Welcome to today’s episode of The Communication Solution podcast with Casey Jackson, John Gilbert and Danielle Cantin. We love talking about Motivational Interviewing, and about improving outcomes for individuals, organizations, and the communities that they serve. In this episode, we embark on a thought-provoking discussion on the scalability of mental health services and the application of motivational interviewing (MI) within systemic frameworks. Addressing the complexities of navigating the mental health system, the conversation delves into the limitations and potentials of MI, the impact of organizational culture and leadership, and the critical role of empathy and consistency in effecting meaningful change. Through an exploration of the challenges faced by both providers and recipients of mental health services, the podcast offers insights into the intricacies of enhancing care delivery on a macro scale.

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• Complexities of the Mental Health System: The episode opens with a candid examination of the prevailing frustrations and criticisms surrounding the mental health system, setting the stage for a deeper exploration of its systemic issues.
  
• The Scalability of Motivational Interviewing: John Gilbert introduces the topic of scaling MI practices within the mental health sector, questioning how these techniques can be effectively expanded to meet broader systemic needs while addressing individual autonomy and well-being.
  
• Compliance vs. Behavior Change: Casey Jackson articulates the difference between compliance-based models and behavior change models, underscoring the limitations of traditional approaches in facilitating long-term mental health improvements.
  
• Challenges of Scaling MI: The conversation navigates the practical and philosophical hurdles in broadening the application of MI, including the need for political will, financial investment, and a cultural shift towards preventive care.
  
• Impact of Organizational Culture and Leadership: The discussion emphasizes the crucial influence of leadership and organizational culture in the successful implementation and scaling of MI practices, highlighting the necessity for consistent vision and communication.
  
• Empathy in Systemic Change: The hosts reflect on the importance of empathy at all levels of the mental health system—from individual care to executive decision-making—pointing out how a genuine understanding of diverse perspectives can drive more effective and compassionate solutions.
  
• The Role of Measurement and Feedback: The episode touches on the significance of measuring MI fidelity and providing feedback as key strategies in ensuring the quality and effectiveness of scaled interventions.
  
• Success Stories and Challenges: Casey shares examples of successful MI implementation in various settings, including the challenges faced and the remarkable outcomes achieved through dedicated efforts and strategic planning.
  
• Vision for Future Scalability: The dialogue explores the potential for a future where mental health services are more efficiently scaled, advocating for a concerted effort among stakeholders to adopt evidence-based, person-centered approaches like MI
  
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You don’t want to miss this one! Make sure to rate us or share this podcast. It would mean so much to us!

This has been part one of a two-part podcast. We hope you’ll join us for the second portion. You don’t want to miss this one! Make sure to rate us or share this podcast. It would mean so much to us! Thank you for listening to the communication solution. This podcast is all about you. If you have questions, thoughts, topic suggestions, or ideas, please send them our way at casey@ifioc.com. For more resources, feel free to check out ifioc.com.

 Hello and welcome to the communication solution podcast with Casey Jackson and John Gilbert. I’m your host, Danielle Cantin. Here at the Institute for Individual and Organizational Change, otherwise known as IFIOC, we love to talk about communication, we love to talk about solutions, and we love to talk about providing measurable results for individuals, organizations, and the communities they serve. Welcome to the communication solution that will change your world. 

Hey everyone. It’s Danielle Cantin here with the communication solution podcast. I’m your facilitator here with your hosts, Casey Jackson and John Gilbert. Hey guys. Hello.  I’d like to turn this episode over to John. You have a great idea for what we can talk about today.

And instead of me trying to reiterate it, I’m just going to toss it to you. Okay. Well, thank you. Yeah. I think it’s a work in progress here, but I know that Casey and I definitely can riff off this and, and this is more Casey’s wheelhouse, but a lot of this relates to a recent podcast we did where we went into the lived experience of helping people that,  are unhoused or dealing with that or mental health issues.

And how that is as someone that’s helping them and what that experience is like and how am I fits with that. So for those that are interested in that, you can go deeper into that dive. I’m really curious about the other kind of side of this where people have all seemingly I I’m less aware of this. I know Danielle.

You shared some things as well, that there’s a lot of opinions and a lot of,  frustration and a lot of ideas about the mental health system and how it’s completely broken or how we need to do this or that. And Casey, I’m thinking of starting there with you because you had shared before this, even some extreme views that I haven’t even heard around this and just starting to think, well, when we look at this macro view of scaling.

Mental health services and behavioral health services, and in my role in that, how does that all come together from your perspective? And where are the limits of M I, where someone’s autonomy leads to hurting other people and antisocial behaviors, or that’s creating self harm and more,  constant visits to the E.

R. that are. Creating lots of costs. So I’m curious to kind of look at this in that way and approach it. We can kind of take it whatever direction you’re, you’re feeling most well, the, I’ll start with the easiest thing to start with, which is, you know, in, you know, almost every state, the basic lies, if somebody’s going to do harm to themselves or others, then.

You take a more specific approach if they’re going to hurt themselves or hurt other people. So that’s one of the indicators that makes it easier to think about where there’s a higher probability that people tend to lean towards compliance. I think it’s such an, it’s just an incredibly complex topic, and I’m going to try to untangle aspects of it when I think when you’re talking about the larger behavioral health system, the mental health substance use.

It is replicated from a Western medical model, which is very much about where are the fees, how are we spending the dollars, where’s the profit margin, how much money is being spent on this, which is very, you know, this John from O’Keefe and Healthcare.  Yes, there’s an element of it that really does have to do with patient care.

 But if you ask patients these days and if you ask providers these days in the health care field, no one feels particularly good about where health care is providers or or the patients. And so you’re gonna hear that same level of frustration in behavioral health as well to the hardest thing with.

Behavioral health. And again, these are just always need to preface this, but this is just my bias from, you know, 35 plus years in the field is that since we’re replicating a health care system and behavioral health, health care has not had particularly good outcomes when it comes to behavior change.

They don’t have particularly good outcomes historically when you look at anything that requires behavior change around health, like diabetes, heart disease,   obesity, things that require behavior change, healthcare has not done a good job with their outcomes are not particularly good. Because they tend to use a hierarchical perspective.

They tend to use a compliance, kind of finger shaking, guilt approach historically, there’s been, you know, significant changes in health care, but that still is the basic cultural context. And so that’s the basic cultural context in. Behavioral health is, you know, I know when I was raised in the addiction world, the addiction field, it was extremely condescending, extremely paternalistic, finger shaking, guilt ridden.

 I remember one of the sayings from, you know, somebody that was in recovery that I worked with and I used to do groups with him and he was,  kind of our, the veteran counselor in our, in our  addiction agency, and I remember him telling people frequently, if you don’t think you’re an addict or an alcoholic, don’t let the doorknob hate you or the good Lord split you,  get out on the streets and figure it out for yourself.

And when you’re ready to come back and talk to me, then I’ll talk to you. And which just has zero correlation with behavior change, but it really does feed a righteous perspective. The whole. Evolution of motivation and behavior change based approaches, I think, has been profound on the field. They’re not the standard.

They’re not the norm, but they’ve been profound because we’re using behavior change based interventions with behavior change versus medical interventions with behavior change, which don’t particularly work well. So instead of the expert Asking you a bucket load of questions, assessing all the things that are wrong with you and then giving you a treatment plan that most people are not going to follow and then blaming them for not doing it.

Behavior change based models meets the person with their where they’re at, helps them get clear about where they want to be. And then starts to elicit from their brain, how do you work through their own ambivalence so their behavior starts to align with their values and their goals that I think one of the challenges is before there was data behind that, that just seemed too nice.

It seemed to pass it for a professional to be able to just listen to someone and help them be a clear in their own head and help them develop their own plan like an insurance company wasn’t real keen on paying for that.  So I think it’s hard to extract all these different complexities and I’m not an expert on being able to do that, but these are just from my vantage point, things that I’ve seen consistently over the years.

Could I jump in on something,  Casey and John, you just, you, I just laughed out loud when you said it’s not, it’s too simple because I’m referencing another podcast, but it was,   something that I did. And helping,   a friend of mine who’s unhoused, and I think I did a pretty good job of what I learned from you guys.

And at the end of the day, it was like this weird training in my head of that wasn’t good enough, even though I know it was pretty darn good. But it seemed too easy. Like, no, I should be the expert and I should solve this and fix this. And it was like, when you take that out of that need to fix, or it was just, sorry, I just, because that was a really great reaction I just had to what you said, because I’m like, Oh my God, I fall into that when I’m doing something.

Well, I think this should be harder or. I need to do more, you know, Daniel, I can tell you of the so many professionals that I work with, especially in behavioral health and the mental health,  you know,  addiction side of the world. What’s so fascinating is that’s where people have been in the field forever start to feel like.

I can’t believe it can be this easy. Like this is why I got in the field was to show up and help people like to just be able to be myself and be present and, but be myself and present in a very helpful way. So after all these iterations of what we get trained on over the years, decades in these fields, in these practices, In these professions, it is really fascinating that the data continues to point us back to what we know works.

And what we know works is usually not we’ve been trained to train to do.  I think it’s the difference between, I think of this in my own education, like. Everything in the psychology field was so much based on theory,  you know, theoretical models, and you had to memorize theoretical models and who developed that theoretical model.

And then when there’s a new theoretical model come in and, and then you have to kind of pick which theoretical model you’re going to operate from. And the vast majority of those didn’t have deep, comprehensive evidence at the time. They had perspective, they were theories, and some of them were mildly tested theories, but they weren’t true, true evidence based practices like we know of today, which is why there’s always new evidence coming out.

 And now in the age of your world of marketing that everybody wants to put a TM after everything they develop, whether there’s evidence next to it or not to say, here’s my fun model. Here’s my, you know, this, this, this model and,  that I developed. And I think, well. Everybody can develop a model. It doesn’t mean that it’s effective.

 And I think those are the things that john has really helped me hone in on just the deep appreciation for the research and evidence behind it. But the direct evidence of research comes back to being a good person and the way you show up will have an impact on how people upload information or download,  resources.

On this also could go in a variety of directions here, but one thing is that people can be so diverse has been a humbling thing for me to learn over all these years. And with our cultural constructed views of how we develop our beliefs from our culture that we grow up in our life experiences to just recognize people are so diverse.

And probably beyond what you even recognize as diverse, you know, especially from a 1st world perspective to a 3rd world perspective and just recognizing the humility in different things resonate for different people. And there seems to be a certain common line of things to pay attention to that. We’re talking about here of how we treat people and maybe there’s certain types of things that have more evidence that resonate with some people say attachment theory and how their childhood relates to that relationships to internal family systems that bodes well with this way of treating to something else, right?

EMDR or something for rapid eye movement, but just recognizing that you having a menu of options that you’re trained in has a place, but it’s not as important. As this way of being seen and treating other people is the key that the meta analyses are showing from what the effect of psychotherapist book points to.

I’m particularly curious at the macro level here and the systems level, then the scalability, right? You get into Silicon Valley, Danielle, California, right? You get into these thinkings of let’s get investors to scale this, right? There’s better help. There’s all these things where there’s investors that want to get money back, which isn’t Inherently wrong.

It just creates a certain kind of a culture. So how do we think about scaling motivation interviewing in a way that supports people’s autonomy? And where, you know, do we start to go? Huh? With the limits of scaling? Am I again? Yes, there’s that. Compliance for laws, but regardless of the laws, is there an ethic to am I where someone might hurt someone else?

But we’re still supporting their autonomy. Those are some of the thoughts I have that go through my mind is the scalability as well as hearing what you both have said before this. What are people’s perspectives of how they view the mental health system? And,  just get starting there with all the different perspectives and then going into the scalability of M I and where are the limits of it?

That’s what’s kind of going on for me and curious of your thoughts. So I’ll tell you one of the complexities of this, and I’m going to stay away from, I’m going to attempt to stay away from being political. I’m going to attempt to stay away from being political when the affordable health care act. Was first being talked about I was pretty heavily involved in the addiction world and the behavioral health world.

And so some of the faculty that I worked with in some other universities were talking about we need to understand the Affordable Health Care Act because this could be monumental in what we’re doing. So when I went through the first training, and this was before it became politicized. But when I went through the very first training and the way that it was distilled down was that the intention of the affordable healthcare act was to turn the healthcare pyramid upside down because the base of the pyramid is you make more money.

The sicker people are you. So the only way you’re going to show significant profit is if people are really ill. And so then it’s a management of how do we get, how do we keep people hanging in there? And keeping them fixed to for the most part, but still absorbing a lot of health care service medications.

What the intention of the health care affordable health care act was to flip that. And there was no money to be made in prevention. That was the tip of the of the pyramid. So what the affordable health care act was trying to do was literally flip the pyramid upside down so that the only way you can make money in health care is if you put money into prevention and people weren’t using services well.

Okay. That doesn’t go well because that’s not the way the system was structured. So healthcare companies, insurance companies were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We don’t know how to make a profit off of making people healthy. Like that just isn’t going to work. So that’s where all the politic, politic, politicization,  politicization of the concept came from was, okay, we just need to destroy this thing because if this passes, we don’t know how to make a profit off of people being healthy.

 From from everything that I understood when I was learning about it before it was politicized. So, before it was politicized, it was just like, and I was thinking this can’t be right. Like, who, who is thinking that level of progressive thinking that it’s like, we, this health care system that just absorbs and makes massive amounts of money, billions and billions and billions of dollars off of illness and that somebody is going to make an attempt to flip that upside down and go.

Let’s just change the structure. The only way you can make money is if you’re helping people get healthy and serving less people. There has to be a formula to do that. And they were coming up with a formula to do that. And that was just completely obliterated over time, politically,  because, because of people’s fear of profit.

So that for me, John, is where I start from in terms of how do you take it to scale? There has to be a political will to take it to scale. If there’s not money to be made in taking it to scale, we can talk philosophically all day long. We can talk theoretically all day long, but if there’s not a political will to have that happen or a financial investment in making that happen, it’s just mostly us talking from our ways that we love to talk and banter about fascinating ideas.

If you were going to take it to scale, the thing that you and I know about motivational specifically is that it’s measurable. You and I have, with large, large, 3, 000, 5, 000, 17, 000 people in our organization we’ve worked with have, have developed structures. If they choose to take it to scale, we’ve helped them conceptualize and develop plans to take it to scale.

Then it comes back down to political will. Are people going to follow through? And if you’re going to take something to scale, what that requires is a strategic plan. When you look politically. Most people’s plan is how do I get elected in four years or six years? So their plan doesn’t move beyond that.

It’s literally, how do I have sound bites to be able to do that? And even within state systems where a lot of these things could be implemented, those, the tenures of, of executive directors,  is not. Stellarly long. It’s they’re not really impressive for how long people stay in this position because they’re really rough political positions when you are the executive leadership team of any, you know, health and human service organization,  because it’s so difficult to navigate that.

So there has to be just this concerted will that we are going to take it to scale. And you were involved in it when we did division of vocational rehabilitation in 2000 when you were  That little second half part of that, but we started that in 2007 and that was taken to scale that took five years to where it was really moving towards its peak.

It hadn’t even peaked yet, but it was just about to the peak and the data was profound. Customer satisfaction was. The best it had ever been staff satisfaction, the best it had ever been productivity, the highest that had ever been in the worst employee. This is 2008 2009 2010. This was when employment was really rough and they have their highest employment rates and retention rates ever in their history.

 They’d moved from, what was it, like 47th out of 50 states because it’s a federally funded, they monitor all the states. They were like 47th in terms of productivity, and they moved up to like 12th or 11th,  in that period of time. So taking to scale is, is doable, but to have that level of political and leadership will to make it happen in any mom and pop organization, let alone large organizations.

And then when you get into corporate. Perspective. That is just extremely complex. And what they’re gonna look at is where’s the bottom line and where’s the profit margin in that? Because same with in substance use or behavioral health, of course, the will is we want everybody to be healthy. But then it’s like, wait a second.

How much money do we make off of this? So there, there is this fundamental reality in our, in our culture about where’s the money to be made and how do we operate with these good vision and mission statements and kind of support our staff into doing the best that they can do. But do we really want people to never have to use our systems ever again?

Because there’s money to be made for that. That’s amazing. Just. When I think about the depth of, of what you just described back in 2007, through that, through that recession. And now when I see you working with the organizations that are saying, yes, the corporations and organizations that are, that are kind of committing to that longer term vision, because the data is there when they do commit, but it’s still takes a stick to itiveness because I mean, you’re faced with all of those pressures, so it’s like extra hats off to, to folks for, for saying yes.

100 percent Danielle. The people that do stick with it, they reap the rewards and it’s just difficult because of political wins, because of budget constraints, because of it, it takes such a concerted effort. This is why, oh my gosh, this is why for me, it’s no different from an individual level to an organizational level that hence IFIOC, this.

Burdensome, cumbersome name, but that’s the whole construct is the concept is the same for an individual when we did the whole podcast on New Year’s Day in terms of how hard it is, you said, how do we stick to it? Like, how do, how does February, March, April come and I’m still on my same path that is no different for an end of one than it is for a large organization.

Is how do you, how do you focus on a strategic plan and motivational interviewing the way we teach, excuse me, is a master of how do you stay focused when things get tough? It’s like you have to constantly not only be resilient, but you have to constantly keep selling yourself. As the leader is the visionary saying we’re going to do this and keep getting your team to keep buying into it and your investors or, you know, whoever it is that you’re selling this idea, because you can’t just sell it to yourself once.

It’s like, when you think about it, I remember seeing you at the senior living sales conference. Right. And it’s just like, typically, am I has. Staying away from sales, but it’s like, if you go in the senior living communities who are like, yes, I want to train.  We’re going to, we want to learn motivational interviewing.

Cause we want to fill, you know, we want to increase our occupancy rates, increase retention. And it’s like, your whole thing is you can’t go into it with that intention. You have to be willing to honor the principles in this way of communicating. And then the research and data says you will get those numbers, but you can’t be attached to them.

And that can’t be your goal. And it’s like, you can get a visionary to say yes to that once. And there’s like, okay, yes, let’s do it. But the reality is you have to keep saying yes, let’s do it again and again and again, because. It’s tricky. We slip into what the pressures are, right? This is it. And you know, I’ve, I’ve for the most part have been leaning away from using quite so many analogies, but you know, it’s like, it’s my own recovery process.

So I’m gonna have a little relapse here. Daniel, the thing that my brain immediately goes to is, you know, for people that are under deck,  rowing.  Just because when you leave port and you say it’s going to take us three months to get to, you know, that continent, and there’s going to be all these riches there, you literally have to be under there rowing every day.

And if it’s going to be months and months, and there’s no status updates, your muscles are tired, you’ve got blisters, you’ve got splinters, you’re starving, you’re thirsty, and if people aren’t telling you where you are and how close you are. And if the person is calling out stroke, stroke, stroke, if you keep changing that person in that position, and, and you don’t know what’s going on above board and the captain’s never really talking to you, and then they change out captains and then they change out navigators and you’re just like, Oh my God, I just want to eat and I want to stop rowing that’s.

I just want to eat. It’s just like, it gets old after a while. Never stop your analogies, Casey. Oh my God. It’s the best in the world. And if you’re two months into that, and it was a four month journey, and you’re like, well now it’s going to be another, you know, we just extended the journey by another three months, and you’re like, well where the hell are we?

Is anybody paying attention to where we’re going? And can somebody give me a status update? And then somebody whips you in the back because you asked? Um. You know, and then it’s like, well, we decided we’re going to go to a different treasure and you’re like, well, when the hell do we find this out? It’s like, well, that was in your email a month ago.

You’re like, and you’re trying to row. Like, it’s just not fun to row when you don’t know what’s going on. And leadership keeps changing a message. You keep changing. And then all of a sudden, if you’ve been doing this for years, that all of a sudden it’s heard, yeah, we got a new captain and we’re not going to that island anymore.

We’re actually going back to where we were before. And that’s when people just want to quit. It’s just like, unshackle me from this or I’m done, you know, it’s just not fun. And that’s the, I think that’s when you don’t have that constant vision and communication throughout your system. Because of when I help lead organizations, for me, what it is, is status updates to be going to that rower and all the rowers every single day.

You guys did an amazing job. Yeah, we’re now we’re two and a half months away, but you know what you accomplished in this last three weeks? And do you know what’s going to happen when you get there? And here’s some results of it. So here’s your food and water and, and, you know, get a little rest because you guys are doing an amazing job.

We’ve got two and a half months to go. We just saw a bird fly by. So we’re a month away, but there was a bird that flew by. We’re getting closer. Like that’s just good leadership. And it makes it easier for people to do the work, but what is the number one thing? Daniel, you know, this from working with organizations.

I know the number one thing problem is communication. Everybody will identify it. Like our communication is terrible, especially the way it gets filtered down. And then you’ve got middle management. Who has to try to honor and embrace their workforce while really being able to push policies and things that are coming down the field, disjointed from the field.

So you’ve got these mid managers that are kind of crunched in between that are trying to either be company people, or they’re trying to be pro worker. And, and then they just get split in half trying to do that. Oh my gosh. Just thinking about it causes me stress. So, and I, I want to get off the boat now, as soon as I start thinking from that perspective, and I have gotten off some of those boats cause I just couldn’t do it anymore.

So that’s why it’s so hard to stick with. You’re talking about that classic, you know, very well known, at least in our Western culture analogy of feeling between a rock and a hard place. When you’re in that middle ground, you’re like, I want to do this. I want to do that. I’m getting mixed messages and I jump in here because with coaching so many people from these organizations, it can be so difficult to balance out an in my perspective with the incentives of the culture or the organization.

And And how do you do that? How do you support someone’s autonomy as best you can when there’s this initiative coming in? So that’s where I’m, I’m curious to explore a little bit more, but I’ll just highlight what you both are talking about. Casey, you are doing 3 dimensionally. It’s that even in a group we’re working with right now, DCYF, the people taking on MI aren’t getting necessarily right now, in the beginning stages, a relief of their caseload.

It’s more work on more work to do some of this, and then you feel that pressure and that stress you were just talking about, and then if you’re bold enough to submit tapes to try to start scaling this, For a QA, a quality assurance and a quality improvement process. And then you get feedback that your work isn’t as aligned with MI as you thought.

You’re rowing and getting whipped and being like, I thought I was rowing, right? I’ve been rowing for a long time and now you’re telling me this. Oh my gosh. Ah, and then it becomes an extremely demotivating for change process. Survival mindset and then leadership is now changing the next initiative to be respect or whatever it’s going to be.

It becomes crazy making when you’re the person in that place. And so just recognizing that leadership and grassroots efforts both matter because we started this Casey talking about incentives. With money. There seems to be something about cultural incentives or structural incentives that matters for our behavior.

So that’s what you’re getting at there. There also seems to be cultural values and beliefs that seem to matter on how they shape. Scalability of am I, and then there needs to be consistency and clear communication in that to feel like the people that are having to do the work and the rowing are making progress and aligning with those things.

And so there’s a number of factors that would come together to scale this. And 1 of those things you were alluding to is having motivation interviewing be measured and having giving feedback with. Certain fidelity tools that I just wanted to be explicit about that we’re talking about, but to do that takes a financial investment on the organization’s part, takes a certain level of clarity that we try to help them with upfront, but then it also takes a certain level of consistent commitment and discipline.

And that is a lot to ask. That’s why I think you said the political will. That if we can start to raise up and see the evidence for how we treat people matters and the consistency and, and, and all of those things matter for outcomes, then we can have more faith in the science to support people’s autonomy to treat people this way, that more pro social, more healthy, whatever you want to say, outcomes are likely to happen, even though we might be taking a risk.

That we can always go back to compliance, which is the thing I know we might not have time for to talk about today, maybe another podcast, but just those limits of, yes, we can always come in with compliance. But short of that, can we operationalize this? Can we? Scale this. And it seems like there’s hope there.

It just takes a certain amount of will, effort, vision and consistency. And hopefully this has helped to clarify that a little bit in some certain ways. But I’m wondering if there are any other thoughts either of you have before we wrap up our. Podcast this time around, I just think it’s just like we talked about.

It’s just a, a huge construct to get our arms wrapped around of like, when you talk about taking it to scale, I hope we provided some clarity, Danielle, you’re such a great end of one to also think about in terms of if it has, if it makes sense to you for where we start and where we end, it’s kind of a windy road, but I hope there’s some coherence to the whole concept.

Yeah. You know, I, it was interesting coming into this. You know, that’s why I tossed it to you in the beginning, John is like the scale. I didn’t, I didn’t quite understand where we might take it with the scaling piece. And now I totally have a, a big picture view of it. And also a lot of compassion for a system in general, like the energy of a system.

And it’s just like all of these shifting things. It’s like, Oh, no wonder there’s so many challenges.  And. A lot of empathy for those leaders, like when you were describing your analogy of, okay, yeah, there’s a new, new boss on the ship here running things. And it’s just like, well, the old boss had a great intention.

The new one does too, but it’s just like, how do you start making everything flow and work together more? And it starts with these conversations, this awareness and Hey guys, no pressure out there, but. All you leaders, like let’s really own it. Let’s really say, yes, instead of just, yeah, communications are our biggest challenge.

Own it because you at the, that top position have the ability to set a much longer runway for success. For the organization and your people.  So I love that. It’s so hopeful to me and,  so insightful. So for me, it, it, this really did help bring a lot to the table. And I also think a lot of great empathy for, for all of us that have been in the, in the seats, right?

Rowing and it’s just like, we all know it. So it’s just like, oh yeah, that makes so much sense. I was so frustrated. And so the empathy all around, I think is helpful. I was just going to throw in the opportunity of how Casey, you run these leadership,  classes for different organizations. I just want to throw that out.

Not as just a shameless plug, but that there are ways to go about,  thinking about this and communicating this in an organizational way from the bottom to the top that. Doesn’t create that disconnect of blaming outside the self so much so much as a common way of approaching the vision mission values that you, you know, help in those trainings.

I just want to say that not as a shameless plug, but as like, there’s hope and clarity as to ways to go about. Doing this in systems, it takes work and it takes humility. It takes discipline. It takes a political will. It’s just there is possibility here. That isn’t just theory or philosophy that I just want to throw in there that we’re actively trying to do to help bridge those gaps as best we can.

So sorry to interrupt there, Casey. Go ahead. Well, no, it just and I think that that’s the link with, uh. What Daniela, we’re talking about just the empathy for those that are in the seats that are doing the rowing and then that whole, and I know, you know, this as well, too. It’s also the empathy for the executive leadership team who is, you know, getting calls about different directions that they’re, you know, intended to take and, you know, political wins and financial wins that keep changing and, and changes of people that are the mid management that are trying to understand where executive leadership is coming from and translate that down to the workforce.

I mean, just. It’s empathy for all of those individuals. And, and I, that’s why I keep going back to it. It just, for me, it’s lightens my load and lightens my heart to know that the data that we see is just starting from that place of understanding where people are at will get us to better outcomes.  Starting from that place of empathy for everyone within the system.

Is not just a feel good thing that there is, there is benefit to that,  short term and long term benefits. So that’s the reason why I love motivation interviewing. Yeah. And it’s like, I go back to like, you blame outside yourself. If you’re not going to have empathy, you’re going to blame. So if in rowing, I’m going to blame outside myself.

I’m going to blame middle management. I’m going to blame leadership. Leadership’s going to blame middlemen. It’s like, if you step into the space of empathy. Whoo. And then, and then I’m excited about the opportunity for consistency. Yes. So John, you mentioned it. It’s like Casey, I’ve seen you train and continue to, you know, I know we typically don’t call it coaching, but that’s what it is.

It’s like consistency means not one and done. So yes, we definitely do training, motivational interviewing, training intro and advanced. And there’s this ongoing path though, that I think. Go ahead and do one and done, but the reality is these bigger scaling ideas, that’s consistency. It’s like in branding, I always tell people, they’re like, oh my God, I’ve said this 20 million times.

I’m like the, I’m pretty sure the latest study was like, well, the 26th time somebody hears you say it is the first time they even know you exist. So it’s like, we’re sick of, we think we’ve got it, but it’s like. the consistency piece is huge. That’s very helpful. So thank you guys so much. What an awesome podcast.

I love this. I’m not sure where it’s going to go. And then it’s like, Oh, so thanks guys, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us.  Again, keep your questions coming. Let us know if you want to join us, any feedback.  And we, we really welcome you.

 Thank you for listening to the communication solution podcast with Casey Jackson and John Gilbert. As always, this podcast is about empowering you on your journey to change the world. So if you have questions, suggestions, or ideas, send them our way at Casey at IFIOC. com. That’s Casey@IFIOC.Com. For more information or to schedule a training, visit IFIOC.Com. Until our next communication solution podcast, keep changing the world.