Listen in and be encouraged as Adam talks with facilitator Sarah Weisbarth about significant behavior change. There are resources available to you as you adjust and consider what you can do differently to improve.
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Adam Salgat:
Hello, and welcome to the Our Community Listens podcast. My name is Adam Salgat, and with me here today is Sarah Weisbarth, Our Community Listens facilitator. Sarah, with all the information that we give people, there’s definitely a lot of room for them to make changes, a lot of room for growth. Can we talk about that a little bit?
Sarah Weisbarth:
Yeah. Thank you, Adam, for asking that. And we could kind of contemplate this for a while, but we’ll get to the point. We don’t kid around when we walk into our first class. And in our orientation session, we talk about the fact that we’re really going to ask people to consider changing. We use the phrase, “significant behavior change.” And it’s not to say that there’s anything particularly wrong with individuals. But we believe that the material and the content we bring, and the environment that we bring it in, really has the opportunity to impact people in a way that they are inspired, and motivated to make some significant behavioral changes in a way that’s going to enrich their relationships.
Adam Salgat:
So when you talk about significant behavior change, for many people, I’m guessing they withdraw a little bit. Especially those who might not necessarily think they’re doing everything right, but they probably think to themselves, “I don’t have time for that.” As a facilitator, what’s your rebuttal?
Sarah Weisbarth:
It’s a risk. And every time I deliver that slide, I kind of feel like I’m about to duck and cover. I’m like, “I’m telling you, you’ve signed up for an environment where we’re going to ask you to change.” And I always feel like people are going to stampede out the door because change is hard. And when we have to, or when we’re placed in an environment or a situation where we have to do that gut-wrenching self-reflection and realize that there might be something that we could adjust and do differently. And it’s not about right or wrong. It’s just this awareness of like, “Wow, I never knew that my being sarcastic, or my interrupting, or looking at my cell phone when I’m trying to have a conversation with my teenager is hurting our relationship. When I have to face that reality, that doesn’t necessarily feel great.”
Adam Salgat:
Right. So they’re getting some feedback on themselves. And oftentimes, when you realize something within yourself internally, it is pretty difficult to swallow.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Yes. What I really enjoy, you said as a facilitator, I think was your first question. I probably went off a different direction. What I do enjoy as a facilitator is creating that environment for people to reflect on. What are their opportunities to change? And their willingness. And the classes are so supportive of one another. It’s just so encouraging to watch and see participants come together as a group, as maybe someone throws a statement out into the environment that is a recognition of things that they need to change. There’s always someone in the class that’s going to be encouraging about that and maybe even learn themselves from what another participant has shared. I don’t think we can ever go through major change or even minor changes without the support of other people.
Adam Salgat:
And that is an environment that is definitely brought to Our Community Listens classes, that you’re there with other people and you’re looking to support one another.
Sarah Weisbarth:
When we design our environment, it’s intentional for that and to have that support. And then we also intentionally design, what’s it going to take to actually enact some behavior change? You go through a three-day experience. You’re inspired, you’re motivated. I don’t think there’s ever been a participant that was like, “Well, this was a waste of my time.” There’s always something that someone is gleaning from their experience with us. And it could even be an experience in our continuous learning sessions from the three-day class. But how are we going to continue to support people in this behavior change? It’s one of the things that actually was keeping me up at night as a facilitator, because I feel like, “Wow, people want to grow and change. How do we continue to encourage them?”
Adam Salgat:
So when you’re up at night and you’re thinking about that, I suppose in some ways you’re thinking, “What can I bring to the podcast? What can I bring to continued learning sessions?” So what are you bringing, what are we doing as an organization to bring more to our alumni to help them continue that successful change?
Sarah Weisbarth:
Yeah. So jumping right off of the environment of the three-day class that motivates this desire to have this significant behavior change. And I think I’ve shared this story before. It doesn’t have to be radical change. It doesn’t have to be an overhaul or a make-over of who I am. It can be as simple as intentionally staying off my phone with my teenager. And we have an alumnus that did that with her daughters. And she reported that it significantly changed the relationship with her daughters, making sure she stayed off her phone for 20 minutes when she got home from work. That’s all it took.
But if it’s a habit that’s in place, it can be hard to break. So some of the things that we do right away before we even get out of class is we have our participants go through an action plan. We have them consider the environment that they want to start creating change in, what is a goal that they want to achieve in environment, and what are very concrete steps, the actual behaviors that you’re going to consider changing. And by having them write that down and then openly share that with each other in class, you’ve created some accountability, you’ve put something on paper, and it’s actionable.
Adam Salgat:
I like that because a lot of times people will say they’re going to do something, but if they don’t have that concrete plan in place, it’s very easy to just fall away from it. But if you have some almost baby steps and how to achieve it, it’s the idea of breaking things into smaller pieces, making them easier to handle that should help create some change. And then by change, should help create a more positive, happier environment for them to be in with their family, friends or wherever it might be, maybe coworkers.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Yeah. And there’s so much content that you could create action steps around coming out of class. It could be around the disc. It could be around the communication cycle. It could be around effective confrontation or being a good listener. You could just choose really anything to start to make those changes around. We actually share a model in class. Most people are kind of familiar with it. But people come into class and they don’t know what they don’t know. But we share information with them, we inspire change. And now there’s this moment where they’ve realized what they didn’t know before. So now you know what you don’t know.
Adam Salgat:
You mentioned there that there’s different areas that you can pick and choose where you want to make your change. I’m curious, do you see as a facilitator, a certain space where people try to make a change immediately? I have a guesstimation or I have a guess, but I’m just curious.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Well, I’m kind of curious about your guess. I’m guessing it’s going to be right.
Adam Salgat:
I figure a lot of people look at listening and that they’re going to change their listening first. Because in many respects, it’s an area that people continue to struggle with, I believe. And it’s not getting any easier in our world, in our society with handheld distractions, everything. So I feel like listening is probably a space that they immediately think, “Oh, wow. I don’t really listen as deeply or pay as close attention as I thought I did.”
Sarah Weisbarth:
Yeah, I would give it 75% of the respondents would say that listening is an area that they’re going to work on making change in immediately. And it can be as simple as putting the phone down. And that’s their actionable step of becoming a better listener.
Some of the other ones that are really intriguing to me is people’s awarenesses around their non-verbals. And things like eye rolling, or even like the gestures that they use, their facial expressions. And so there’ll be a lot of goals and actions around being more cognizant and aware of their non-verbal message.
Adam Salgat:
Tell me a little bit about any of the other things that we’re doing right now as an organization to support growth and change.
Sarah Weisbarth:
So building off of the action steps or the action plans that we do in class, we do have some intentional relationships that we try to help our participants form. We call them learning partners, where we connect participants with one another and ask them to just stay in touch with one another for the first 90 days. Research will show that the first 90 days after committing to a change is going to be the most crucial, important time. And if we can implement those small changes, then the larger change will be more sustainable. And if we have accountability in that and support in that, again, we’ll be more successful in that change.
So we have our learning partners. So just touching base with people, having someone that understands the same process that you’re going through is incredibly helpful. We encourage our classes to actually stay in communication and connection with one another for that initial time period.
And then we do have practical resources. We have a continuous learning guide that we give out to our participants. It’s essentially like a reflection journal where just on a daily basis, you can continue to read and connect and reflect on the content. It just builds on the skills that you went through in the communication skills training three-day class. So we send people out the door with just a ton of opportunity to stay connected to their commitment.
Adam Salgat:
When you send them out the door to stay connected with their commitment, how are we then trying to reach back out to them? Because it’s easy for them to fall off.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Yeah. Oh yes. One of the things that touches my heart about our programming is our participants desire to still stay connected with the organization, connected with the content, with one another, and with our facilitators. In order to help foster that opportunity for them, we have our continuous learning sessions where we offer in our different regions throughout Michigan, and our chapters nationally offer it as well, where we offer in-person facilitator-led continuous learning.
And it’s really just going to be a shot in the arm or a refresher or a deeper dive into the topics and content that we do in that three-day class. So it might be about DISC. It’s almost always about effective confrontation because people really want some support in that area. So we’ll do hour and a half to three hour sessions, depending on how each chapter formats them, where we can continue to support with education, information, inspiration, and guidance.
Adam Salgat:
That’s awesome. And I think doing those locally is very key because people need to do that. But I’m going to tell you, I’m excited for the one day when National announces a national community picnic in St. Louis, Missouri maybe, center of the US, so all of us can get together. All of us like-minded Our Community Listen to people. Alumni, I should say. And to have a community picnic. I’m just throwing it out there. It’s just a thought. I think it’d be good.
Sarah Weisbarth:
Well, you know what, there is so much desire to stay connected with the people that you went through class or connected with people that are like-minded. And when you really think about how our material gets infused into a community, you do start to run across people that have obviously gone through class, and you’re using the same lingo, and you’re using the same intent and the same presence with others. And people will be like, “You’ve been through that three-day class, haven’t you?”
And then those connections throughout a community naturally develop. So we do have that understanding that keeping those connections are important and that social time is important because we do want that. And I love that you brought up that the fact that we can connect nationally. I don’t know if we could all fly to St. Louis, but there is merit there.
Adam Salgat:
We can drive.
Sarah Weisbarth:
We could. But we’re going to start webinars where it might be a webinar conducted by our Charleston chapter that any of our alumni can jump onto. So if scheduling is a limitation to get into an in-person session in your local chapter, the webinars will be available and anyone can jump on those and there’ll be recorded. And we’ll have those as a resource as well. So we have great accessibility to continued support with the content.
Adam Salgat:
That’s all very exciting, Sarah. Thanks so much for taking time to share some of this with us. Anything else you’d like to add about staying connected?
Sarah Weisbarth:
Well, obviously we have our podcasts. And there’s a lot in the works going forward that we hope to roll out and pilot at the end of the year with additional, I call it value added content. Basically it’s going to be content above and beyond what people have already experienced that they can engage with with our organization as well, to support their own personal development and growth.
Adam Salgat:
That’s outstanding. I did not mention the podcast because frankly, if you’re hearing this, you’re listening to the podcast and we greatly appreciate it.
Sarah Weisbarth:
So, but let me jump off of that because we are developing … we would call them mini sessions off of our podcasts, where a team or a group can engage with our organization and get access to activities, discussion questions, and going deeper on their own, around the content of our podcasts. So it’s like you get to hear the content from a facilitator, and then you get to experience it with your group or your team.
Adam Salgat:
Again, super exciting. And I’ll say this, alumni, if you are interested in any of this, if this does sound like something you’d like to be involved in or something you’d find as a valuable resource, let us know. Find us on our Facebook, Our Community Listens page, or any of the chapter pages. Make a comment on this podcast release or make a comment on the SoundCloud page. Send us a message, write us an email. If you have a carrier pigeons, we accept those. We will feed them and send them back. They know what they’re doing. So any option that you have to get in touch with us, to let us know you’d be interested, we would love, love to hear it.
If you do want more information on Our Community Listens, visit our website at ourcommunitylistens.org. And don’t forget, alumni, you are the message.
