A Horse of a Different Color: Positive Framing

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Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for joining us today at JLC Media. This is one of our brief podcasts related to resiliency. And we're so grateful that you took some time to be here with us. And all of our podcasts that you can listen to are on Apple or Spotify, and you can get us on our YouTube channel. And if all that fails, you can go to gojlc.com and then here we are. So I have two wonderful colleagues with me today to do a little piece on resiliency, which is something that can be taught. One of the biggest things we've learned in the practice. You can teach resiliency just like we can teach gratitude. So we're going to take a moment here and first introduce ourselves to you. And after we do that, I'll set the stage for a brief little story that I think you'll enjoy. So, Colleen, tell us who you are.

Sure. Absolutely. Colleen Sullivan, I've worked with Ray, I've worked with you and the other associates for almost 12 years now. And in the work that I've done across the country in supporting leaders and enhancing their communication capabilities, I have the absolute honor of running into one of our other people who are joining us here, Bob Frey. And so I'm going to go ahead and hand it over to him to have him introduce himself briefly.

Great. Hey, good morning. Good afternoon, everyone. Bob Fry, retired Navy guy. After nearly 40 years in the service. Three main areas of service was education, training, health policy for the military health system, and then healthcare operations, working at nine different facilities. And I've had the privilege of commanding two of them, one in the trauma hospital at Kandahar, Afghanistan, and then the Fort Belvoir Community Hospital down the street. And I'm really honored that you've asked me to join you here today. Both Ray and Colleen, I've been working with you guys for over 12 years now from old Bureau of Medicine surgery days or Navy Medicine headquarters. And I've used your skills. And for me, what says it works is the people that come back over the years and say, hey, I've learned and I've used what you tried to teach us. And so I'm a big fan. You guys make it look simple. So I'm honored to be here and glad to participate.

You're very kind to us and thank you. And we are honored and humbled by the fact that people like you, Bob, have enjoyed the work and practiced the work. And thank you for your service, my friend. Thank you so much for your service. And as we continue forward, I think you'll get a real dramatic sense of who this wonderful man is. I know you've already heard Colleen and I before, but this one's going to be really special for you, I think. Okay, so why are we talking about this? Today we are doing a whole series of podcasts on resiliency. And the definition of resilience means to leap back. So when you get knocked down, leap back. When something happens, get back into it. And we have spent two of our early podcasts on resiliency talking about positive and negative events that even a positive event, sometimes we ignore it. We say, oh, good, that went well, and we just move on. And what we have ended up doing was demonstrating how to do an after action review on something that went well. And of course, we followed that up with something that didn't go so well. The process is the same. The after action review is the same. What I invite everyone to do is if something really good happens, take the time. Take the time to do an after action review on that so that you can really get some bang for the buck. Because it's all about building that resiliency muscle. By the time this has ended, I think that each of you will have kind of a unique way to look at a story, an event, something that occurred. And this is your chance to. To kind of get into the work with us as we go forward. Colleen, what are you hearing me say we're going to work on today?

What I'm hearing you say is we're going to be talking about resilience, and really, how can we look at an event? Perhaps it's negative or it's positive, but how can we frame it in a way that we can really bounce back? I heard resilience is kind of a muscle that we can develop, very much like gratitude.

That's excellent. Thank you, Colleen. Bob, did you anything more or different?

I didn't. It's really the experiences in life. You know, John Maxwell has a book, Sometimes we win, sometimes we learn. Right. So it's a matter of what?

Love it.

And I love how you say, take the time to learn from the positive as well, to accentuate the positive and grow from there.

Well, you know, Bob, and you and I have actually talked about this. We're our own worst critics. And when something goes well, we're like, well, I guess we were lucky rather than maybe we did something pretty good, you know, So I love Maxwell and I love that quote. It's just phenomenal learning. Our company is the J Learning Center. We are A learning area. It's what we do. We work on it. So here's a learning opportunity. So I'm going to do my best to combine two kind of themes from philosophical literature. One comes out of the Confucian Taoist period, and the other one is just a little story that could be any day and age. So I'm going to put you both into one of those settings and I'll tell you the story. I want to know how the story lands on you. I want to know how you react to the story. So once upon a time, there was a farmer in a community, not a big community, small community, kind of isolated, a bit from the rest of the working world. But they were there, and there were a number of little farms around their farm. And as it so happens, he had a number of kids, and his eldest son was about 18 years of age. He was out working on the farm one day, and as he was out there and he was actually, you know, using a horse to help plow some of the fields, he misstepped in some way and the horse took off and the horse was gone. The entire group of farmers, their friends and other people that they know well kept saying, oh, my God, this is terrible. This is awful. You lost the only thing that enables you to farm effectively. And the farmer whose son lost the horse said, well, he may be right, but we'll see. We'll see what happens. Well, three days later, the horse comes back and brings three horses with it. It was like he went out on a scavenger hunt and found more horses and brought them back. Now they go from being really sad to everybody's excited and saying to this farmer, isn't this great? Now you have four horses. Everything is so much better. And the farmer, in his own contemplative way, said, nah, maybe we'll see. Well, he's out trying to break one of the new horses. So the son is very happy. He's out there working the farm. He's trying to break one of the new horses. He falls off the horse and breaks his leg pretty significantly. So he had to be taken to the local doctor. And the doctor fixed him up, and the same thing starts to unfold. All the neighbors and friends and community members said, oh, my God, this is so bad. Now he can't work the farm anymore. What are you guys going to do? And the farmer, I don't know. You may be right. We'll see. About a week later, just a week, the local militia came to conscript all of the 17 to 21 year old, young men to bring him to a war that was unfolding among the nearby villages and towns. They couldn't take him because he was limping. And they said, we can't take anybody that is hurt. And right away, everybody started going, oh, my God. Oh, my God, isn't this wonderful? And the farmer said, we'll see. So, Colleen, how does that one land on? You got any stories like that one that are out there?

I think what landed on me most is, I guess I kept thinking about we'll see, and perhaps, you know, kind of how each time the farmer made a choice not to react in the moment and to come to a conclusion, he kind of paused and he made a choice to respond differently. And I think many times, especially when something happens and it's so easy to go, oh, my gosh, and to look at that as a negative thing, right? Instantly go to, oh, my gosh, well, you broke your leg. That's just horrific. And how horrible for you. And to think of all the things now you can't do, you can't work your land. It's going to be difficult for you to move around. I think many times we have that tendency to. And we've talked about this in several of our other podcasts, right? To react and versus to really take a pause, to breathe and to think about, hmm, okay, well, this did happen. And yet maybe what are some unintended consequences of this particular event as well.

That's just superior. Very well stated. And what Colleen's referring to is we actually did a little webinar on this, that it is normal for us to react when something happens that we perceive as good or bad. We react. And we coach people all the time in our executive coaching world to breathe, take a breath, do some reflection before you automatically react. I see you smiling, Bob. What are you thinking?

No, I think the patriarch. I think it comes with time and experience, the wisdom to not to do that. Sometimes we learn faster than others, and different experiences prepare us for those moments. And I think that's where it's. It's very challenging sometimes when you're in the midst of it, not to react. And then especially where you talk about leadership is how do you train your team to think differently and to take that pause and make them feel good in the moment, that, hey, everything's going to be okay.

One of the greatest things you ever said to me when you were in Kandahar, you told me a little story that people shot at you every day, and if you took it personally, that was bad, right? So how do I continue to be the leader and not take that kind of aggressive action at me and go, oh, my God, this is so bad that they're shooting at us all the time. They must really not like us. Well, what you said to me, they didn't even know who you were. You were just Americans, and they were doing something they thought was good for them and their community. That was incredible, Bob, that ability for you to not react, but to reflect and help your whole command respond. Do you recall that conversation? That was magnificent.

I do. I think the bombings or the missile, they have the siren and a very calm British voice, female voice comes over the base and incoming. And incoming. And you're trained to react, and you just wonder how it's going to affect the team that you're responsible for. I remember one day early on that it was. I get a call on my line and they say, we have wounded folks coming in. And I'm like, okay, this is different. Call me. And then all of a sudden, the siren comes on and incoming, incoming. And the first thing I thought about was the team, because we had to get people from the base to the hospital to respond. And that stuck with me for a long time. I mean, you talk about resilience, and thank God that everybody from my team that I brought with me came back. The, you know, the deployment before us, they had shooting right outside because you're right by the airport, the local airport, and it's just a different world over there. And God bless those people, what they're dealing with and trying to make a difference. But it's that sense of resiliency and what people go through in defense of their countries is amazing to me, and it comes from within, but I think it comes with the ability. For me, the resilience piece is being able to talk about it. When I was down the road as the commander at Fort Belvoir, they asked me to give a Veterans Day speech. And I said, what do you want an old sailor to talk about service and sacrifice to a bunch of soldiers? And I thought about it, and I really. As we try to destigmatize mental health and PTSD and all the things that people dealing with, I think we're getting there, especially as we're living through this pandemic. But I went off script. I had a beautifully written speech, and I went on. I took the microphone and I went off script and talked about my experience at Kandahar and how it comes out in what I'll call emotional incontinence that you just start Crying uncontrollably sometimes. And so I actually talk about the resilient piece. I acknowledge that this wasn't right for me. So I actually went to Behavioral health and talked to someone and said, hey, something's not right with me. First time in 37 years I started crying at a staff meeting, talking about a patient and I'm like, something's not right. But it all attributed back to that deployment and the experience there. And, and so I, I did therapy for five months. And you know, because it's. We see things in service of our country that most people don't deal with. Yeah. And so it's. But I do it all again. You know, I tried to go back before I retired and the animal says, no, Bob. That's when something will happen to you if you, if you go back. But it's, but it's amazing. The, and I love that you're part of this, is that you got to tell people it's okay to talk about it. Right. The good, the good and the bad. And not everybody comfortable that the, the 25, 30 year old version of Bob Fry wouldn't have been comfortable than the 50, 55 year old version to talk about it.

Now there's that wisdom again. It comes with experience, time. But the other thing, you identified beautifully. I need to be able to reflect and be authentic. And that's what you are. You are authentic in front of the group. That's fantastic. And notice the narrative as he was telling us about the Kenahart story. Colleen, did you notice he talked about, I need to figure out how to respond to take care of my team and make sure my team is ready to respond. Did you notice that, Colleen? Yeah, that was probably powerful. What are you thinking?

Yeah, I think it's interesting because when you talk about resilience, many times we think about ourselves. What about my personal resilience and how I'm going to respond? And what I heard you reference, Bob, is not only were you thinking, you were perhaps thinking about yourself, but you're thinking about your team. Where are they? How am I going to get them? How are we going to ensure that they're getting to the hospital safely from the base? Because that's really important as well. And I think there's many different aspects to resilience and that sense of, especially when you're leading. Right. You need to think about personal and individual resilience, but also thinking about your team resilience and enhancing their capabilities as well. And I think that's a great story of leading and modeling Resiliency and then that other piece of talking about it, you know, I mean, many times we talk about resiliency and that whole sense of bouncing back, well, geez, to bounce back from something. Many times you get knocked down. And how many people talk about how they truly feel when they're. When they're, you know, not at their best?

Well, folks, this is supposed to be a little short one. I think the three of us could go on for some time. But I would like to hold us here and recognize all I did was tell a little story about somebody who could have chosen to get all in with sadness, anger, whatever, and instead just stayed fairly neutral to positive, which is what Bob modeled. But I will say to all of you listening, as you develop your resiliency muscles, you have to learn how to take care of yourself first before you can take care of others. And that's what happens. We suppress the things that we need to do to take care of ourselves in order to support the team. So in closing, thank you so much, everyone for listening. I'm going to ask each of my buddies here to say, what is one thing that stood out most for you in this conversation? Because one of the great things that Colleen and Bob do is they're constantly reflecting on what they're saying and what they're hearing. And these conversations are so critical. So what is the one thing that stood out most for you in this conversation? Colleen, you start. What stood out the most?

I think the one thing that stood out the most for me was from Bob's story. And I think we talked about. It's really important to talk about when you're down to talk about those things that are still bothering you, that are still keeping you in a space where you can't bounce back. They're limiting your ability to move forward. And I think that happens to a lot of us. So how can we be true to ourself to recognize them and to seek some sort of resource person to have those conversations with so we can surface those things and get past them.

I love it. I love it, Colleen. In this sense that we do, ladies and gentlemen, and executive coaching, the folks we coach, they say, thank you. I had no one to talk to about this. I am working with a person now who is one of the highest level leaders you've ever had in the military. And his comment to me yesterday, what was the best thing about this meeting for you today? Right? He said, I got to talk with you and tell you what I was thinking and feeling. It is so challenging to find somebody who will just listen and just acknowledge as I have done for each of you, if you've spoken today. Best thing about this one for you was what?

Bob I think the reminder about the dad staying calm and that when you think something negative happens to you and your world's falling apart and it actually flips it and turns it into a positive so he couldn't be conscripted and go off to war. And it's and it happens a lot. I mean, it happens more than people. If you take time to reflect on.

It, you just nailed it, brother. Reflection is our is almost like one of our client. One of our executive coaches is Joe Marshall and he always takes our practices and turns them into his own language and he talks about reflection as the engine of change. I love the way he says that if I don't spend time doing that, then I end up separating on all the crap that happens to me and all the bad stuff that's going to unfold moving forward. So you both were magnificent today. I'm so grateful for the opportunity to be here with you again. Ladies and gentlemen, this was JLC Media and you can find us on Apple or Spotify. You can go to our channel, which is a YouTube channel at Jorgensen Learning Center YouTube channel and see this. Most people don't. They have a tendency to listen to it on podcasts. We are happy either way and please think about us next time you have a need for your team. Personally have a need or someone that needs some executive coaching in your mind or if your organization is trying to develop strategically, think about us. We are Jorgensen learning center@gojlc.com thank you so much for spending time with us. Have a good day. Sincerest thanks for listening to this episode.

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