Sandi L Boucher draws on her marriage, where her husband refused counseling, to argue that relationship improvement requires both people to change. She extends this to Indigenous-non-Indigenous workplace relationships: training only for Indigenous employees won't work without also training non-Indigenous employers on recruitment, retention, and cross-cultural understanding.
Questions this video answers
May 13, 2024
Sandi L Boucher
15 years
20+ years
10 years
Chapters
Hello, you absolutely amazing person, you. It's Sandy Boucher here once again with another week of content, hoping to inspire you, motivate you, educate you, whatever you need so that together, you and I can bring this country together. Nothing would make me happier than having everyone that lives within Canadian borders believing that this is a great country to live in. And the reality is, if you do believe that already, then you need to realize there's a whole bunch of people that don't, and they're not just being negative Nellies. There's. I was one of those people. I still might be. I believe in the future of Canada. I believe in the potential that Canada. I just don't think we're there yet. So we're going to work on that this week. And together we can do this. I know we can. So I have a question for you. As I so often do. I want you to imagine a married couple, and maybe they've been married two, three, four, five years. Anyone who's ever been married knows that's a journey not always easy. You got to learn to compromise. You got to learn to share. There's a lot going on. And I just want you to imagine that this couple finds themselves in a rough spot. Things don't seem to be improving. They've tried, and it's just not getting there. So they decide to look into marriage counseling. But when it comes down to the time to go, only one person, only one member of the couple is. Is willing to do counseling. Marriage counseling. So the question is, with that scenario in mind, is it going to work if only one partner goes to counseling? Is it going to help? What do you think today? Let's talk about it. Hi, everybody, it's Sandy Boucher here once again. Welcome. Recording this video on my brand new Mac with my brand new microphone. And hopefully all of this is working awesome for you. And thank you for sticking out the journey with me last week when I definitely had the settings wrong on my microphone. So in the opening, I gave you the scenario of the married couple and I asked you, do you think it would work? Do you think it would help? Can we save this couple's marriage if only one partner is willing to go to counseling? Now, you may think that's a ludicrous situation. It was actually mine. You see, when I was married to a certain individual, our relationship definitely got rocky. And I know, I have no idea how much he was trying. How would I know? But I know how hard I was trying, and anything I tried was definitely not working. So I suggested marriage counseling and he agreed. But when it came time to go, he refused. He believed we didn't need it. It was a waste of time. And, and more importantly, he wasn't, quote, unquote, the problem. So I don't know. I had never been married before. Maybe I was the problem. So I decided to go. Even if he wasn't going to. I was going to go to counseling. So I met the counselor and we sat down and I'm certain we talked about many things, but there's only one part of the appointment that really stuck with with me. Keeping in mind I'm a 10 year domestic abuse survivor. This was not a healthy relationship. It hadn't reached the obviously problematic state yet, but there were signs. So I remember at one point in this, this meeting, this conversation that I shared with the therapist, he asked me, you know, what he could help me with because my partner wasn't there. And I said, you know what? I really wanted some help because it was a real challenge on our relationship, this fact that I didn't have a sense of humor. And he kind of made a face, he thought that was interesting. And he said, okay, what makes you say that? And I explained to him how I always thought I had a sense of humor. I thought I had a really good sense of humor. But since being with my husband, I realized I didn't because he says things that hurt my feelings or upset me. And when I bring it to his attention, he always tells me that he was just joking and that I have such a lousy sense of humor that I overreact and didn't even realize he was joking. Rest assured that I left that appointment reassured that there was nothing wrong with my sense of humor. Disguising an insult as a joke and then gaslighting someone by telling them it's their problem if they don't think it's funny is problematic at its core. But let's look at this scenario of only one partner receiving training. Is that going to help the relationship? If you've watched my videos for any length of time, you've heard me talk about balancing the feather. How if you think of a sacred eagle feather, half of the rep half of the feather represents you and the other half of the feather represents whoever you're in relationship with. Whether that's a parent, child relationship, an intimate partner relationship, or even a work relationship relationship, even a boss and staff member relationship. If only half of the feather is receiving training and working on becoming better at this relationship, it will either take so much longer to achieve healthy relationship. If that happens or it won't happen because only one partner is approving their skills. Now I'm a reconciliation consultant. I'm a hundred percent focused on Indigenous Canadian reconciliation. So why in the world am I using the example of a marriage counselor? Well, in case you haven't figured it out yet, it is one of the reasons for my career. Before I started this business, and I've been in business for 15 years now, before I started this, I worked in Indigenous employment and training. The agency I worked for, along with many, many other amazing agencies, helped Indigenous individuals find a new job, go back to school or even start their own business. We were offering supportive intensive training and that had been going on for years. I worked in that industry for 20 plus years, but nowhere was there a corresponding relationship or corresponding training. I should say for the non Indigenous employers that these people were going to then go work for. An Indigenous Canadian relationship is a cross cultural relationship. And any cross cultural relationship has its challenges. The employer should know what challenges they should expect and how to navigate them. And the employee should be trained on what they can expect from this work environment, the expectations that will be on them. It just makes sense. So to end off today, all I want to say is Canada, quit skipping your appointments. You need to sign up. Do not complain about how low your Indigenous retention numbers are. Do not complain about how hard it is to recruit and keep those people on staff if you haven't taken training. Because anyone in business knows if a process isn't working, you don't just keep repeating it. You change your skill set. You get better at what you do. And what you don't do is blame Indigenous people expecting assimilation and just total integration into your system with no understanding of the challenges they may face because they're from another culture is sending you both up to fail. Now that's what I do for a living. So if you need help, reach out. At bare minimum, subscribe to my channel because I definitely have some information for you. I hope that helped. We have a great week ahead of us. I'll talk to you soon. I love you. Take care. Bye bye.
