Why Bullying Persists and How Conversation Breaks It | Leslie Robinson Part 2

Welcome to the Legacy All Stars podcast. We feature inspirational stories from people who dedicate themselves to helping others. Here is your host, Alan Pavloski.

Thank you for joining us again on Legacy All Stars. This is part two of a special two part episode featuring Leslie Robinson, the founder of Transformation Games. I hope you enjoy it. Yeah, that's a mouthful. I don't want to leave bullying yet because I think it's such an important crisis to address. Can you give a few more granular examples of how the game addresses that and how it teaches those, both the victim and the perpetrator of bullying, how it helps them heal and get past that. If you could just give an example of how the Call it out game addresses it and how it helps people interact with each other, that would be really helpful.

Yeah, so it's brand new and so we're just starting to roll it out, but there's 10 categories. I wish I had it in front of me. I just created a whole new game for mental health, for athletes and that's what's all in my mind right now. So it's.

Yeah, we'll address that later. I'm excited to talk about that.

It's hard for me to remember exactly all the categories in that game since I just a week ago finished beyond the game for mental health for student and pro athletes. So there's questions like why again, everyone answers the same question around the circle. So there's questions like what do you think might be happening in somebody's life? Do you make them be bullies? That's easier to answer when you're a child. It gets much more complex for adults. Then say you're seeing, is there a time you stood up when you saw someone bullied? What happened? Everybody gets to answer that. Then there's drop the mic quickly. You know, each person in the circle share one way to shut down bullying quickly. You know, so there's a lot of fun things, there's power moves, there's pop up play where you act out different things around bullying. There's, there's a lot of different other self care, you know, surrounding anxiety and how you take care of yourself if you're being bullied that everybody will also be sharing. So people really get to be very, very open about them being bullied, about potentially them having bullied other people, understanding the impact that it's having on each other and practicing standing up. And really I think the most important part is the whole conversation is open. Like it's out there. Like people are talking about this in a really Engaged way. They're not being talked at. They're sharing and playing and role playing and doing this all together in a way that they're all engaging each other. The bullies, the bullied and the upstanders and everybody.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. Thank you for sharing that. You mentioned beyond the Game, and I'm going to get into that now. You know, I have a long history of working in the professional sports space. I want to discuss athletes and mental health. What inspired beyond the Game and what mental health needs are you seeing amongst athletes?

Well, athletes, you know, their performance. Right. Like, people don't really want to hear about any vulnerabilities. So we want our athletes to perform. And there's enormous pressure, as you know, and they're coming from families that are sometimes putting all their money and all their hopes and dreams into their child to, you know, make it pro. So they have fear of letting other people down. Their identity is completely tied to results. There's no space for them to talk about their doubt or their fears or any of these things. And as I said, they're celebrated for their strength. They're not supported to be vulnerable. So right now, about 60% of college athletes, research shows, are regularly using substances or alcohol. And there's a lot of pressure. Right. So there's high levels of anxiety and burnout. And they have an injury that's a whole other thing. A deep fear of being seen as weak because we're all human and we all have fears and they don't aren't really given permission to be human. So the tagline for this game is strengthening the human behind the player. And then on the side, it's play hard, talk real. So it gives them the opportunity to have a lot of conversations that they would not have and to let them know they're more than what they're producing. And in fact, I think it's brand new and I'm excited to roll it out, but I think it'll strengthen performance, not diminish it, for them to be able to be vulnerable.

Wow. I have to think that my favorite TV personality, Ted Lasso, would love implementing that in his locker room.

I don't even know him. I'll have to look into him.

Oh, my goodness.

I play games all the time. I don't get to watch anything.

Yeah. Ted Lasso is a wonderful show. It addresses a lot of these issues in the show. So for anybody who hasn't seen it, dive into Ted Lasso. It's an amazing show.

I will. Where is it?

Apple tv.

That sounds great.

How do sports environments influence how mental health is talked about or avoided? And that's a key issue.

Well, I think, you know, mental toughness is associated with emotional silence. Right. So you gotta be mentally tough. You can't admit to any of these things going on. So you have to push through and you can't complain. You have to handle everything on your own. And it makes mental health feel really, really risky. You know, now is the first time some major athletes are coming out and speaking that mental health problems and Simone Biles and tennis player blanking on her name and this Serena Williams. Yeah, yeah, A lot of people actually. So it's starting to shift. And so actually the sports community, I'm being told, and I'll find out because I'll be at super bowl week. But being told, they're really looking now, they don't really know what to implement at the moment. So I think the game would be a really good first start. But they're looking for tools because they're beginning to understand all the pressures and the need and there's athlete suicides and.

You know, yeah, most definitely. You and I have spoken prior on numerous occasions, but we've spoken about your push to engage through digital platforms. What surprised you most about working with Gen Z participants on the digital platform?

Yeah, I mean, they really are a different culture. It's a different generation especially. I mean, I'm significantly older than them, so for my generation. But, you know, everybody talks about them not responding and everything, which I did find to be true. And I was very frustrated by that until I started to realize they were really doing the work, like much more than I had any idea. They were working really hard and putting other things aside and really like, the platform is play to hub playtohealhub.com it's free right now. Anybody who wants to go there, there's a bunch of free digital games that these 14 Gen Z interns from Hunter College digitized. Plus, they built the platform from scratch. They did this all in one semester. So they did brilliant work. And I got them all together once a month, all in person to bond. And I always ask questions, reflection questions. So I had everyone go around and say, you know, what was one of your biggest challenges and what did you learn from it? And everybody just started talking about how they had to put other things aside and other classes and how much work they did on this and how much they learned and how much they devoted. And I had no idea because I thought if they weren't responding to my emails and my texts they weren't there and they weren't doing the work, but they just do things differently. And they did. They did beautiful work. They also really care about mental health and they're really open to speaking about things and just really wanting that connection and really wanting to be open and be human. So, yeah, I think there's a lot we have to learn from them.

Yeah, for sure. It's good to be the mentor and the mentee. It's. If I can say that.

Yeah, I definitely was.

Yeah. You know, on this show, we don't talk about politics or religion. We want everybody to feel welcome to share their views. One thing that strikes me is that there's a lot of needs in the immigrant communities. What conversations are most needed right now with immigrant communities?

So I just finished. Well, I didn't finish, actually. I came up one of my interns, she's an immigrant. She's been an immigrant in three different countries. She wanted to do a dialogue game for immigrant communities to heal together. So I came up with the title Crossing to Rising. That'll be on there in about three months on the platform and the categories for it. And then she went to her friends who were all immigrants, and in two weeks they had six categories. Fifteen questions in a category. Amazing, amazing content done. So that's going to be up there. I'm very excited. So mostly they want to belong without being erased. They're carrying layered grief. They have loss of homes, language, identity, safety. But they're also carrying a lot of resilience, a lot of pride and a lot of hope. So there's often no space for them at all to talk about the emotional toll without feeling weak, their families or they can't admit to it. And then there's intergenerational misunderstanding, identity conflict between cultures, grief that they don't have any way to talk about. And most importantly, conversations say you don't have to choose between where you come from and what you're becoming. So Crossing to Rising really is positioned to bring forth all those kind of conversations and so to create communities so people don't feel so isolated. I mean, I won't get into the political situation as you said, but obviously there's a lot of fear and there's a lot of fear not only among immigrant communities, among many, many communities. So it's really important that they feel they have some kind of community or not just out there on their own with no way to process anything.

Yeah, for sure. Your work is expanding globally. How do you adapt across cultures while keeping the heart centered approach Intact.

The North Star is always there, always helping people to feel seen and valued and respected and be able to speak their truth. And then there's, you know, cultural context. So I have a game. My prison game was introduced, was translated into Marathi by psychologists, and then now it's in women's prisons in Mumbai. And there's very little for healing. So I'm very honored to have that. So really, they took care of the cultural context and the differences in how things might land, but that's really the most important thing. And how vulnerability is invited in, that can be very different culturally. And then in Jamaica, my game's going to be picked up by Kingston Bookshop. So I worked with people from four different organizations in Jamaica online. We had regular meetings, and there's a lot of cultural differences, especially for the inclusion category, which has questions around race and religion and things like that. And sexuality is very different in different countries. So we went over all the questions one by one and rewrote them according to the culture. Got it.

I'm struck by how thoughtful you are about how you customize games to make sure that it addresses issues that are different for different groups of people. I just really appreciate that about what you're doing.

Thank you. I guess I never felt like I belonged necessarily. So I was always moving in so many different spaces and worked in so many spaces, and a lot of people don't have the opportunity to be supported through anything like that. So they have a lot of fear of moving in different places and things are different, you know, as you move across cultures and.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, after decades of this work, how do you personally define legacy? And this one's really important to me because the show is all about legacy building and helping others. How do you define that?

Yeah, I'm always. You know, part of the reason I create the games for people to speak with one another is that's really what I prefer. I haven't done a lot to promote myself because it's really to offer this for other people. And if I've helped people listen differently, create spaces of trust and hope and love and appreciation and leave this behind for people to pass down, I'm super excited. Also, a new game that's going to be on the Hub in a few months. I have a new group of interns coming in now. So the ones from last semester with the play to heal hub.com Again, they all finish their semester. And I have a whole new group coming on to digitize six more games. And one of them will be Home is The heart for family connection. And then I'm working with the Girl Scouts to take that with a certain group to start for the Girl Scouts to be leaders. That's part of what they're all about, for them to take it to their homes to play with their families. There's a lot of family tension in a lot of communities for them to create more open and respectful and loving relationships with their families. So that's going to be an initiative that'll be launching as well. So that's it. I mean, connection, love, caring, appreciation. Yeah, yeah. A lot of things I didn't have growing up, so. So, you know, I did find it later in life and a lot of people don't who don't grow up with it.

For listeners who are inspired, what is the simplest way to engage your work?

So transformationgames.com is where you can get all the physical games and see information about that. And that's a strange spelling. So it's T R A N C E. Like you're going into a trance. The number four nation, one word, T R A N C E. The number four M A T I O N. Transformation games dot com. So you go to that site, you see a whole bunch of things and then the play to heal Hub is where all the digital games live. And that's free for as long as I can keep it free. I'm hoping to bring on philanthropy, money. There's a lot of people that my games address don't have money even a little bit. So I'm hoping to keep it free. We're going to also build out communities in this next semester with the new interns. So we'll have community rooms. People can get online and invite people on to play with them, have therapists come on, all kind of other features. So playtohealhub.com, transformationgames.com thank you.

Who do you most hope will bring these games into their communities? And why is it just ubiquitous? Do you want it to be used by everyone or do you feel like there's a certain set of people that might need it more than others?

I think everybody. There's always the challenge. I've never heard of this. What is this? You know, so if leaders were to bring it into, you know, teachers and coaches and parents and faith leaders and, you know, bring it into their communities, that would be a really huge help because I think people have a natural fear of, oh my God, I'm going to speak, you know, or people are going to judge me, that they find when they start playing that that drops away, but to get people to engage, especially since I think since the beginning of time, the beginning of the human race, people are scared of vulnerability. So I'm trying to bring a whole new way that we can relate to each other that's really fun and enjoyable and feels good into the world. So really for everybody. But I hope that healing will stop being a rare thing and start being a normal thing and other people will come up with all kind of other ideas based on what they experience as well and make it the world more human rather than the way we're going now.

You know, it strikes me because I feel the same way about Legacy, and I feel like what we do in our time here allows for others to take whatever work we've done and scaffold that into a situation where they can build on what others have already created. It feels a little odd to say I don't care if I get credit for it, but I really don't care if I get credit for anything. I'd really love for people to take concepts that I've created or you have created and build on that and make things better for everyone.

Yeah, I mean, I'm not going to name names, but a few of my games, people have paid me to create for them and then they say they created them. That's okay. That's okay. That's in their area. They're going to get more people using them and. Yeah, right, exactly.

As long as the end result is there, we don't really care. What's next for Transformation Games. Where do you see it making the most impact?

Well, I'm hoping after we refine the hub, that will build tons of communities and millions of people will have access. So in a lot of countries around the world, young people want to talk about. They know that in some countries, young people have a way to talk about things, even though it's very limited and they want to be able to. But there's like one therapist for every 500,000 people in many countries, so it's not a thing at all. So I really, you know, I'm hoping. I want to launch the Play to Heal Academy, where we just bring people on and we have people from different countries, different languages doing quick trainings. It doesn't take much, just really to give people confidence for them to start groups and start communities with the games. And so that's, you know, going to take a lot of work. But that is, after the Hub, I want to start implementing that and bring it out to all these countries that are there's. So many people hurting with no way to address any of that. My grief support game remembrance is in Turkish, translated into Turkish and it's being translated into Arabic by the largest NGO in Turkey for Syrian refugees. And obviously there's a huge need for that. So we all need to heal from so many things as a human race. So my hope is for as many people who want to come on and run groups and join in and do whatever they want to do with them, like you're saying, to come be a part of this so we can accelerate the healing and because the way things systems are right now, it's definitely not working. I created an addictions preventions recovery support game years ago. It's been sitting on my computer. So now we'll digitize that. That'll be done by spring. And you know, everybody talks about rehab and they go to rehab and they do all this work in rehab and they leave and they're alone and they relapse and they lose all the connection to all the people they went through that month or months with. So it would be amazing to have this game and they can get on every few times a week with everybody they're in rehab with and play and keep it going. You know, sometimes just human, simple solutions. It doesn't have to be all this wearable and heavy tech and complex, you know, that everybody's like trying to chase down right now, put all their money into and. Yeah, yeah.

Well, Leslie, we've come to the end of our time together. Thank you for the work you're doing and for the way you continue to create spaces where people feel safe, safe enough to be honest, vulnerable and human with each other. That's crucially important. I'm grateful for that. Your Transformation Games reminds us that real change often begins not with answers, but with the right questions and the courage to listen. For our listeners, we encourage you to explore the Transformation Games digital platform, experience a game for yourself and bring these conversations into your own communities. Once again. Leslie, can you share the website information so that our audience knows where to go find you?

PlayToHealHub.com it's going to keep growing. They'll keep being more and more games put on there and more features to keep going back to the ones the games that aren't there yet. And the website to get physical games and learn more about those is transformation games.com t r a n c e for number four. M a t I o n games.com thank you very much, Ellen. Thank you for your heart and for your.

Yeah appreciate you too, as well. For our audience. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Don't forget to subscribe and be notified of new episodes. I'm Alan Pavloski, signing off for Legacy All Stars.