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Episode 36: Getting Political with Michael King
20 Plays6 days ago
Michael King discusses politics and leadership in the behavioral health and addiction fields. Visit our website at www.nbhap.org.
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Transcript
Introduction to Recovery and Leadership
00:00:12
Speaker
Welcome to Destination Change, a podcast where we talk recovery, treatment, and more. I'm your host, Antje Feudler-Sutton, with the National Behavioral Health Association providers, and I use she or her pronouns. My guest today is Michael King.
00:00:23
Speaker
Michael, he, him, is the director and creator of the Communities Project, an initiative aimed at expanding the leadership capacity of individuals and organizations to effectively tackle issues critical to the communities they serve.
00:00:35
Speaker
Michael is the former Director of Outreach and Engagement for Facing Addiction with NCADD. He spent over a decade in the political arena working on presidential, gubernatorial, U.S. Senate, and local campaigns from county to state legislative efforts.
00:00:48
Speaker
He is a co-founder of a Washington state-based not-for-profit organization aimed at empowering young people to become engaged in the political process and a past public policy committee co-chair for Faces and Voices of Recovery.
Michael King's Journey to Recovery Leadership
00:01:00
Speaker
Michael is also a 2018 alumni of Just Leadership USA's Leading with Conviction program and a graduate of the Rockwood Leadership Institute's Virtual Art of Leadership program. Welcome to the podcast, Michael.
00:01:11
Speaker
Hi, Angie. Thank you for having me on. I'm grateful to be here. Now, long-time listeners know what my first question is. I always like to hear what I call origin stories. Basically, what got you into the field? What made you get into this kind of stuff versus accounting or any of the other 5 billion job options that are out there?
00:01:29
Speaker
Yes. Well, for starters, I'm a person in long-term recovery, which for me means I have not had a ah a drink, a drug, or placed a bet since February of 2013. And prior to getting into recovery, I had a career in the political arena, as you were reading a bit, and I worked on campaigns. I, i you hobnobbed with bigwigs and whatnot. After I got into some trouble, which led to me getting into recovery, i had to endure a period of incarceration as a result of some things I had done in active addiction.
00:01:59
Speaker
and When I was incarcerated, I started to just kind of wonder, God, is there some way that I could blend my professional and my personal backgrounds together? and I had developed a newfound passion for recovery. I was about nine months into my recovery journey when I had to be incarcerated. and Then I just started to kind of wonder if there was some way to connect those two dots. and Inevitably, when I got out, I simply made the choice that I was going to make
Challenges in Leadership and Advocacy
00:02:24
Speaker
a contribution. I didn't know what that contribution meant, but I wanted to make a contribution back to a community given the fact that nearly everyone with whom I was incarcerated was in there for something connected to substance use, 90%. I went to work for a national nonprofit and I was doing advocacy and organizing training, which was consistent with my background. But a couple years into that journey, I was accepted into a leadership development program for formerly incarcerated citizens. And i joined this cohort initially with kind of the idea that really what I was entering was a networking opportunity.
00:02:58
Speaker
As it turned out, I had no idea the power of what I was about to start the journey I was about to go on. I had a a mentor who facilitated a conversation about leadership, and I was just blown away by what he had to offer. And here I was already doing trainings all over the country, and it really started to crystallize for me that I wanted to do leadership training.
00:03:23
Speaker
for this community of recovery leaders who I had come to just have so much respect for. So it was about five, six years ago now, I began doing pretty solely leadership training in this field. And it's really opened some tremendous doors for me, but more importantly, for those I've had the opportunity to train. And it's just, it's work and a gift that keeps on giving.
00:03:44
Speaker
Well, first of all, congratulations on your recovery. And, you know, leadership is always a great thing. And we'll start talking about that. Now, I know it varies depending on, people you know, everybody's different and whatnot. But in your personal opinion, what's some of the bigger hurdles for having a person be more effective as a leader?
00:04:02
Speaker
oh What are the biggest hurdles? you know we all There are certain common challenges that come up all the time. and I'm going to just kind of turn back, if I may, to those practices that I'm talking about. so Let's look at that from the perspective of responsibility. What is it that blocks me from being responsible for what I'm creating?
00:04:22
Speaker
Usually it's judgment. So I fail. This project doesn't go as well as I'm hoping for. The event didn't get as many people to turn out. My boss and I are struggling in our relationship. Rather than taking responsibility for my own contribution for that, and by the way, if I take responsibility and I lead from that posture, I have the ability to always be powerful because I'm always focusing on that which I can change.
00:04:50
Speaker
But when I'm not, when I'm stuck in judgment, I just don't allow myself to actually move forward because I get more caught up in the story I have because that's what judgment really is. It's just a story. i keep showing up late. Oh my God, I'm a terrible person. No, you're just showing up lay.
00:05:06
Speaker
So be responsible for showing up lay. But it doesn't mean that we're a terrible person. I always say success just means success. If the training I do goes well, it doesn't actually mean I'm God's gift to leadership training as much as my ego wants to tell me I am.
00:05:22
Speaker
It just means, oh, the training went really well. Yeah, let me be responsible for doing a lot of legwork to understand that client, understand what their needs were, know their team. I think that really contributed to that training going so well. So let me be responsible for that.
00:05:36
Speaker
Likewise, if the training doesn't go well, it doesn't actually mean that I'm a horrific trainer. It just means... It didn't go well. And I contributed something to that. I thought, you know, I need to be responsible for showing up completely
Youth Engagement and Cultural Shifts in Politics
00:05:50
Speaker
disinterested today. I was stuck in my own head. I had too many things going on in my life that I didn't, I wasn't taking responsibility for. And inevitably I showed up completely disinterested. And in turn, that training did not go well.
00:06:02
Speaker
let me be responsible for that and count on me to do better moving forward and let me own the impact that had on you and your organization because we can be responsible for fail and we like to say things like all failures are just learning opportunities and i certainly hope that's true right i hope we learn from our failures but we also have to be responsible for the impact it has on others just as we have to be responsible for the impact that our success has on others too And in the recovery world, this is one of the great hurdles because we've all been sort of spoon-fed this idea of staying humble.
00:06:41
Speaker
I have to be humble. And I'm not going to argue that. Of course, humility is a virtue that we all can continue. I know I certainly need to keep working on growing it, right? But we're not bragging and we're not being boastful.
00:06:55
Speaker
We're just being responsible for what we did. I actually did do that legwork on that client, which did help lead to the training being successful. I get to own the things I do.
00:07:06
Speaker
I just don't need to make them mean more than they mean. So I'm getting away a little bit from your question here, but these are some of the things that do, I think, block effectiveness. We get stuck on our judgments. We get stuck on our stories. And we fail to actually recognize what it is we've done or not done that has contributed to what we've created. And then we don't own it.
00:07:26
Speaker
And now we're in a blaming posture. It's all your fault. It's the world. It's this and that. And now I'm completely powerless and I can't do anything to change what I've created because I've just, I've given all the power to outside circumstances and taken none for
Advocacy Tips for Aspiring Leaders
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myself.
00:07:40
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Does that make sense, Angie? Yeah. Yeah. No. And you said you were off kind of going off the question, but actually my next question was going to be kind of, is there a difference leading in recovery versus leading in non-recovery spaces? And if so, what are some of those differences? Yeah.
00:07:55
Speaker
I think the short answer is no, honestly. That might not be the popular answer, but humans are humans. right It's like when I worked in politics for years, every time I'd go into a new community to organize, everyone would always say, well, our community is different. and The truth was I never found that to be true. Maybe history is different, maybe impact right maybe cultural backgrounds are different, but the truth is humans are humans. and so Is it different to lead in the recovery community? No, and not in my experience. But yeah, there are certain things. This is just purely from my own experience. So please, not everything I say is the truth, right?
00:08:30
Speaker
But in other communities, owning fail can often be more difficult than owning success. And my experience in the recovery community has often been the opposite.
00:08:42
Speaker
We're actually pretty adept at owning where we've come up short because that's been part of our recovery process. I have to actually, I've already, i've done if for folks have found recovery through a 12-step pathway, I've actually taken inventory and written down what my part was and stuff. So I'm not actually a rookie at that.
00:09:00
Speaker
but it's owning the good stuff. That's the tricky part because I want to make sure I'm staying humble. I am wary of my ego going out of control. All these things that we're kind of taught in recovery. So that's the only thing that I think is different is I constantly am in conversations pushing people because I tend to have a bit of a pushing style as of as a facilitator and a coach, but pushing people to recognize and be responsible for their greatness.
00:09:28
Speaker
That's the big hurdle. but Well, let's talk a little bit more about your work with governmental agencies. kind of Advocacy, like i said, is a big part of NBHAB's motto. Talk a little bit about kind of your work and how that, you know, has changed over the years. And obviously things are changing on a daily basis nowadays. What you do to kind of make sure that you're
The Ongoing Process of Recovery
00:09:50
Speaker
keeping up. Yeah. So I used to do a ton of advocacy work in a previous position that I had. and I've done a lot of training work around advocacy. And I will tell you the biggest area where I think
00:10:00
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advocates, and this does not specifically pertain to our community. I think it's advocates across the board on on any issue. But one of the single areas where advocacy falls short and what I think we could do to be more effective, it stems from the notion that somehow advocacy is purely about persuading people to join our side, our team, or whatever.
00:10:21
Speaker
And that's all well and good. right That's what we want to create. We want to bring more people into the fold. But I think the means that we try to do it, the manner in which we try to do it, often comes up short. And I think it comes up short for one primary reason, which is that rather than being interested in what others want, we try to sell them on our notion of what we believe to be right.
00:10:44
Speaker
And inevitably what ends up happening is sure, we we might get some folks on board who who were kind of already teetering towards us anyway. But what we also create is a solidified opposition when we do it.
00:10:56
Speaker
The other thing area where I think sometimes we can come up short in advocacy is we go and we meet with, say, the elected leader. And rather, the first thing we tend to do in that conversation is explain why we're there and how our cause will benefit.
00:11:12
Speaker
And obviously, we tend to know what we're talking about when we're walking into that space. So it's not that that's wrong. I actually encourage people to take a slightly different approach. And this is just, again, this is the Michael King advocacy recommendation, right, of how to approach this. But start by being interested in that person.
00:11:31
Speaker
They're meeting with you for a reason. What's that reason? You are an opportunity for them. in some way. We know you're an opportunity for the people for whom you are advocating. That's why you're there.
00:11:45
Speaker
But if your objective, if the result you want to create is to get this individual on board with, again, your bill, your project, your coalition, whatever it might be, start by being interested in why they took that meeting with you in the first place. Because it's only by actually understanding that that you're going to see a clear pathway as to how to be effective. Angie, if you told me, well, Michael, I want you as a guest on this podcast because I really want to build my cadre of bald white guys who are running around the world, right?
00:12:15
Speaker
I have no way of knowing that until I've actually asked you about you. But if I know that, if you've articulated that to me, well, then I can show up and make all the bald jokes in the world and get myself right in your good graces, which I might not do with somebody else.
00:12:29
Speaker
And as a result, what
The Communities Project and Leadership Development
00:12:30
Speaker
happens? I get what I want, which is the opportunity to talk to you, Angie, and be a guest. And you get what you want, which is more bald white guys and in the file, right?
00:12:39
Speaker
Totally, we all get what we want. Here's the example I always always use of this approach. And and it applies in advocacy. i think it applies in community organizing. I think it applies in successful business management, I always kid around with audiences. I have never successfully talked anybody into hiring me.
00:12:57
Speaker
Never. The only times I've been successful in getting that big contract, landing that big client, helping that big client through a tricky time has been when I have focused on being an opportunity for them.
00:13:11
Speaker
So if I'm listening for what is the opportunity that this organization sees in leadership work, in advocacy work, whatever it might be, then I i know how I need to show up.
00:13:21
Speaker
And if I do that successfully, they get what they want because I focused on being an opportunity for them. And I get what I want, which is number one, the opportunity to work with amazing, courageous people who are interested in creating big change. And number two, to get paid, which I also enjoy too.
00:13:36
Speaker
All by being an opportunity. Whenever I don't get the contract, 99.9% of the time when I pause and I reflect, why did that not work out? I always land on, oh crap, I made it about me again.
00:13:47
Speaker
That's why it didn't work out. i I told them what I thought was best for them, not what they wanted to create. Does that make sense? Definitely. When reading your bio, I talked about how part, you know, your organization is aimed at empowering young people to become engaged in the political process.
00:14:01
Speaker
Kind of give me a read as to whether that, you know, is that more happening more often, less often than it has in the past? Kind of what are some of the trials and of getting younger people involved?
00:14:14
Speaker
Well, that was a past project I worked on many years ago. I was a co-founder along with a big group of folks in Seattle actually to start a nonprofit, which has thrived in the meantime in the many, many, many years since I was on their board of directors and one of their co-founders. But I i get the sense that young people are getting engaged in in different kinds of ways. i don't know if the traditional political process, at least the one that I got involved in 25 years ago when I first ventured into this work, I'm not sure that pathway is quite the same anymore. And I do think that there are cultural reasons for that.
00:14:46
Speaker
you know i would I don't do work in the political arena right now, though I
Trends and Challenges in Modern Leadership
00:14:50
Speaker
would be very interested in, but I think nobody would want to hear what I have to say on either side of the spectrum. Because i do I have come to believe that you know the single biggest hindrance we have in politics is that nobody cares about anybody outside of their community.
00:15:05
Speaker
I mean, societally, we've seen we just compartmentalize ourselves in every conceivable way where we just don't associate with people who have opposite political views than us. we just don't I read a study one time and I don't want to totally, I'm going mildly misquote it here, probably I'm paraphrasing. But a percentage of people who would date someone of the opposite political persuasion as them has shrunk to next to nothing.
00:15:32
Speaker
And that used to be almost half of the of American society. It was people who had opposite political viewpoints under the same roof. Can you imagine that these days? It sounds crazy to even contemplate how someone on one side would be with someone on the other side. So I think my concern with young people in the political process right now is I just don't know I'm concerned about the culture we've created. I think there's a bigger cultural shift that needs to happen. And I think, again, it'll start if we actually have a dialogue that was centered in responsibility and not blame. We love to blame people who think differently than us for all the problems that we face, the world faces, the community faces. And maybe if we got a little more interested in why those around us believe what they believe and how they arrived at that viewpoint,
00:16:20
Speaker
maybe we might actually have a chance to have some kind of positive impact, but I'm getting soapboxy here. I'll have somebody to step off my soapbox. It's my unpopular soapbox that just tends to irritate people on both sides of the spectrum. No worries. One more advocacy question, then we'll go back to your leadership work. you know Say i I want to get more involved in advocacy, but I don't know where to start or I don't know what to do and I feel a little weird just making calls. or What would you recommend for someone who wants to get that first start going but feels a little scared? Oh, I think the first thing would be to be specific with themselves. What is it that they're actually looking to advocate on? Because if you get too broad, you're going to end up in a big broad sandwich, right? But figure out, do your research and just figure out what is it that you actually want to advocate on? I guarantee you there's a community out there that is advocating on it too. And then I think
00:17:15
Speaker
recognizing when you're reaching out that your passion is an opportunity for those communities. So i I do think if I was going to make one recommendation to people, most people know, okay, I'll do my research and I'll figure out but an entity that's doing that work. That's not rocket science. I think the biggest hurdle becomes the internal one. Oh, what if I reach out? What if nobody gets back to me? i mean, we just get on the hamster wheel and we start going. Recognize that your passion is an opportunity, not just for you, but likely for countless others too. So don't be hesitant to articulate that. Don't be hesitant to articulate that while also listening for other people's passions as well.
00:17:54
Speaker
That is a great advice. Now, again, like I said, we'll go back to your leadership. Now, the point of the name of the podcast is called Destination Change. We call it that because we feel that recovery is not a single point. It's a journey that people sometimes go off the path. They sometimes backtrack. In your personal opinion, what does it mean to go through recovery and what are some of the hurdles that you feel are hitting you know some of the biggest hurdles that people have in terms
Resources and Motivation for Leadership
00:18:20
Speaker
of going through recovery? Well, I'm always amazed by how everybody's path is the same but different, right? that everybody It's amazing how many commonalities there are in terms of different challenges that people face. I'll just share a little bit of my own experience in this because I think others can probably relate. That when, you know, you can take away, there's an old saying that you can take away the alcohol, but you still have the ism, right? That I never learned how to cope with life. Life can be challenging. There's just just no way around that. There's no guarantee that there is no way to now to try to navigate your life away completely from complication. There's complications in life.
00:18:57
Speaker
I never learned how to deal with any of them. I never learned how to actually embrace any of them or lean into any of them. I learned how to avoid all of them. And I learned how to avoid all of them through substance use and gambling.
00:19:08
Speaker
So I think in recovery, not just learning, we can say, so learn how to lean into stuff. And that's all well and good. But I actually think it's a deeper, it's deeper work to do because it's knowing that you can and really believing that you can lean into them and you can actually endure hardship and you can do it sober, that you actually have the capacity and the power to do that.
00:19:34
Speaker
So many of us, I think, get into recovery and we've we've never actually embraced or leaned into a problem, so we don't know that we can. But actually, in the meantime, we are leaning into the most challenging thing there is, which is to stop using or drinking or gambling or eating unhealthy or engaging in unhealthy sexual behavior or whatever your particular challenge might be.
00:19:55
Speaker
So I think the work, like everything else, is inevitably internal. It's recognizing that you can. I always share with folks that the greatest thing that ever happened to me is the hardest, the worst thing I ever did, right? Which was, you know, I went to prison for embezzling a large sum of money from the entity that I worked for and it was political. So it was public and it was on the front page of the newspaper and it was all over, you know, I was sitting in the car with someone and a story about me came on NPR. when Like it was a public, it was a very public bottom that I created for myself. And I don't say this to shy away from the impact it had on others, which was grave.
00:20:32
Speaker
I just learned that I could navigate that. So today when hardship comes up, and my lord, it certainly does, like I can just always remind myself, i can navigate this. I'm going to be okay.
00:20:44
Speaker
and I don't need to escape it. So I think for people in recovery, the biggest thing that they can overcome, and it just takes time and patience and community first and foremost, because community is the solution to all. I really believe that. That's why the work I do is called the Communities Project, because that's what we're doing is we're building community. You can't navigate this hardship, even when it feels like the worst thing that's ever happened to you and the pain is really hard. You can't.
00:21:12
Speaker
you are strong and powerful and you can. That is a perfect segue because I was actually going to say let's talk about your work with communities project next. Kind of for those who may be unfamiliar with the project, give me the elevator pitch of what you do, what's your purpose, that kind of stuff.
00:21:27
Speaker
Yeah, so my my mission is to invest in deep-seated community change through leadership development and coaching. At the end of the day, all change, whether it's systemic within an organization, whether it's navigating or shifting a community stance on any given issue, whether it's internal, comes back to leadership.
00:21:45
Speaker
Am I going to step up and help to lead this initiative? Am I going to lead myself in a specific direction? Leadership is the common thread through not just every person, which I really believe, but through every challenge.
00:22:00
Speaker
Leadership can, in fact, solve everything. So when I first entered the recovery world, it was the one area where I just sort of felt like, I'm not sure I see this type of investment happening. And lo and behold, i ended up being fortunate enough to receive that type of investment.
00:22:17
Speaker
And so I just as a trainer really thought this is the contribution that I could maybe make to this space that I could look back on an X amount of years and really feel proud of. So I do that work through training and coaching. So oftentimes I visit organizations or communities. I get brought in to do fundamental leadership training. So I talk a lot about those three practices that I mentioned before. Responsibility, self-reflection and feedback, speaking to others as leaders or creating collective leadership is another way to put that. And then I also will talk about other critical leadership topics as they arise, to workshops like conflict, trauma-informed leadership, goal-setting, supervision. And then I provide one-on-one coaching to folks. So after they've gone through a training, they always have the option to do some work with me one-on-one. And I really do believe that that one-on-one post-training interaction is where so much powerful change happens, simply because the fact of the matter is, in most communities, we go through millions of trainings, and trainings are great. But if you don't have some kind of follow-up to the training, you know the impact lessens. It evaporates over time. We've all got lives to live, right? So it's really, really impactful, gratifying work. i I'll get a note occasionally from someone who I haven't read. necessarily spoken to in a while.
00:23:34
Speaker
Sometimes there's someone who I didn't even really build that much of a relationship with, but I'll get a note occasionally that will say, you know, i I sat in a training you did two years ago and just the other day I was in this conversation and something in that training came back to me and I completely shifted the dialogue and was able to create this powerful result. Thank you for that. And that's just, I have another um a person who I've worked with for years who has created a recovery farm. So they actually like grow products and give back to the community and and help to feed people. And one time she sent me a picture of these just barrels and barrels of food that they've created and cited my contribution to that.
00:24:10
Speaker
And that's a really powerful, that just felt, Not much feels more tremendous than that, right? that was I bet. That was pretty great. So yeah, Community Project is all about investing in community, specifically through leadership.
00:24:23
Speaker
Now, I'm sure there are, I guess, trends in your work in terms of you're seeing a lot of the same issues or a lot of the same problems. Can you talk a little bit about what kind of some of those trends? Sure. Well, as I mentioned before,
00:24:35
Speaker
I think the ability and willingness to see how great you are and how capable and powerful you are is the number one challenge that every community has to overcome. We see ourselves, I'm just a peer.
00:24:50
Speaker
We'll come up a lot when I work with peer recovery workers, for example, right? Well, pause and listen to your language. I'm just a peer. You're literally minimizing yourself and then surprised when the world doesn't treat you like a leader. Well, you're not treating yourself like a leader. So that's the work we have to do. It's actually not about shifting the world.
00:25:10
Speaker
It's about shifting you. And in turn, the world around you will shift if that's but the work has to start here. So that's a common trend. I think in terms of the moment that we find ourselves in right now, i mean, a lot of our people, our community and the organizations doing this work,
00:25:27
Speaker
you know We're all kind of sitting at the edge of our seat right now just because we're not sure is that next funding source going to come? Are we going to be able to continue this big project? Can we keep all these people on our team?
00:25:39
Speaker
Those are all about as serious challenges as organizations in any space could face. And I think given, you know and yes, my viewpoint is going to come out here. so let me be responsible if I offend any listeners along the way here, but the complete assault on the behavioral health world that we're seeing right now, it has created, i think, a hesitancy to spend too much funding on things like leadership development, which I think sometimes we we think of as frivolous.
00:26:10
Speaker
and I would argue, and you know again, I won't let me be responsible for my clear bias in this conversation, but I'll just name it anyway. I would argue there's never been a more important time for us as a community to stand up and lead and to hear how we can most effectively use our voices. We're kind of in this cultural moment where we all are are convinced we're right all the time.
00:26:32
Speaker
And I certainly love to think I'm right all the time too. But what's really important right now actually isn't being right, it's being effective. Because the lanes we have to go through are smaller than they have been in recent years. So we have to be effective in those moments. And that's the investment that I'm always interested in making, right? How can leadership development lead to you being more and more effective?
00:26:55
Speaker
Now, I'm sure you don't really have a typical day that varies depending on what you're doing. But what is your the the hardest part or your least favorite part of what you do? Oh boy, that's a great question. Sometimes I'll out myself here and I'm sure clients of mine will chuckle if they're listening to this and they hear me say this, but I really do believe in the human capacity to lead. Like this isn't, I'm not faking this. I really, really, really believe in it. And I will get frustrated when I when i hear what I perceive to be a lack of willingness to be responsible.
00:27:29
Speaker
That will frustrate me the most. Now, here's the irony. In that moment, When I let my frustration become a director rather than an advisor, because that's the thing with emotions, like there's no such thing as leading with less emotion. Your emotions are beautiful sources of wisdom.
00:27:47
Speaker
Don't shove them down. Don't cut them out. Just learn to listen to them as advisor rather than director. When I let things like my frustration become director, which I certainly do as sometimes...
00:27:59
Speaker
suddenly I'm no longer interested in you and what you're trying to create. I'm more interested in my frustration. And now I'm not being effective with you. So that's the hardest that's the hardest thing, I think, is when I allow my own emotions to direct me rather than advise me. And inevitably, it leads to an ineffective coaching conversation or not my strongest training.
00:28:22
Speaker
And rather than pointing fingers and I'm going to actually adhere to the practice that I train on, I have to pause and have to reflect on that. And then I have to be responsible for it. And I have to figure out, well, what is it I need to do for myself and my own practice that's going to allow me to go back to that higher level of effectiveness? Day to day, i mean, I get to talk to people all day long who are just completely committed to building powerful change and their communities to better serve clients that they're working with to grow their organizations i get to go travel to these places and see them in person i'll be in cleveland next week to speak at the nar conference there a few weeks after that i'll be back in ohio for some training i'll be in new mexico for a training with a long-time client in october i mean new hampshire in november i get to go see
00:29:09
Speaker
I get to go see the work on the ground because I really think the best work that happens in our world is the work in communities on the ground. And that's not a knock on the big national entities, but those small, what these small nonprofits do and how they do it and the sheer volume of people that they serve, it's incredibly inspiring.
00:29:29
Speaker
Now, this might be the answer to the, that might kind of be the answer to my next question, but on the opposite, what is your favorite part of the job? There's one moment. And especially when I'm training one-on-one, although it comes out a lot in, in when I'm training an organization, but it comes out a lot in one-on-one dialogue, coaching dialogue with folks as well. People have what I like to call an aha moment.
00:29:52
Speaker
And I see it when it's happening. I see it when a door opens that wasn't open. And i don't I don't open doors for people. People open doors for themselves. I am a mirror, right? That's what I try to do. I'm going to just ask, I'm going to reflect back what I'm hearing from you, which you may not be hearing from yourself even in that moment. People open those doors for themselves. But when I see that happen, I had someone recently who I've actually coached for a long time.
00:30:19
Speaker
And they're just moved into a new position in their organization. So their anxieties, just like we all have, we start a new job, we're not sure we know what we're doing yet. And I offered to them, I said, what if you didn't need to know the answer all the time?
00:30:33
Speaker
Like, what would open up for you in this moment, if you knew that you didn't need to know the answers? And for her, it was like her whole her brain exploded. It was, oh my God. And I've talked to her. I've had several coaching dialogues with her since. And she said that changed up that literally changed everything for me when I realized they didn't actually need to know the answer all the time. and in fact, and I say this to audiences all the time, sometimes us not knowing is actually just an amazing opportunity for somebody else who does. Like if I don't know the answer to something, I actually have the opportunity to create a leadership moment for somebody else.
00:31:12
Speaker
That's a beautiful way to invest in others. So I don't know just doesn't have to be a problem. I don't know can actually be an amazing opportunity. So that aha moment when it happens and every single training I do, almost every single training, I get to see it at least a couple of times, um a big breakthrough.
00:31:32
Speaker
That's my favorite. That's like I could get that and thank that selfishly for myself and walk away happy for the day. Now, if you could travel back in time to when you were first starting out, what kind of advice would you give yourself? What's kind of your biggest lesson learned?
00:31:45
Speaker
Oh, first starting out in recovery, leadership work, or both? Both. Oh, God. i think in recovery, it would be kind of something along the lines of what I said earlier. You will survive this. You will come out the other end. It's funny because as much as kind of inactive addiction, just like everybody else, I suffered a lot of pain when there was a lot of Just a lot of unresolved stuff which inevitably led to so much use.
00:32:10
Speaker
ah My days of early recovery were very complicated by this massive legal mess that I had created and reading about it in the papers and lots of unhappy eyes gazing upon me everywhere I went that wasn't a recovery community and knowing that it was deserved, right? Knowing I had done some horrible things. So it's i to this day, I have no judgment over the way people reacted to me or to it.
00:32:32
Speaker
But I would tell myself, you're actually going to be okay. you're going to make it through. You actually have the strength along with the community around you to make it through this.
00:32:42
Speaker
Because i I think I had a lot of moments early on where I wasn't sure that I did. And that just made me even more committed to something unhealthy. I think in the leadership work, I think I would say you have to keep growing.
00:32:54
Speaker
When I've had moments, and not even keep growing, but if you have to um no there isn't a know that there isn't actual mastery, right? Mastery is actually the embracing of not knowing and the recognition of the possibility of fail. That's mastery.
00:33:11
Speaker
But I don't think I quite got that. i can know I can believe what I believe in my heart of hearts, and yet I'm still going to fail. I'm still going to occasionally have a conversation that's ineffective. I'm still going to have one-on-ones with folks where I don't quite land the way I want to land.
00:33:26
Speaker
And that's okay, that I don't have to judge it, that I talk a lot about non-judgment or at least being present to judgment and recognizing that it's a story, but I have to actually practice what I preach.
00:33:36
Speaker
So remember that. I think that's probably what I would tell myself. Great. Well, that actually, we're getting close to the end and that actually leads to my next question. If you're saying it's a constant learning thing that you can always get, be more effective, what kind of, do you have websites or magazines or books that you would recommend for people if they want to become more effective as a leader?
00:33:56
Speaker
Yeah. So there's one book I would recommend. And then I would recommend something a little different. But the one book I would recommend is actually an amazing book called How Minds Change by David McGraney. And i always kid around that maybe I only like this book so much because I read it and I felt like it validated a lot of what I already thought. So might just be my ego is the reason why I like it so much. But essentially, it talks about how can we actually be effective in our efforts to persuade? We all want to persuade. We live in this like such a divisive moment culturally that we just constantly want to shake people and get them to see things our way and believe things our way. And we're so ineffective when we do it. I see social justice movements that in my heart, I agree with them from a policy perspective. And I get so frustrated because I feel like they are so ineffective.
00:34:48
Speaker
And it's because they're not interested in the people who disagree with them. And this book talks about how do we actually shift people's minds. And it starts really at its core by being interested in why other people think the way they do, why and how they arrived at their viewpoints. So it takes time, intentionality, and deep effort.
00:35:13
Speaker
But if you want to be effective at anything in leadership, part of leadership is getting people to say, yes, persuasion's part of it. So you ought to be effective at it. And that sometimes means spending time and talking to people who drive you crazy and you got to do it if you want to be effective or choose not to, but be responsible for the fact that you're going to fail in that interaction.
00:35:36
Speaker
The one other thing I would offer to folks though too is to keep talk to folks, get a coach, get coaching. And you don't always have to pay someone like me to do it. I'm going to cost myself business here. But you also, you can get coaching from friends. There are methods and ways you can learn how to coach one another. Coaching means not offering advice. It means not problem solving. It's not helping. It means shining a light on the fact that most of us can actually solve our own challenges. We actually have those tools already.
00:36:07
Speaker
a proper coach just kind of points you in the right direction, so you go dust them off and use them. so that's If you want to grow in your leadership, just keep talking and be responsible. Be responsible. I would say that about life. Just live your life responsible for what you're creating, and it will set you free. I'm actually working on a book right now that's sort of memoir. and The whole underlining theme is I am free when I'm willing to be responsible for what I'm creating. i am free.
00:36:35
Speaker
imprisoned when I blame people, places, things, the world and circumstances for what's going on. I am free when I'm responsible. That is beautiful. Now, my for kind of before we get to the nitty gritty, my final question is kind of reiteration of the very first question, but in gut feeling, first reaction, why do you do what you do?
00:36:56
Speaker
Well, I am interested in spending time with people who are deeply committed to changing the world around them and are willing to look deep within themselves in order to do that.
00:37:10
Speaker
An old friend in recovery once said to me, this amazing thing happened. I got sober, but the world stayed the same. I did the work. And as a result, my perception of the world shifted. The world didn't have to change for me.
00:37:22
Speaker
I do what I do because I had this life-changing experience, a life-changing experience. And it was so powerful and so impactful for me. This leadership program that I went through that I just wanted to do what I could to try to recreate something similar for others.
00:37:38
Speaker
Awesome. Now, was there anything that you wanted to talk about that we haven't or that you thought I was going to ask, but we didn't? I didn't? No, I would just, i think I would just add shameless plug, of course, but I would just add now's the time to invest in people.
00:37:52
Speaker
Like we have to do it in this moment. It's not frivolous. It's actually a requirement. So figure out how to invest in the people around you and do it at every opportunity that arises. That's what I would just add.
00:38:06
Speaker
Great. Now, if someone wants to get a hold of you or learn more about you, where can they go? Yes, they can go to my website, which is communitiesproject.org. All one word, communitiesproject.org. I also am completely open to just communicating with folks directly via email, so don't ever hesitate to reach out. and My email is pretty simple. It's just michael, M-I-C-H-A-E-L, at communitiesproject.org. And I am always open to having a ah one-on-one check-in and i'm I'm interested. I'm always interested in you and what you're interested in creating and what your organization does. And I'm always just listening for whether or not there's alignment with some of the things I'm hoping to create, which is mostly helping you create what you want to create. That's really what my passion is.
00:38:50
Speaker
Awesome. Well, okay. You've been listening to Destination Change. Our guest today was Michael King. Thanks for you for being here. Our theme song is Sun Nation by Kitsa and used via a Creative Commons license by the Free Music Archive.
00:39:02
Speaker
Please consider rating and reviewing the podcast on Apple Podcasts so we can get more listeners. In the meantime, you can always see more about the podcast, including show notes and where else to listen, on our website, www.nbhap.org.
00:39:15
Speaker
If you have questions for the podcast, please email us at info at nbhap.org. Thanks for listening.