As an applied positive psychology and sport and performance psychology practitioner, Gloria Park, PhD is uniquely qualified to speak about how we continue to learn, grow, evolve and even thrive in the face of challenge. And we are certainly being challenged in 2020! Gloria shares transformative skills and strategies during the interview.
“I’m often navigating the tension between helping people do better at whatever craft they’ve chosen for themselves…and balancing that with how [they] do that AND maintain some degree of wellbeing. It’s my fervent belief that you can have both; that you can do well and be well.”
Gloria Park, PhD
Regoaling vs Reacting
It’s easy to get overwhelmed these days while we’re in the middle of the Covid-19 crisis and also trying to thoughtfully enter and positively impact the domain of racial injustice.
In April I attended a webinar co-lead by Gloria. It was very timely given the newness and shock concerning Covid-19. When I first heard the term, ‘re-goaling’, I thought, YES!, this is how I would describe the thoughtful and intentional shift I see some people making. It’s different from simply reacting. Re-goaling means that I consciously disengage from the old goal and thoughtfully create a new goal. It also means that I feel and acknowledge the continuum of emotions and engage in hope. In this interview we explore ways to our own resilience.
The quotes stood out for me:
Covid’s Impact on the Human Psyche
[11:31] …everyone is dealing with this very deep sense of grief about things that matter deeply to them and now look no longer like they used to…the second place where people are really struggling is the uncertainty.
The Important Role of Hope and Goals
[13:43] …what gives me hope is that people are finding things to be hopeful about despite all of the uncertainty and despite all of the grief…
[26:36] …But if you think about the average person and the goals we set for ourselves, we set those goals because they’re a reflection of things that are really valuable to us and they’re often tied, especially in the performance domain, deeply to our sense of self-worth and our identities, and you wouldn’t have set those goals if they didn’t mean a lot to you.
(C.R. Snyder’s Hope Theory): People feel hope whey they have three things: they have a goal that they’re focused on; they have beliefs that they have the capacity within them to strive towards that goal; and that there are avenues available for them to be able to pursue those goals.
[29:38 ] A lot of the foundation of resiliency training as well as a lot of the foundation for performance psychology is about understanding the connections between those three things: your thoughts, your emotions and your behaviors.
[43:51 ] But the accomplishments will always be there. The world will be there to await you to show up and be able to strive towards those things again. I think, right now, we really need to be paying attention to our wellbeing and figure out how we can support our families and support our employees in an organizational context to really help them navigate this crisis successfully.
SMART and DUMB
We’ve all heard of SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-driven); Gloria is also an advocate for DUMB goals! (42:05)
3 Vital Questions for Transformative Results: David Emerald
David has followed up his wildly popular and super sticky book, The Power of TED: The Empowerment Dynamic with 3 Vital Questions: Transforming Workplace Drama. When we answer these questions and re-orient our perspective, we become more resilient and more likely to create the results we desire.
“All leadership really starts with self-leadership and the way that we lead our own lives has everything to do with the quality of leadership that we bring to our organizations, frankly our families, our communities, our school system, etc.”
David Emerald Womeldorff
Energy Follows Attention
We’re built for survival. Our default mode is to scan for danger and then react. If we want to create a wonderful life and build great places to work, then we have to move past problem-solving. We have to build habits that support designing futures rather than reacting to problems. David Emerald’s 3 Vital Questions takes our focus from a problem to an outcome orientation.
Highlights from the Interview
These excerpts have been edited for context.
[07:10] …The first vital question is, Where are you putting your focus? The subtext to that is, are you focusing on problems, or are you focusing on outcomes? What informs that question is an organizing framework that I call FISBE. FISBE is an acronym that stands for Focus, Inner State and BEhavior. The idea is that what we focus on engages some emotional response. That inner state that then drives our behavior.
[17:16] …Vital Question Two is, How are you relating? How are you relating to others? How are you relating to your experience? And how are you relating to yourself? Are you relating in ways that produce, or perpetuate drama? Or are you relating in ways that empower others and yourself to be more resourceful, resilient and innovative?
If our orientation is problem-focused, fear-based and reactive in nature, that creates the environment and the conditions for the Dreaded Drama Triangle, or DDT, which I’ll explain in more detail in just a moment. I also want to say that if we can consciously choose to operate as much as possible out of that Outcome Orientation, where we’re focused on what we care about, that our inner state is more passion-based and we’re taking creative action, that creates the conditions for a different set of relationship roles and dynamics that we call TED or The Empowerment Dynamic.
[31:29]:What actions are you taking? Are you merely reacting to the problems of the moment, or are you taking creative and generative action, including the solving of problems in service to outcomes? Dynamic tension informs the Third Vital Question.
[32:42]: The three basic steps of dynamic tension are first and foremost, focus on the outcome and to be as clear as we can on the outcome, that the outcome can sometimes be clear and concrete, other times it may be more vague and directional.
Then the second step is to step back and tell the truth about, what’s my current reality in relation to the outcome? That engages a tension between what we want and what we’re currently experiencing.
The third piece of dynamic tension is to then determine and take baby steps that move from our current reality toward our envisioned outcome. Baby steps to me are things that as an individual, or team, we can choose to do that tend to be short-term and in organizational terms. LeeAnn, it could be as simple as, ‘I need to have a conversation’, or ‘we need to go gather this information’. It’s just whenever the next little step is, that’s going to help us move toward and/or get clearer about the outcome.
The Rhythm of a Great Place to Work: Drew Clancy, President of PCI
Drew Clancy, President of Publishing Concepts (PCI), is a self-proclaimed ‘cultural enthusiast’. His commitment to the core elements of culture has resulted in year-over-year growth and consistent recognition as a Best Place to Work. As a third-generation leader, he has brought this near 100–year-old family business solidly into the 21stCentury through innovation and servant leadership.
Drew Clancy is President of PCI, a midsize, third-generation family business headquartered in Dallas, Texas. In 2021 they will celebrate 100 years in operation, and like any company that has weathered that much time, they’ve experienced iterations and evolutions. In 1982, Jack Clancy, Drew’s father, breathed new life into the company and gave it a new name: Publishing Concepts, now best known as PCI. They’re in the business of “helping college, university, and association clients engage their alumni and membership and raise money in order to fulfill their mission of educating our nation’s future leaders”.
Jack Clancy was a ‘dynamo’, as Drew describes in the interview and embodied many first-generation and founder qualities: charisma, high energy, generosity and a preponderance for making all the decisions, and generally keeping tight reigns on the business. These characteristics are needed at start-up but will cripple the business over the long-term. Note: PwC has published a very interesting survey on family businesses. A short video summary can be found here.
Drew entered the picture in 1995 after his father suffered a heart attack and could no longer bring his formidable energy and presence to the business. Drew recognized the talent and capacity of the team and brought his own unique approach to leading and managing to PCI. Essentially, he navigated the company past the ‘founder’s trap’ as described by Dr. Ichak Adizes, creator of the Adizes Corporate Lifecycle, and steered PCI toward sustainability. And it’s working – PCI continues excellent financial performance, targeting $50M in revenue this year, doubling 2016’s performance. As you hear in the interview, Drew is a self-described “workplace culture enthusiast” and is so passionate about this that he invites anyone to reach out to him for a conversation.
Organizational Culture as a Business Strategy
We spent the bulk of our time discussing Drew’s passion: workplace culture. He is a strong believer in Servant Leadership and sees creating a thriving workplace as a foundational business strategy. His orientation is paying off: PCI has appeared on both Dallas Morning News 100 Best Places to Work and Best Companies to Work for in Texas, nabbing first place in 2015 & 2016. Even with these accolades, he doesn’t take culture for granted, claiming “you have to work for it every day”.
They have a term for the central elements of their culture, theFIVE:
5 Elements of the core ideology: Purpose, Values, Vision, Goals, Commitment
5 Values: Excellence, Unlock Human Potential, Act with Integrity, Innovate a Culture of Relationships & Fun, Lead with a Servant’s Heart
Structure Will Set You Free: Rhythms, Rigor and Ritual
A best-place-to-work culture will not happen by wishing for it. It won’t even happen if you articulate your core ideology (Jim Collins’ term for Purpose, Vision and Values) and hang posters throughout the workspace. You have to take action.
Drew is keen on the idea that “structure sets you free”. Liberating structures are created to channel individual or group energy toward a specific goal. James Clear’s book, Atomic Habits, guides individuals to make tiny shifts in daily behaviors that will lead to big results.
At the organizational level, leaders use liberating structures by setting rhythmic meetings with appropriate agendas to guide actions and increase engagement. Drew outlines the meeting rhythm at PCI that has helped create their award-winning cultural.
Drew’s morning ritual:
Like many successful leaders, Drew has a rigorous morning ritual that he’s been practicing for seven or eight years now. Last year, he led a book discussion at PCI on The Morning Miracle by Hal Elrod, which helped him fine-tune his own routine (this is also an example of his commitment to Unlocking Human Potential as an organizational value). Here’s his practice:
Wake at 5:45a or 6:00a
Exercise – push-ups or sit-ups
Meditate for 10 – 20 minutes
Read the Bible & pray
Journal – writing about the 10 personal goals he sets each year
PCI’s Organizational Rhythm:
“Try a lot of things and keep what works”. This is the advice Drew gleaned from Jim Collins’ epic book, Built to Last. Here’s what is working for PCI now:
Annual Planning – Yearly
Monthly Extended Leadership Meeting – Trail Blazers meeting for anyone leading a team, project, product, client relationship, etc. This meeting is focused on growth and learning.
Weekly – CEO Council. This is an L-10 meeting (Level 10 from EOS)
Daily Huddle – 10 minutes at 8:30a, called the 10@8:30. See PCI’s agenda here
These meetings share critical information such as metrics (transparency is key), updates, and progress and also keep team members focused on ‘theFIVE’
Courage is the third element for creating an enduring culture. There are times in the life of a leader when decisions aren’t just tough, they may even have a short term negative impact – financially or otherwise. The leader has to choose whether to take the high road and stay true to the stated values of the company or let something slip by. These are known as leadership moments and they are opportunities to embody the values that have been espoused. Actions speak much louder than words. Which reminds me of the quote attributed to St. Francis of Assisi: Preach the gospel at all times. If necessary, use words.
Drew Clancy’s actions SHOUT his commitment to the culture at PCI.
After listening to the interview and reading the notes, I wonder what your takeaway is?
Doing Her Work: Michelle Kinder Leading From the Inside Out
Michelle Kinder is well-known in the domains of social-emotional learning, education and family counseling. She is also an authoritative voice in the discourses of leadership, stress, emotional health, trauma and parenting. Her increasing passion about historical and structural inequities has led her to make an important shift in her career, which we explore in depth in our conversation. In the midst of her transition, Michelle has taken time to slow down and adjust her focus from striving to one of getting results with a sense of ease and groundedness. This inside-out approach takes self-awareness, persistence and patience. She talks honestly about her experience in this episode.
If you have come here to help me you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.
– Lilla Watson
Michelle Kinder is well-known in the domains of social-emotional learning, education and family counseling. She is also an authoritative voice in the discourses of leadership, stress, emotional health, trauma and parenting. Her increasing passion for the dynamics of historical and structural inequities has led her to make an important shift in her career, which we explore in-depth in our conversation. Michelle shares how growing up in Guatemala influenced her perspective on social issues and how this developed her capacity to innovate and problem-solve. We hear her view on the destructive “us” and “them” narratives that often accompany outreach efforts and how cultural forces are counterproductive to our ability to be grounded and sensitive as individuals. We discuss the focus of Momentous Institute, her new partnership with the Stagen Leadership Academy, and her collaboration with Rex Miller, with whom she is co-authoring a book on the challenges of educators. Michelle advises that, for us to be most effective in bringing about positive change, we need to do the required work of regulating our own nervous systems. She speaks frankly on her view about the responsibilities of the corporate and philanthropic worlds in establishing a more equitable society.
Shaped by her Upbringing
Growing up in Guatemala as a “third culture kid” shaped Michelle’s worldview and ability to innovate.
With parents who were missionaries and very service-oriented, she developed a deep knowing that “we belong to the community and that we’re here to serve and grow and learn”.
The value of exchanging the toxic “us” and “them” narratives for a genuine desire to solve problems with rather than for others.
A disappointing job search and a crucial positive experience at Momentous (note to hiring managers!) changed her trajectory.
How were you shaped by your upbringing?
There’s no getting out of being shaped by the environment of our childhood: the where, when, and what are inextricably linked to who we are today.
What milestones stand out to you and what imprint was left?
Can you trace how your beliefs were formed? What beliefs have changed?
What was normal to you then? Is that still the case?
What links can you make from your upbringing to your life today? Have you followed the path laid out for you or did you take a sharp turn somewhere?
Do you have a sense of what is next for you? What is it? What do you wonder about?
A Deeper Layer of Leadership Development
“What are the ways we can change our relationship with fear and stress and ego and show up in a more self-regulated/mutually regulated way?”
Michelle’s journey of shifting from striving to listening and surrendering, of calming and “clearing the vessel”.
There are many forces in our culture that pull us away from our grounded, sensitive selves.
We can become addicted, or at least very accustomed to an ‘air-traffic controller’ way of living and working.
There is often a need to reset our neurobiology and to build up a tolerance for the lack of activity, or busy-ness.
Becoming more conscious, more aware, positively affects the impact we’re able to make.
Practices for “regulating our nervous system”:
Mindfulness, meditation
Reflective Journaling
Guided body scan (try one of the many from Insight Timer). Becoming more familiar with where you hold stress raises your awareness of tightness in those areas.
Unplugging completely from: work, email, digital devices, social media. Schedule periods of time daily. Prolonged periods that include full days or weeks can also be scheduled.
Regular exercise or movement
Consistent 7 – 9 hours of sleep
Time in nature. Read this Time magazine article on the benefits.
Eating whole, unprocessed foods
Regular checks for alignment with personal values
The Upstream of the Upstream
The importance of focusing on a community’s ability to create the spaces in which children can thrive.
There are historical structures that benefit certain groups while disabling others.
“How is my long straw connected to someone else’s short straw?”
The important role of the corporate and policy world in creating social change.
Can we honorably grapple with each other as we explore these questions?
Immediately Next for Michelle:
Speaking, writing, and workshops: contact her through michellekinder.com
Designing and leading a 52-week, practice-based program for women leading social change via Stagen Leadership Academy.
Co-authoring a book with Rex Miller about “what looks like teacher disengagement is actually trauma and battle fatigue”.
Here’s what else you need to know:
Michelle shared several important statistics from Momentous Institute’s research on the impact of their work with children of ages 3yrs old – 5th grade and their families. The focus on both academics and social-emotional health has had staggeringly positive results.
Watch Faith talk about the importance of breathing.
After listening to the interview and reading the notes, I wonder what your takeaway is?
Thanks for elevating your part of the world!
LeeAnn
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Citizenship is a chance to make a difference in the place where you belong.
Charles Handy
First a look behind the curtain. I had the chance to see Chad West in action when our technology broke down and his tech-support partner had to switch out his laptop. A half-hour ticked away, and I was getting antsy about having enough time for a meaningful interview.
This breakdown afforded me the gift of eavesdropping on Chad as he continued to work calmly with his assistant in the background, answering a few questions and ultimately delaying his next meeting so that we had enough time for the interview.
Chad had previously shared with me that he is a stickler about keeping commitments. Integrity is high on his list of virtues. I witnessed him walking his talk while also staying kind and generous with employees. This recollection reassures me that we elected the right person for Oak Cliff and for Dallas.
I’ve included Notes from our conversation as well as Reflections + Practical Applications, below.
Conversation Notes
First Impressions and Accessibility
Accessibility to constituents and clients is important to Chad and is expected for a City Council Member (CM). I experienced that firsthand when he personally answered my call and accepted the podcast interview invitation without a previous introduction.
To balance his extreme availability, he’s sure to bake downtime into the end of his day for reading or other solitary activities.
Balancing the Whole and Parts
I wondered about competing commitments between District 1 (D-1, our district) and the City’s vision and goals. (There is a natural and constant flow of attention and resources to various elements of any healthy system or organization – just look in nature!)
A CM has to stay connected with what the voters want and move the city ball forward.
Unique challenges of D1: we’re one of the oldest neighborhoods in Dallas with the original street grid, old infrastructure and tons of new development.
Importance of public engagement:
Chad’s goal is to make sure people understand the issues, agendas, and plans by communicating in eye-catching ways, i.e. graphs, pictures, maps.
On the flip-side, neighborhood feedback is very important when trying to encourage developers to include pedestrian & neighborhood-friendly elements in their projects.
The CM has a more powerful influence with developers and at City Hall if citizens are engaged and vocal at meetings.
Engagement also poses challenges. People will question Chad, and rightly so. While this creates more work, lack of engagement causes a neighborhood to lose its character.
Chad is working to build trust in lower-engagement neighborhoods by attending non-city events and getting to know the neighbors so that they, too, are able to influence their future.
Building relationships and trust with other Council Members is super important for moving both the city and individual districts forward.
Chad expects to visit other CM districts and learn about their vision and challenges
He will invite other CMs to visit D-1 to experience ours
Holding the Vision and Integrating Thought Leadership
Chad embodies the excitement of seeing 10 – 20 years of planning come to fruition in Oak Cliff and the Bishop Arts District.
Oak Cliff is a gem with 100-year-old street-car informed grids and adjacent neighborhoods. Bishop Arts is a great example.
In the plans: Oak Farms, a mixed-use development with workforce housing, market-rate housing, retail, and plazas.
Two major streets will be repurposed. The new streetcar between downtown Dallas and North Oak Cliff, pedestrians and bicycles will be routed to one street, with cars on the other. This will improve safety and accessibility.
We’re 10 years in with great success and a positive trajectory.
Extensive meetings with neighbors are ongoing regarding plans for their neighborhoods. They are almost unanimous about wanting to bring new life to old centers (formerly streetcar stops), but there is concern about parking, overflow, traffic and the intense usage experienced in Bishop Arts.
Urban design with a focus on the people who live in nearby neighborhoods rather than how to move traffic through quickly. The design includes commercial and retail on both sides, pedestrian and bike safety, traffic safety.
There’s a focus on preserving single-family neighborhoods; once you take them down you can never get them back.
More trail expansions are in the works, linking people with parks.
There’s an opportunity to develop the eastern section of D-1 with more corporations, bringing jobs to the area so that people don’t have to leave the area to go to work.
A strong sense of place is being ignited.
Reflections + Resources + Practical Applications
I’ve included notes that expand past the conversation with Chad. The intent is to give you an opportunity to dig a bit deeper into your own way of relating and leading – at all levels. Tools and articles are included to help you move from earphones to application.
First Impressions, Accessibility and Limiting beliefs
What first impression do you make? Do people feel seen and heard when they walk away from their interaction with you?
I was reluctant to reach out to Chad because I thought he would decline or simply ignore my call due to his busy schedule and lack of relationship with me.
Where are you limiting yourself by not extending?
To whom do you need to extend?
What are you concerned will happen if you make contact and it is either not returned or rejected?
What is the consequence of remaining quiet?
Encouraging Engagement and Being Challenged
How are important decisions communicated in your organization? Are they interesting and clear so that employees and stakeholders understand the impact and action they need to take?
How do you skillfully engage your stakeholders when leading change? Can you tolerate being challenged? Do you build in time for thoughtful input and are you open to changing direction based on this input? Do you expand engagement past the ‘usual suspects’ that typically agree with your opinion?
Speed and ease are often preferenced over stakeholder engagement. The sheer amount of current work, ‘incoming’, and shareholder and time pressure make thoughtful engagement difficult. Strategic prioritization of initiatives and tasks can help clarify and reduce noise. Here are a couple of prioritization tools.
I was reminded of the Gallup 12 Employee Engagement Survey used in many organizations while Chad described the challenge and payoff of engaging neighborhoods. There seem to be several similarities between engaged employees and engaged citizens. How is your organization assessing engagement?
I’m also reminded of my first interview with Jennifer Touchet and the importance of power mapping and neighborhood engagement.
As a stakeholder – citizen, voter, employee – how are you investing your time and energy to give input in ways that can positively influence an outcome (rather than staying on the sideline)?
Building Trust and Relationships
How often do you reach across the aisle or across the organization chart to truly understand your colleague’s world? It’s likely that your work processes and products, whether it is financial, sales, operations, or HR, directly impacts them. How often do you take a walk in their neighborhood?
Notice the vision for District 1 has been unfolding for 10 – 20 year. The article, A Call for Long Term Capitalism is insightful and compels is to look past quarterly earnings and other short-term metrics. We’re challenged to become ‘decaders’.
How do you and your organization stay committed and aligned to a long-term vision? What rhythms and structures have you created to support this vision?
After listening to the interview and reading the notes, I wonder what your takeaway is?
Thanks for tuning in, and I’d really love to hear from you!
Take good care,
LeeAnn
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Visionary Leadership Keeps a 100-Year-Old Mission Relevant
Jennifer Bartkowski, CEO of Girl Scouts Northeast TX
Innovation, strategic thinking, and execution are marks of Jennifer Bartkowski’s leadership. She invests these talents as CEO of Girl Scouts of Northeast Texas (GSNETX), and in collaboration with strategic partners, is transforming the Girl Scout experience. Jennifer is committed to making Girl Scouting a path to success for all girls. Her passion and visionary leadership are changing the game for GSNETX.
Staying relevant in a constantly changing world is daunting. As organizations age, their appeal often grows stale and without significant revitalization, they risk demise. Jennifer is accomplishing what has eluded countless leaders: she is bringing new life to a century-old organization to meet the demands of contemporary challenges. And she’s doing it while staying true to the Girl Scout mission: To build girls of courage, confidence, and character, who make the world a better place.
Building on the Mission
“We asked ourselves, What else can we do with this strong foundation? Our answer: we can get girls excited about STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). We can get them excited about financial literacy and how it makes more things possible as they grow up. We can teach them about healthy living and healthy relationships and other skills required to be healthy adults. We can teach them about the outdoors. It’s fresh and exciting!
“One of the challenges of Girl Scouting is that we’re 105 years old. It’s a blessing and a curse. People know us for cookies, camps and crafts. We are all of these things and we’re proud of them. And we’re so much more today – the organization has been going through a real transformation.
“For six weeks of the year, Girl Scouts is cookies. Every single girl owns their own business where they develop important skills like decision-making, goal-setting, financial management, and business ethics. This experience creates a powerful foundation to build on.
“We are also camp, which is so critically important today. This generation of kids is the first to grow up almost entirely indoors. We have a proven history of teaching leadership at camp better than anywhere else. (Note: Girl Scouts founder Juliet Gordon Low purchased land for camping before investing in a physical building.)
“And yes, we are crafts. Girl Scouts has always been about fun and creativity and we intend to keep offering what the girls enjoy.
We are taking all that is foundational and setting it on its edge.”
Women, Technology and Girl Scouts
In 2010, Texas Instruments (TI), a Dallas-based global technology company, approached GSNETX, asking them to be a partner in solving a business challenge: A significant talent shortage in the fields of technology and engineering is predicted by the year 2020. Girls are less likely to go into technical fields and TI would like to change that. TI has long been committed to diversifying the workforce and has been a champion of developing and promoting women. TI imagined that Girl Scouts could offer years of positive STEM experience all the way through high school, shaping their desire to pursue STEM degrees in college. A K-12 STEM Engineering badge was the first accomplishment of the partnership.
Texas Instrument’s offer also fits with Girl Scouts’ commitment to the development of leadership skills in girls and young women. Their curriculum, driven by the earning of badges, provides experiences that develop confidence, critical-thinking, and problem-solving skills and encourages the pursuit of challenging goals.
The STEM Center of Excellence at Camp Whispering Cedars
The timing was auspicious. Alongside the initiative with TI, GSNETX was taking a strategic look at their physical properties. A decision was made to unite the new STEM initiative with an investment in Camp Whispering Cedars, a gorgeous property in southern Dallas. That is how the STEM Center of Excellence at Camp Whispering Cedars was conceived.
Jennifer’s visionary leadership and passion for girls energized a campaign that cast a wide net across the business, academic, cultural and philanthropic communities. She invited them all to take part in giving local girls from all walks of life fun, hands-on experiences with STEM. The community responded with a resounding YES! A sample of collaborators joining TI in this innovate effort (so far): the University of Texas at Dallas, the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, the Dallas Arboretum, and many very generous donors. Other business partnerships are emerging and they’re eager to make this vision a reality. (Read about Capital One’s boost!)
STEM Highlights at Camp Whispering Cedars:
The telescope-equipped Moody Observation Tower is a place for girls to get high above the trees to study astronomy and sleep under the stars. They will also experience themselves as part of something much bigger.
Girls will learn underwater robotics when they’re not swimming in the on-site swimming pool.
Rockets will be launched, archery skills honed, walls will be climbed and girls will zip-line above the largely un-groomed, wide-open spaces so many kids no longer have access to.
A GeoScouting app already guides girls on their hikes through the beautiful escarpment, learning about rocks, plants and the geologic formation of Camp Whispering Cedars.
A Virtuous Cycle
Jennifer, the GSNETX team and their award-winning Board of Directors have created a cycle of contribution and benefit that is acting as a flywheel, reinvigorating itself with each accomplishment.The obvious benefactors are the young women who will experience STEM in an environment that only Girl Scouts can provide: an outdoor, all-girl setting, infused with leadership and life skills. These young women will be primed to follow degree programs leading to a job market hungry for their capabilities.
Local tech businesses will enjoy an enlarged and diversified pool of female talent ready for work for the foreseeable future.
Enrollment in engineering and other STEM-related university programs will increase. The more girls who enter programs with a flourishing peer group, the more will persist and complete their STEM degrees.
The City of Dallas is also a significant benefactor, and Jennifer is “proud to be a part of Mayor Mike Rawling’s Grow South initiative. Girl Scouts is investing $13M in 92 acres of the most beautiful land in Dallas, and we’re happy to be a part of the city’s priorities.”
Also promising is the role Girl Scouts can play in positively impacting race relations. At camp and in many troops, girls are playing, sleeping and learning next to girls of racial, ethnic and religious backgrounds different from their own. Their parents are also interacting with each other for a common goal: to prepare their girls for a bright future.
Innovation in Girl Scouts Delivery: Making the Experience More Accessible
A limiting factor for the number of girls able to participate in Girl Scouting is the number of troop leader volunteers. GSNETX is experimenting with new ways of delivering Girl Scouting: “We’re piloting a partnership with a few DISD elementary schools and exploring possibilities with KIPP schools as well. We’re actually going in and helping the teachers understand the Girl Scouts leadership experience, and enabling them to deliver Girl Scouting to girls at their schools. Those girls are using our STEM Center as a field trip space and becoming Girl Scouts in the process”. Solar Prep, an all girl’s STEAM (A is for Arts!) school in southern Dallas is calling itself a Girl Scouts school. 100% of the students there are Girl Scouts. It’s a new model.
“Finally, we’re piloting a way to make the space available to girls and boys in schools in the southern sector of Dallas for field trips. These schools don’t typically have the revenue to send their students to expensive camps in East Texas. Camp Whispering Cedars is a short bus ride away which gives them access to a 21st century STEM Center and an incredible outdoor space.”
A CEO Exemplar
Jennifer speaks from experience about the impact of Girl Scouting:
“I was a Girl Scout myself through ninth grade and earned the Silver award. Girl Scouting is a long tradition in my family: my three sisters and I were led by my mother and she was led by her mother. My daughter is a Girl Scout and I volunteer with her troop. Through Girl Scouts, I got to try new things and have experiences that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. I was the oldest of five kids and we didn’t have a lot of money, so every winter I worked hard and sold cookies so I could go to camp for two weeks on my own. I got to be my own person and meet new friends. As I got older I went on destination trips and got to do really cool stuff.
“Between Girl Scouts and competitive swimming, I learned leadership, teamwork, time management and how to work hard and be competitive. Girl Scouts opened doors for me and I’m passionate about making sure that girls from all walks of life have access to the Girl Scout leadership experience and programming. It can be transformative.
“We’re all on a leadership journey: me, all of our staff, and of course the girls. My entire life and career have led me here, building the skills the organization needs now. And I’m being challenged to develop new ones all the time! I believe we are doing this work on purpose. We’re leaving a legacy for the future by building on an amazing foundation for Girl Scouts of the 21st Century and beyond.”
For Reflection:
Is your mission clear enough to guide strategic decisions?
How can your legacy products and services be delivered in new ways that fit the current environment? Explore out-of-the-ordinary ways that your mission can be accomplished. (GSNETX paired camping with STEM)
Who are your stakeholders? How can you partner with them for win-win outcomes? (Consider the innovative partnership between TI and GSNETX)
Do you feel on purpose with your vocation? Are you passionate, engaged and creative in your thinking?
