993.  She would love to be able to train those within the court system about trauma.

So, in our conversation, one of the things that we talk about is what the courts miss in cases of domestic abuse because they are not sufficiently trauma-informed.  She also talks about the societal impact that misconceptions about abuse can have; so what it means for the rest of society if we don’t actually address these and have the correct understanding about trauma.  And then we also talk about the difference between parenting with coercive control and parenting in a healthy way.

There’s a lot to be gained from this episode, and I really look forward to you hearing.  Enjoy!

Andrea:  All right!  Debra Wingfield, it is great to have you on the Voice of Influence podcast.

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  Thank you, Andrea.  I’m honored to be here.

Andrea:  Would you tell us a little bit about what you do and why you do it?

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  Okay.  Well, I have been working in the field of abuse and working with trauma survivors for over forty-five years now in my career.  And I’ve worked with children.  I’ve worked with adults.  I’ve worked with teenagers.  And in all of that work what I found is that the dynamics that are connected with domestic abuse and coercive control have lifelong impacts on the individuals involved in that.  So, I have, over the years, gone from actually being a therapist and doing the groundwork there to now being more of an educator.  I have an online training center where I actually train people to understand the dynamics of domestic abuse and coercive control as well as how to actually help people – whether it’s survivors or it’s the abusers, how to work with them and help them go through a change process that will help them heal.

Andrea:  Hmm.  Who tends to be the people that you help with that?

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  Right now, I’m partnered with a program called Called Peace Ministries.  I’m training advocates for their program to work within the church system as well as in the community to actually be there and available for survivors who are coming out of relationships where they’ve been abused or they’ve been coercively controlled.  And to help them get through the court system as well as they can based on a very broken court system that we’re working with right now, to protect their children, to keep their children as safe as they can.

And I know you have some questions about the court system.  So one of the other things that I do is I actually serve as an advocate for survivors that are going through the family court.  And as I’m doing my work with them, I’m also teaching others to do that same work because that’s a legacy that I want to be leaving behind is that we’re creating an army.  And that army is to go out there into the communities around the world and we are international at this point and educating so that people understand more about, not only the dynamics, but the impacts and how that impacts us in society and how it can have lifetime impacts on those who are abused.

Andrea:  Do you do some of this training with professionals within the court system somehow?

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  That’s my dream.  I would like to be working with some of the professionals that work in the court system.  At this point and time, they consider their training that they get through their degree programs as sufficient for the work that they’re doing.  And we know that through the research, we’ve been able to show that their lack of training in their degree programs actually contributes to more harm to children on down the line.

Andrea:  There are a few different questions that come to mind.  Well, first of all, you’ve been in this, it sounds like you said for forty-five years; you’ve been working with children, adults, teens in various ways.  How have you sort of sustained that work, that mission and the energy that it takes to continue that mission?  I’m sure it has to be somewhat discouraging a lot of times.

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  You’re right, Andrea.  There are times when it is discouraging.  However, when I see someone who is able to come through their healing and get on the other side and really make a solid life for themselves, that keeps me moving forward.  We had a tragedy the first of this year.  My granddaughter overdosed, and I had gotten into working in the family court system because she had lost her son to her abuser, and that’s what took her down that downward spiral into using drugs because she just never felt like she had an opportunity to be a part of her son’s life.  So, I have dedicated the remainder of my years that I can do this work to her and her legacy and for my great-grandchildren.  She left two children behind.

Andrea:   I’m really, really sorry to hear about your granddaughter, Debra.  Yeah, that is tragic, and I’m so sorry to hear about the disservice, the harm that the court system ended up causing for her life and the lives of the people in your family.

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  Well, thank you.  It’s not been easy.  We’re making adjustments as we go along.

Andrea:  Yeah.  So, when it comes to the court system then, what are some things that you feel like need to change?

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  I really think the courts need to be trained in trauma-informed processes because they miss what’s going on with the survivor in courts.  Survivors tend to have a lot of anxiety in court and over an abundance of anxiety to what the courts are normally used to when someone comes in before a judge.  First of all, they know nothing about the court system.  They’ve never been, for the most part, involved in anything like this.  So, it’s very unfamiliar, and not only the courts but the attorneys really need to have a strong understanding of the kind of clients that they’re working with, who don’t know how to express what’s gone on in a marriage where they have been coercively controlled by their partner.

And as a result of that, very often what we see is judges will discount what mothers say.  They won’t believe them.  And mothers tell the truth 98% of the time in court, and judges tend to just gloss over that and buy into the charm of the abuser.  And the abuser convinces the judge that, “Oh, I was involved with the children’s lives and I did all these things with the children,” when in fact it’s the opposite.  The mother has been left to do all of that.  And then the father comes in and says, “Well, I should have at least 50% custody of my children or 50% parenting time.”  And we are changing; the language is changing across the country from custody to parenting time.

Custody actually implies a sense of ownership, and abusers capitalize on that.  That’s what they’re looking for is to own the victim, to own the children.  They’re property to them.  And when children are with their abusive parent, they may be being covertly abused, which means it’s just kind of under the surface or they don’t understand how they’re being manipulated.  But then they go back to their mother who is trying to continue to maintain the discipline, to maintain the family rules that have been set up for how their family works.  And the children balk at that because they’re basically with the other parent 50% of the time who’s playing the Disneyland parent.

So, let’s put in a couple of statistics here, so I don’t have to try to keep this gender-neutral because it’s not gender-neutral.  We know that one out of every four women has been abused by their partner at some point in their relationship and that abuse is very off and ongoing.  So, children are also experiencing that.  The research now that talks about how children experience the coercive control that’s being exerted on their mother actually has long term impacts on them as well.

Andrea:  Like what?

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  Like, we see health impacts in middle age.  And I don’t know if you’re familiar with the ACE study, the Adverse Childhood Experiences study.

Andrea:  No, I’m not.  Please, tell us.

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  Okay, the ACE Study was developed by Dr. Vincent Felitti in San Diego.  He was a physician in Kaiser Permanente out there, and he had set up a program for his patients who had problems with obesity.  And what he wanted to do was he wanted to make sure that they were losing weight, and keeping that weight off, and getting healthier because he comes from a prevention standpoint.  And over time, those patients who had enrolled in that program started dropping out or started regaining their weight, and he was concerned about what is causing this. And with that, he brought in their social scientists to interview the patients.  And what he found was there were ten factors that happened during their childhood, and of those ten factors, one was witnessing mother being treated violently.  Seven of those factors have to do with physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and neglect.

Andrea:  That they personally experienced?

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  That they personally experienced.  And we’re talking about a population of people that are middle-income people; they’re not low-income, they’re not higher income.  They tend to be more middle income.  And he repeated the study in other states and then around the world and kept getting the same results, that history of one to four or more of those ten factors actually resulted in midlife onset of chronic physical illnesses.  So, heart disease, high blood pressure, cancer, diabetes, having had a teen pregnancy, substance abuse, and the list goes on.  And you can actually look at the ACE study on the Centers for Disease Control website.  And on that website, there are multiple research studies that have come about.

And it was such a phenomenal study and opened up the eyes of the Centers for Disease Control so much that they changed their whole focus on how they address child abuse.  So, instead of addressing child abuse as, “We’ve got to stop the abusers,” what they saw is you’ve got to start when children are in the womb, actually, and moving forward and create safe, stable, nurturing families.  And the effort of the CDC in their violence prevention unit now is completely the opposite of what it was prior to this study in 1998.

We’re still having people catch up with the fact that this study is out there.  We’re having people still needing to catch up with all the research that has come as a result of that study that helps us understand that we have to stop children from witnessing a parent being abused.  We have to stop children from being abused.  We have to teach empathy skills when children are young enough that it carries over into adulthood so that for them hurting someone else is no longer an option.  And whether that hurt is an emotional hurt or a physical hurt, we have to stop that.  And the way that we do that is we have to do education.  And part of what I do as an educator is I talk about the prevention side as much as I talk about what is the problem and how do you identify the problem.  So, I know that was a long answer.

Andrea:  That’s okay.  This is really interesting.  I’ll be back in just a second.

Okay, so we have to catch up with this.  So it makes sense.  We’ve got to catch up with the research that’s already been done on this.  So, there’s health impacts, long-term health impacts.  What other kinds of societal impacts are there that kind of stem from the fact that the court system isn’t taken care of, as it isn’t trauma-informed that children are seeing and experiencing abuse?  How does that really impact not just those people and the people around them but then also society at large?

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  So, from the standpoint of society, what we’re looking at is some of these children who do not get the help that they need from the courts – the courts do not operate very quickly and very timely – and I have seen children who have basically thrown away their education.  They coast through school, and the schools get upset and schools suspend them, schools exclude them permanently from a school district and they have to be moved into another school district because they have never learned emotional control.  So, we actually have literature that talks about children who are emotionally dis-controlled or dysregulated, and what we need to do to help them with that.

And children who come out of situations where they’ve witnessed their mother being abused or coercively controlled, where they’ve also been abused themselves, they get into trying to address their own trauma and trying to heal from it, and instead they act it out.  So, they end up in our juvenile court system.  They end up never going to college, working at jobs way beneath their intellectual capabilities.  They become abusers.

And one of the things that we do know is that boys who are exposed to witnessing coercive control, witnessing domestic abuse, actually have a greater chance of becoming abusers in their own relationships and continuing this intergenerational cycle of abuse in their families.  What we see between the ages of six to ten is they’re learning from the abuser how to treat women and beyond that.  Then they turn that around and they start treating their mothers that way until we run into situations where the guardians ad litem in the court system say, “Well, maybe this child needs to just go live with dad.  Maybe that’s the problem.  The problem is that they just aren’t getting along with Mother.”

Andrea:  And Mom can’t control them at this point, probably.

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  Right.

Andrea:  Because they’re trying to control the mom.

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  Mhm.  And then they go and live with Dad.  Well, Dad just teaches them to be better at their abuse.  And then these children start blowing off their lives because Dad doesn’t hold them to the same level of accountability that Mother does for getting their schoolwork done, for staying involved in activities, for doing the things that build good, strong, healthy adults.  What they do is Dad says, “Oh, I got a buddy.  Let’s go play video games together.  Let’s go hang out together.  Let’s go do…” whatever Dad believes is going to keep that child locked into him and be the fun person, the fun parent, and then portray the mother as the rigid, structured parent when all she’s doing is carrying out what they had agreed to do during their marriage as far as how to raise their children.

And at that point in time, he’s undermining everything that Mother is doing to where, finally, Mother goes to the court and says, “I can’t keep this child in my home, and he’s gonna have to go live with his dad.”  And the court says, “Okay, we’re gonna let him live with his dad and he needs to go to counseling so that he can learn to be a better person because that is supporting whatever he’s doing.”  When they’re with Dad, Dad undermines the counseling or never gets them to counseling.

I have a case like that where the court has ordered the father to put the son in counseling.  He had a psychological evaluation that the dad put off and put off and put off for well over a year that the court had ordered.  And now he’s about to age out of the high school system and probably will drop out on his 17th birthday and never complete high school.  And his therapy that he’s been in has only been happening for maybe three to four months now.  Dad is facing contempt of court with the judge to the point where he’s facing jail time and fines.  And the dad says, “I don’t think it’s gonna happen.  I don’t think the judge will do this to me.”

And so, what is the message to this child?  What is the message to multiple children in these situations when Dad doesn’t hold them accountable because Dad wants a buddy?  Dad is going to do whatever he can to take the children away from Mother because he’s mad because she had the audacity to leave him and to stop being abused.  That’s the bottom line.

Andrea:  Debra, what can we do or what do you feel like it would take to really…  If we were to move forward in an idealistic way, what would it take to disrupt the way that things are in the court system so that we actually see the impacts lessen – the impacts of trauma lessen – and people in more healthy environments?

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  It’s going to take a huge revamp of the court system.  And I know that the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges is slowly chipping away at this.  It’s going to take a much more massive movement to have something happen dramatically.  I know of a judge in California who actually was following the dictates of what the judges taught her to do in these cases and sent the child to live with the abuser.  And when the child was murdered by the abusive father, she felt so harmed as a judge by what she had been taught that she actually resigned her judgeship because she could no longer carry out what her fellow judges were teaching her and saying she had to do.

So, there’s movements across the country to make these kinds of changes in the court system.  The Center for Judicial Excellence out in California, Kathleen Russell has led them a very strong movement in California where they’ve done audits on the courts out there to show where the courts have not done a good job.  But we need millions of dollars to do audits across the country on the court system.  Joan Meier with DV LEAP out of Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., has just completed a study of cases that were available where Mother claimed domestic violence or child abuse and Father gained at least 50% custody or more.

So, you know, we have little pockets.  This issue gets pushed underneath the surface because many people think domestic violence is physical abuse, is a physical injury – and that’s incorrect.  Domestic abuse is coercive control.  And if you look at the Power and Control Wheel that was developed by the Duluth Project out of Duluth, Minnesota, what you will find is there’s a wheel – it’s called the Power and Control Wheel – and there are eight spokes inside that wheel.  And every one of those spokes inside that wheel are coercive control – whether it’s financial abuse, using the children, using male privilege, threats, intimidation, emotional abuse – and on the outside of that wheel is physical and sexual violence.

So, what everyone goes through is, “Oh, well, there was no physical abuse.  You didn’t file a police report.  There’s no medical reports.”  And, so, therefore, the judge determines that there’s no domestic violence and does not use that part of the statute to make their ruling about parenting time.  When in actuality, what the judges need to be looking at is all of those spokes inside that wheel and addressing how all of those spokes inside that wheel were used as a way to coercively control.  I’m going to use the women because we know more women are abused in relationships than men.  The women are cut off from expressing that.

So, one of the things that I teach is stay away from saying the word “abuse” in court.  Instead, describe the behaviors of the abuser.  Describe how you were pulled out of your educational program when you became involved with a relationship with this abuser and that he convinced you that you wouldn’t need that because he was going to take care of you.  Describe how you were the parent who had to stay home with the children and homeschool the children instead of pursuing your career because someone had to do it.  And so he said you were to do that, so he isolated you from your home, sometimes even isolating from the homeschool community.

And as we go around that wheel, we can find examples of that happening on a very frequent basis in that relationship.  And then because I’m working with Called to Peace Ministries now, I’m getting more and more people coming to me who have been spiritually abused by the way that the abuser uses the church against her.  And I’m not going to do the quotes here.  I’ll just stay away from that because I come from a secular perspective.  But we do know that the churches are creating great harm to women in these relationships by saying, “Oh, you have to reconcile.”  “You have to forgive.”  “You can’t divorce.”  And that in itself is coercive control.  So, how do we change all of this?  We have to change our whole mentality around domestic abuse and coercive control.

They’ve done it in the United Kingdom and are working on it, I know, in Australia.  But in the United Kingdom in December of 2015, a law went into effect that actually criminalized coercive control.  So, all these dynamics inside that Power and Control Wheel have been criminalized.  And they have made arrests.  Yeah, they have made arrests and convicted people, and there’s a five-year prison sentence that goes with that.  So, we have to look at coercive control as a captivity crime in this country.

Andrea:  That’s a huge shift.  That is a huge shift.  That would be disrupting to not just the court system and churches but even schools.  I mean, I looked it up while you were talking about it because I’ve not seen this before, but using coercion and threats to get somebody to comply…  I mean, that can happen in a school pretty easily.  It’s using intimidation, you know, things like that.  It makes a lot of sense that we would be careful around these things and not use them and that we would criminalize them.  It is such a huge, huge shift.

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  It is, and that’s why it takes so long to create that kind of shift.  Evan Stark put this together so well in his book on coercive control.  And he explains exactly what it is – it’s a condition of unfreedom.  The abuser has taken away the freedom of choice, the freedom of being their own person from the victim.  So, in our program, we teach empowerment.  We teach our advocates how to use empowerment with trauma-informed processes with the survivors and that’s so important because survivors need to finally take back their personhood, to take back their identity that has been stolen from them by the abuser.

Andrea:  How do you help people to see the difference between empowerment and helping people to take back their identity, that sort of thing… or maybe not even a difference.  I’m going back to the idea of schooling or parenting, when of course there is a certain amount of needing to kind of guide a child to make the right decisions and things like this.  So, what’s a healthy expression of parenting and schooling and that sort of thing versus the unhealthy way of approaching it with coercive control?

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  Okay, so a healthy way of parenting – and this is how I parented my daughter – is using logical and natural consequences.  This comes out of some of the early research in parenting, and one of the things that is the hallmark of that is giving children autonomy to make choices.  So, I’ll give you an example, and this is a true story with my daughter.  I had called her in, she was out riding her bike, and I called her in to set the table for dinner.  And she comes to the door and she, you know, in that whiny voice that kids use, “Oh, Mom, I just want to be outside riding my bike with my friends.”  And I said, “Well, you can do that.  However, if you choose to do that before you set the table, then the bike is mine for a week.  Now what do you want to do?”  And she said, “I’ll set the table.”

Now, I have been doing that with her from the time that she was very young.  She was about three or four years old, and I stumbled across this whole piece about logical and natural consequences.  And as a result of that, she learned that she had to make good choices.  That’s an empowerment piece.  When we work with survivors, we help them look at different options so they make the choice.  We don’t tell them what to do.  That’s what abusers do.  We say, you know, “You can look at it from this standpoint or this standpoint or even a third standpoint, if it’s there.  What do you want to do?”  And that helps them make their own choices.

The other thing is that we believe the survivor.  We don’t question her story about what happened to her.  That’s her experience, and we want to be there for her.  So, if it’s okay with you, I want to give a little plug here for our training program.

Andrea:  Oh, yeah, absolutely.  So, tell us about where people can find information about you and your trainings.

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  Okay.  I have a website.  It’s called houseofpeacepubs.com, and there are links there to the advocacy training program where someone can find out information about the program.  We start a class about once a month.  We do a class over four weeks.  So, it kind of comes out over every month.  Sometimes, it rolls over into the next month.  But we end about mid-December with our twelve courses so that everyone has the holiday season off, and then we start usually the first full week in January again.

Andrea:  And this is a series of twelve courses, is that what you’re saying?

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  Yes, there’s twelve courses.  People can join the course at any time and go through the sequence of twelve courses.  So, we are in our second year now.  And we are close to having 200 people who have taken one or more of our courses.

Andrea:  That’s great!

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  So, another thing to look at on my website if people want to know more about coercive control and the impacts of coercive control and how to work with that in the family court system, I have a book that I’ve written that can be found on the products link on that website.  It’s called Eyes Wide Open: Help! with Control Freak Co-Parents.  And it explains all the different types of coercive control that I’ve identified through the research, through talking with survivors and through working with survivors.  So, you know, people are welcome to go and check that out and see if they have questions.  They can contact me through info@houseofpeacepubs.com if they have any questions, they want to know more.

Andrea:  That sounds great.  Debra, we’ll make sure to include links to everything you mentioned in our show notes on our website, too, so that would make it easy for people to come and find at voiceofinfluence.net.

Debra, thank you so much for sharing your experience and expertise with us here and your passion to see things change.  I hope that in the midst of all the unrest that we’re all experiencing kind of right now that perhaps some good will come of this for race relations but also for just this issue of coercive control in general, and specifically also for people who are experiencing it in the court systems and in their families.  So, thank you for all the work that you’re doing and for being a Voice of Influence our audience today.

Dr. Debra Wingfield:  Oh, you’re welcome, Andrea, and thank you for having me on your show!