E99: Brandon and Nicole Raines – Resilience and Belonging

Dr. Dave:

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So hello and welcome to the KnolShare with Dr. Dave podcast. I am Dr. Dave Cornelius, your host. As we continue with our Resiliently You Podcast series, my guest today is Brandon and Nicole. I guess, can't wait to hear what they have to say and what they have to share.

So Brandon, Nicole, provide an elevator pitch about your journeys in life, as a coach and as someone who is helping people to be resilient. I mean, would love to hear from you.

Nicole:

Sure. So I'm Nicole Raines. The professional title is licensed and marriage and family therapist. But what that means is that I work with people with mental health, and relationships in all phases and stages, and wellness. I also do some consulting with organizations, including law firms.

I am a former, now non-practicing, attorney. So being able to bring wellbeing and resilience and just being able to cope with life stress to organizational structures as well. And also happen to be a podcaster. So all of those things boiled right on in together.

Dr. Dave:

Wow. That's nice.

Brandon:

Yeah, she does a lot. And good at it too.

So my name's Brandon Raines. I am a coach. I am an organizational and systems coach. I play a lot in the agile space, where I do a lot of agile coaching as well. So I find myself working pretty much in the IT space, because that's where I got my grounding. I'm a software developer, going way back. I'm starting to realize that it is really way back now.

But I'm finding myself, now, working much more with organizations who want to adopt agility, and not just the frameworks but the mindset of it, the idea of being able to work in a way such that things change, and being able to adapt to that change as quickly as possible. And to do it in a conscious way, such that the workforce feels engaged, customers feel great and joy with the products that they're getting. And that it's somewhere to come to work every day, to feel happy.

So that's what gets me up in the every morning, is to work with organizations who have the intent of doing that, and me doing my little part to help.

Dr. Dave:

Yeah, it says: vote yes for better code.

Brandon:

Yeah.

Dr. Dave:

Yeah. That's where I got started as well, is being a software engineer, and then expanding out to coaching and fun stuff that we do.

Man, I love your background. You have VUCA on there, it's a beautiful term that I like to use a lot. So thank you for sharing that with us.

Brandon:

Thank you. Thank you.

Dr. Dave:

Let's talk about resilience. I mean, let's talk about resilience in the context of leading an organization, or even helping individual transformation. How do you guys define that?

Brandon:

It's funny, we were having this conversation leading up to this. And we often find ourselves having these conversations a whole lot. And Nikki, coming from her perspective in the mental health space, and me in the systems and the organizational space, we see this a lot.

What does it mean to be resilient? I know she schooled me a whole lot on this idea of: resilience comes out of adversity. I think she'll definitely talk about her end of it. But, for me, I think I see adversity a lot of time, particularly around change in organizations. Because I get brought in because it's, "Hey, help us adopt agile." So immediately it becomes the big change conversation, which oftentimes will bring about adversity.

And then there's the follow on conversations around, "Well, how does resiliency check into that, as being something that change being a long-term event," if you will? And the ability to be resilient, to get up the next day after something goes really hairy, and be able to say, "You know what? This is still important, this is still meaningful, and this is still worthy of me to show up to try again."

Nicole:

Yeah. So resilience is ... I mean, with Brandon, just piggybacking on that ... is that it's a byproduct of those difficulties. And change is difficult for people and for organizations. So looking at it as not just ... sometimes people say, "Oh, I'm a resilient person," and not just it being a character trait, but it's also a skill that can be developed. And that's where being able to coach, or being able to consult, really helps people.

Dr. Dave:

Yeah. And when you say change is hard or difficult, what just came to mind, I was thinking of someone that I know from Boston who would say, "This is wicked hard."

Brandon:

That's great.

Dr. Dave:

He was in that dialect, right?

So let's talk about: why is resilience such an important skill to cultivate in a world that's filled with VUCA? We just talked about volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. How does that help you to navigate in that type of a world that we live in today?

Brandon:

Yeah.

Nicole:

Well, I believe that the one thing that is constant is change. I mean, as a clinician, I don't say always or never, but when it comes to change, we're always going to face change and uncertainty. Our brains don't like uncertainty.

So really being able to help people develop resilience is a way to be able to cope and face and know that you can handle the change. And even if you don't handle it the way that you wanted to in that moment, resiliency is being able to say, "You know what? I'm going to get up the next day to be able to try again."

Brandon:

Yeah, Nikki nailed it. I think this is the world that we live in now, and maybe have been for a long time, it's just that now that we've had these wonderful terms of art, like VUCA, to help express it a whole lot better. But yeah, this is the world that we live in. And wouldn't it be nice if this is the world that we live in, that we also adopt some tools and techniques and language around what we're in and how to work with it, as Nikki talks about it, cope with it?

This is her specialty, around: how do we cope with things? And come home every single day and acknowledge, "That was rough. And it might be rough tomorrow. What do I need to do in order to thrive, not just survive all the time, but thrive too, in those kind of situations?"

Nicole:

I think you said something really important, which is language. And Dr. Dave, you pointed out the language behind us. And being able to have language really empowers people to talk about their experience. And that's being able to say, "Hey, change is hard. Oh wait, resilience is a byproduct? Okay, how can I build this?" Instead of being able to say, "I'm just not a resilient person." "Well, oh, Brandon's here. I can talk to him about this." Or being able to get some coaching around it so that you know, even if you feel low in resilience, you're going to be able to build it up. And I think that that's really helpful.

Brandon:

We could go probably on for this for a [inaudible 00:08:44]-

Dr. Dave:

Back and forth.

Brandon:

Yeah. But I think, for me, it's been so empowering to be able to, again, name certain things, of what's happening, because there's a certain amount of normalizing that comes with that.

Brandon:

And when you are able to express it to somebody else and they can go, "Oh my goodness. Yeah." And then there becomes a strength in numbers kind of thing because you're not going through something alone. And I think as humans that connection piece is always there. So it could be incredibly powerful to name it, to share it and to work with others around it.

Dr. Dave:

Now that's really powerful, using language and also giving it an identity that people could connect with. But let's bring this home to both of you. What makes you resilient?

Nicole:

Practice, Dr. Dave, practice. And I mean there can be, again, I'm a natural optimist, which can be something that leads to hardiness is the personality trait that people talk about. But honestly going through a lot of major, just personal and professional change. I used to work for a community nonprofit and our first year there, we were working in community, doing in-home therapy. And one of our clients unfortunately, was killed and we wrapped around the team that was there and I was telling Brandon, we were talking about, this was my idea of like, "Wow, we were a really resilient team because we had this tragedy, not just even adversity and we're able to come together and talk about it." So through that, the practice that we had in, "Okay, this thing is terrible." That's really one of the things where I'm like, "Wow, not only am I showing resilience to be able to share with the actual clinician whose client it was, but seeing her resilience and seeing our resilience as a team." So I would say practice has made me resilient.

Being able to say when things are hard is something else. A lot of times we can be silenced and say, "Oh, don't say what's difficult." But that's leading into the resiliency and being able to just... At best when you're out of the crisis phase or even as you're going through it, how do you take care of yourself? And that's something else that I feel has led to help me with my resilience is taking breaks. I mean doing different things, listening to music, getting some movement in there. So that's what's actually led me to my resilience, but definitely practice. Lots of practice.

Brandon:

Nikki talking about practice, it reminds me of something I heard a while ago, which is, practice makes permanent. And it's huge. It's helped me so much and she's right. Practice is so key. And for me, part of that practice to become more resilient is continuously coming back to reevaluating, reminding myself of my north star. What is my purpose? What are my values? And whatever I'm involved in, does it match up? Does it align with those things? And it at least gives me the ability to say, "Hey, is this worth my energy to be resilient about?" Because I feel like my energy, my time, particularly at this point in my life, it's become very valuable.

And with a family, with a wife, I want to be very intentional about how I use my time and energy no matter what the space is. So continuously reminding myself about my purpose and my values becomes really, really incredible. In addition to a lot of the things that Nikki was talking about, just some daily practices to get rooted before you step in to lots of situations. And then when you step out of them having a good way to reground yourself or discharge a little bit.

Dr. Dave:

I love the language that you guys are using. Self-care, awareness, inquiry. All positive, healthy things for us as we try to become more resilient in our lives. And even just being a mindful of the fact that we don't... Our time isn't infinite, right? I mean, you got to choose.

Brandon:

Yes. Because as I heard once before, father time is undefeated.

Dr. Dave:

Yeah. I was going to say something else, but I'm like that's too morbid. So I heard it and didn't use the other day. Yeah. I'm never going to say it. Stay positive man. So how do we create belonging through the organization on individual transformation? Co-create, not just create, but co-create the wonderful partnership.

Brandon:

So I've become a really big fan of [inaudible 00:14:28] work and I love the steps that he talks about. And I know what gets me jazzed when I come to an organization, whether or not I'm actually a part of that organization or I'm helping that organization. I get real jazzed about... Well, what are we trying to do? What's our mission? What's our purpose? What's the hill that we're trying to take? And if I hear something that connects with me, that resonates with me, brother, I'm in. And I will stay engaged as long as I have a real alignment to that mission. And I know that there is a leader there who is open, who listens and who I love. The word that you use, who's willing to co-create. Yeah. And part of that co-creation is being really clear on, well, am I looking for input from the team and how is that input going to get used?

Being really clear around that because then I know where I stand and how I can contribute. Again, it's back to me is how I use my energy and my time. So I love organizations who either are doing that, trying to do that, or willing to do those kinds of things. Because I think that that creates the engagement. And then doing a little check in and saying, "How engaged are people around me?" And being able to say, "You know what? I measured it. That's not good enough." I want to do better. And what can I do to get better?

Dr. Dave:

Yeah. Fun stuff.

Nicole:

I like that. I mean, is that listening to understand because it's that human need to feel understood. That really helps with the sense of belonging and having a leader that does do that. So you're listening to understand instead of respond, which can be hard sometimes. And then being able to do that check in of, well did I get that right? Because each individual sense of belonging can be slightly different. Because we're all unique.

Dr. Dave:

Yeah. I mean what I'm hearing coming out from boats, Brandon, and Nikki, if I could call you Nikki, because I think that's what your husband... Okay. I asked permission. Don't call me Nikki. My name is Nicole.

Nicole:

It is fine, Dr. Dave, thank you for-

Dr. Dave:

Yeah. I mean what I hear both of you saying is we're talking about being seen, heard, and valued. And I think that's so important in today's world. Well, it's always been important. So if we think about some tangible benefits gained by organizations when their employees, their people who work there have a sense of belonging, share some of your experience that you've had.

Nicole:

It makes the difficulties not feel as traumatic. They don't rock as hard. When you have that sense of belonging and they're going to be days, even if you love your job that you might not go skipping into work, but you do feel like, "Oh, okay, this is a place that I want to be for the next however many hours." So it contributes to just the overall morale of

Nicole:

... of the workplace. Emotional contagion is something that I talk to organizations about because even if you just have a few, I mean, it's catchy. So you could have a few people who their morale could be really low because they don't feel that sense of belonging, and it just takes everyone down that path or a lot of others.

So really just looking at those kind of things of like, "Oh, okay, I want to be here. I do feel heard. I feel seen, even I'm not getting my way all the time. But I do feel like I was heard and you see me for who I am. I'm able to come in and have difficult conversations." There isn't a sense of, sometimes people think, "Oh, let's avoid the conflict."

But no, conflict is actually measured and handled in a way that feels respectful. That contributes to the sense of belonging as well, and you're going to actually see lower conflict. You're going to see higher productivity when people feel that sense of belonging and really just being able to keep people there as well.

Brandon:

I would also add that particularly for organizations who create products or even services, the quality goes up, too. People show up and they're jazzed about doing the work. When that gets extended to the people, the direct customers that they work with every single day so that product gets better, too. So I think lots of people can do, can go out.

There's so much research out there that talks about the higher the engagement scores, higher morale about those things and the benefits of it. And most people will see through those numbers, those are the companies where you see they land on the list every single year are best places to work. When you dig a little bit deeper, it's "I really enjoyed my leadership, my direct leadership," "I really enjoy the team that I'm working for, that I work with every single day," "I really enjoy the work that I'm doing, it's meaningful, I understand it." Those are typically the kind of things that you see out there.

I venture to say, even if you never looked at any of that research, take a look at your own life and see, ask yourself what was the best team that you worked with? What was the best company that you worked with? I'd put money on it that the answers to that question probably lines up pretty well with all of the fancy research that you tend to see.

I know it does for me, like still today, having been in this industry for almost 25 years now, I still can go back almost more than 10 years to one of my favorite teams that I worked with when I was still a software developer. I love the entire team because we came in every single day and it's like, "All right, what do we want to teach each other? What do we want to learn from each other?" It was, "This work is really cool." It was something and we knew that somebody was going to use it and find it really valuable.

We had managers who said, "I trust you. You all know how to write code. I don't. Tell me what you need from me." And we had customers who believed in us even when we messed up because we said, "We messed up, but here's what we're going to do differently." They said, "Great, try it. Here's a short period of time. Go off," and that's what we did.

Dr. Dave:

Man, that's rich. That's some rich experience that both of you are sharing.

So I'm going to ask you to go even a little deeper and talk about, share an experience that you had personally when belonging increased a personal team's resiliency.

Nicole:

Sure. I mean, I have a few, but the one that comes to mind is working again at the community nonprofit. Because we were doing trauma work with children and their families and you are meeting people on, like, usually the worst days of their lives and that can be extremely draining, especially in a therapeutic space where you want to join and connect, but you want to be sure that you don't get stepped in.

So coming back to the team and having, at this point, I was a therapist and my case manager and us just being able to debrief or laugh about the fact that we got... I couldn't get the car started and she's like, "Oh my goodness, what's going to happen?" Us just being able to laugh and have that camaraderie and it's just like, "Oh wow." People are starting to feel more like it's not just about the work, it's about how we are interacting with each other and those interpersonal skills.

That case manager and the other clinician that I used to work with on a regular basis and refer cases to back and forth because we trusted each other, well, the three of us now work together on the podcast. And that's 15 years later because we were like, "Oh, we need to find a way to be able to work together again" because we remember how good it felt to work together in the nonprofit and it really was that sense of belonging. We knew we had each other's others back and we trusted the high levels of communication, being able to be collaborative.

Then also a sense of autonomy, too, where even though, yes, there's certain things that we might have had it because our position changed and sometimes we would end up supervising one another. But even with those changes, because we felt like, "Hey, not only do we belong here, but I know that you see and trust me no matter what our roles are, even if it becomes supervisor and supervisee, we're good." We wanted that feel good feeling again and so we started working together on the podcast.

Dr. Dave:

Nice.

Brandon:

Yeah, I love that being able to work with each other over and over again.

Yeah. My story is similar from that aspect. I can remember, I mean I was just kind of alluding to it. One of the software teams that I worked on, I was in the lead position and this was before we started using the Agile on this team and we had a delivery date. We all knew that we were going to deliver a stinky pile of garbage and that's, in fact, what we did because there was a lot of reasons, let's just say.

I remember walking into our customer's office and saying, "I know this is not what you want, nor what you need. We want to show you what we did, but we actually want to talk to you about a different way of working and if you give us a chance, this will be better and shortly."

And we all, as a team, we didn't feel great about what we were delivering, but we also had a good time working with each other. We had a strength in our particular team and we made a commitment to each other and our customer to do better. So while we delivered something that we weren't proud of, we knew we could do better because we believed in each other and that's exactly what happened.

That particular program turned out to be, it was just a 180 of what we did in a pretty short amount of time. It ended up winning awards for our team. To this day, again, more than 10 years later, I still have connections with a lot of those folks and we have worked with each other again, again and again in certain instances, because that experience was just so rich with each other. Even that customer has called on some of us over and over again to help him out in other cases.

So for me, it was one of those things of believing each other and for us, that's where we drew a lot of our resilience.

Dr. Dave:

Now, that's cool, man. Because when resilience become a profitability thing, I mean-

Brandon:

That's a nice add.

Dr. Dave:

Right. That is so nice.

Brandon:

Yeah.

Dr. Dave:

So what words of encouragement would you like to gift the listeners with today? I think you did a lot of it, but as we're coming toward the closing of our interview, or our conversation of like what else do you got that people would like "Give me that, give me that?"

Brandon:

I

Brandon:

I think for me it's... I mentioned earlier, finding your passion, being able to understand what your passion is, and then being able to play around with that, right, see where it takes you. For me, it's not holding it so tightly or so rigidly in terms of, "Here's the steps I need to do." It's, "Wow, this is something that really sparks me, and so let's see where it goes. How can I learn a little bit more about how whatever that thing is, it's brought me joy," and so for me that's one of the things... We talked to our kids about this, is finding what is the thing that really lights you up.

Nicole:

Yeah, I like that. To add from there, and one of the things that I end sometimes even sessions with, is be gentle with yourself, because that inner critic gets really loud for us sometimes, and it's just being able to turn that down and being able to be gentle with yourself so that you can honor when you want some joy and be okay with... Your passions might change and that's okay.

So along with being gentle, I'm going to invite you to be curious about yourself, be a curious observer, an explorer, and looking at you... Life... This is actually advice from my mom, but where life is an adventure, and I expand that by saying, "And adventures are not just one thing." There're going to be ups and downs, toils and sometimes strife, but then there's going to be those joy moments, those moments where you feel just bliss and just being able to be okay and know that you can handle whatever's going to come up.

You might not feel like you have the tool at the time, but if you connect and you are connecting, then there is going to be somebody that might have that tool that can help you out, so being able to also be open to being supported by others, because even though as adults we say, "Oh, I got to do this on my own," on your own does not mean completely by yourself, so look where you can connect with others as well.

Brandon:

If I could just say on a personal note, Nikki's "be gentle with yourself", these are words I hear very often and thankfully, so yeah, just crazy, crazy helpful. I think particularly for the past several years it's been rough, and just being able to be gentle with yourself and know, well, lots of crazy stuff has gone on, you don't have to be a hundred percent every single day because there's a lot of weird stuff going on that affects all of us.

Nicole:

Yeah.

Brandon:

So that "be gentle" is huge.

Nicole:

Thank you.

Dr. Dave:

Those four words are just such great words of kindness, just kindness for yourself and for others. Thank you so much, and I just want to say, Brandon and Nikki Raines, man, I just love the conversation that we had today and I'm sure the audience would also love it as well, and I am really looking forward to hear what you got to go talk about in February during Black History Month on the Agile for Humanity conference. Can't wait, is where I am with that. I'm like, "Man, this is powerful."

Anything else you would like to add before I close?

Nicole:

Just gratitude towards you, Dr. Dave. Thank you so much for having this platform and inviting us out today. I think the more... again, language, right? The more that gets out there and people are able to talk about it, not just in one space, especially as a mental health professional but also no longer practicing attorney, but this is not dedicated to just the mental health space. Being able to talk about resilience in all spaces, so I thank you.

Dr. Dave:

Thank you. And just to let you know, we're fortunate to get another power couple like yourselves, with Devon and Lizzy to also be the other keynotes on Friday, so power couples, right, bringing our people out, so-

Brandon:

Thank you for not making us follow them.

Dr. Dave:

Well, I actually did, so game on?

Brandon:

Hey. No, no. I bow down. Devon and Lizzy. Wow.

Dr. Dave:

Yeah, yeah. So I'm just really grateful and that we have both couples who are doing really amazing things in our space and beyond, right, to be able to bring that out into our community during a very special time, I think, for all of us. So thank you, I'm very grateful. Makes me emotional sometimes, so...

Brandon:

Thank you.

Dr. Dave:

Thank you. So let me close and say thank you for listening to the KnolShare with Dr. Dave Podcasts. I invite you to come back for more insights and perspectives that may help you with discovering Resiliently You.

 

KnolShare with Dr. Dave Podcast is streamed on Spotify, Apple, Audible, Google, and many other platforms.

The music for our podcast was created by my niece, Kyanna Brow-Hendricksen. Thank you, Kyanna.

This podcast is also copy-written 2022 by Dr. Dave Cornelius and KnolShare.

 

Thank you for listening and stay tuned for our next episode of Resiliently You as we continue to share our stories and experiences. Be well and speak soon.

(Singing)