74. Growing Forward Podcast featuring Elizabeth Barnes

Tri-Cities Influencer Podcast with Paul Casey

Speaker 1: Everyone's favorite radio station is W I, I F M stands for what's in it for me. And so you're only going to pursue a goal probably that you really want Speaker 2: Raising the water levels of leadership in the Tri-Cities of Eastern Washington, the Tri-Cities influencer podcast. Welcome to the TC podcast. We're local leadership and self-leadership expert Paul Casey interviews, local CEOs, entrepreneurs, and nonprofit executives to hear how they lean themselves and their teams. So we can all benefit from your wisdom. Here's your host, Paul Casey growing forward services, individuals and teams, breakthrough success. Speaker 3: It's a great day to grow forward. Thanks for joining me for today's episode with Elizabeth Barnes. She is the executive director of the children's reading foundation of the mid-Columbia. And I asked her for something funny about herself, and she said the word avocado, tell us more about that, Elizabeth. Speaker 4: So I'm kind of embarrassed about this when my husband and I were actually like brainstorming about, what's a quirky thing about you that people can relate about. And I was like, you know what? You are, I am kind of obsessed with avocados. And I know it's such a millennial thing, but you know, like avocados, I eat one or two a day and I have to tell you, Costco has the best office. I like to create like small little paintings. My mom got me off a couple of socks for Christmas, and I might currently searching on Etsy for a giant avocado painting to hang over my dining room table, Speaker 3: A little bit of an obsession, a little bit. Speaker 4: My husband told me that people were going to probably start buying me all the condo, like figurines and stuff after this. And I'm just, oh gosh, Speaker 3: Probably. Yeah. I had, you know, bald Eagles when I used to be a school principal years ago, it was bald Eagles, and I got all those gifts. So that's, what's coming your way. It's coming. I can't wait, but we'll dive in. After checking in with our Tri-City influencer sponsor, it's easy to delay answering uncomfortable questions. Like what happens to my assets and my loved ones when I die. So it's no surprise that nearly 50% of Americans don't have a will and even fewer have an estate plan, many disabled clients worry that they don't have enough assets to set up an estate plan, but there are important options available to ensure that you have a voice in your medical and financial decision-making. Even if your health takes a turn for the worst estate planning gives you a voice when your health deteriorates or after you're gone. Marin Miller bam attorney at law is currently providing free consultations to find out more about estate planning or to book an appointment. Call Marin at [phone] or visit Salem that's S a L U s-law.com today. Thank you for your support of leadership development in the Tri-Cities welcome Elizabeth. I was privileged to meet you. You reminded me early 2020. I was speaking for the Columbia basin Sherm, the HR organization here locally, and you were there. So Speaker 4: That was, yeah. And you and I ended up connecting because you were speaking about your international experience. And I just moved back to the trace of his, after being gone for 13 or 14 years, doing all international work. And so I came up and introduced myself, wanting to find out what happening internationally. And so, yeah, Speaker 3: It was good stuff. Very good. Okay. Good stuff. And then you've got like young professional of the year or something, right? Well, you got one of those tough things in the journal business. Yeah. And the connect magazine recently got Speaker 4: Like the young, well, it was executive spotlight. It was of, it was pretty exciting to get, they actually came in and did photographs at my house with me and my son doing, you know, school. Yeah. It was very Speaker 3: Cool. It was really cool. Thank you. Well, so that our tries to the influencers can get to know you tell us about what your organization does and what you spend 80% of your day doing. Speaker 4: Yeah. So the children's reading foundation of the mid-Columbia was actually founded right here in the Tri-Cities about 25 years ago. It was collection of teachers and principals and parents all got together and they really identified that education literacy education was the key to future success of our community. And so they started the children's reading foundation, which is now a national organization. The mid-Columbia is our local chapter right here in the Tri-City. So we serve Benton and Franklin county. Our mission is to encourage and educate families about their important role in raising a reader and preparing their child for kindergarten w also to support schools and ensuring the students read on grade level by the end of third grade, and to facilitate community involvement in helping young readers be successful. So this past year during COVID, we have really been working in the community and showing that we're getting as many educational resources and tools as we can. We I'm so proud of my team. We have actually distributed over 40,000 books to Ben or Franklin county to students, to children and families had been Franklin county. And yeah, I mean, if you've heard the saying read 20 minutes a day with a child, that's us, that's the children's reading foundation. So if you've heard that slogan, then you know who we are. And so, yeah, it's a, it's an incredible organization. I'm so proud to be the, you know, the head of this organization. It's, it's just wonderful, Speaker 3: Like literally in your email address, right? Yeah. 20 [e-mail]. Yeah. It's just so Speaker 4: Important. How do I spend 80% of my day? So I spend 80% of my day making connections with the community to really spread our mission and raising funds for our programming. It's that's really, that is my job. So it's like, how can we, how can we grow? How can we develop? How can we ensure that we are meeting the community's needs? And how can we make sure that we have funding to support that support our mission. And then the other 20% is just managed my incredible team. We're a small little team, but they're awesome. I just, they're just so wonderful. Speaker 3: And why do you love to do what you do besides my incredible team, but I've just been ranked. Speaker 4: I really love what I do because I'm really friendly, do believe in our mission. Our non-profit is one of the few that actually provides preventative instead of reactionary measures to help ensure our community grows and thrives. Most nonprofits in our community are reactionary. Okay. We have students that are dropping out of high school. What do we do? And instead of that, we say early childhood education, access to books for children at birth through third grade, that's preventative. That actually changes an entire community. So that's why I'm so passionate about what we do is because we are so preventative, we are ensuring that we are saving our community before anything ever happens. It's just, that Speaker 3: Is so true. And it's good. You pointed that out. I was in leadership Tri-Cities and I remember the day, well, there's a couple of days where it talked about the community and most of the services and the Tri-Cities were reactionary. It's like, okay, so now that there's a problem, we're going to get funding to this. And you are one of the few organizations that's on the front end. Yeah. Speaker 4: You know, literacy really is the key to success. Children who are able to read on grade level by the end of third grade are more likely to graduate from high school, go on to college, be more financially stable and be healthy members of rewire of our community, you know? And so why not, you know, why not support that kind of organization Speaker 3: Prevention? Yeah. So Elizabeth, outside your organization who helps you be successful, do you have any mentors, other people in your network? Speaker 4: Yeah, so that's really, that's really tricky. So we moved here like six or eight months before COVID hit. And so it was such a tough time. Right. I had big plans. I attended a lot of networking events before COVID, but you know, it's, it's difficult to make those connections and those relationships. And so I don't, I don't really have outside of my board. I don't really have a lot of mentors or like a lot of connections here in the Tri-Cities yet outside of, you know, LinkedIn and maybe it's so hard, but yeah, it's yeah. So, but I have a lot of, I have some really incredible women who have guided and led me in the past. I've been in leadership for 15 years now and I have some incredible, really powerful women who have taken me under their wing and guided me and supported me. And so I've reached out to them or bills last year and just asked for guidance and support. And we're in different fields. Now I was in education in the past. So they're still, you know, they're still leading their schools and, and there, you know, they're gigantic, huge schools and I'm running the small little non-profit, so we're kind of indifferent different fields, but you know, they've still been very, very happy to support me. And it's been, it's been nice. Speaker 3: Yeah. You're an educator at me too. So leaders have growth mindsets. How are you constantly evolving as a leader what's in your own professional development plan? Speaker 4: So I had big plans for this last, for this year. Right. And of course, like everything had changed, but so my professional developed plan for this year for the 20, 20, 20, 21 has really been ensuring that our brand name gets out there when people hear read 20 minutes, or when they hear the children who need foundation of Maine Columbia, they understand like, oh, I know what that is like, oh, that started here. Oh, okay. They give us books; they provide educational resources. You know, they're here to support families and really ensure that that brand name is connected. We've been here for 25 years. And when I say the children, we need foundation of the children's Winnie foundation. I didn't have to say make Columbia. They're like, what's, that is that the child development center is that, that place over there off the highway. I literally had that last week. Speaker 4: And I was like, no, no, we support them. We provide ready for kindergarten with that. But now that that's not us. And so really trying to really trying to get our name out there. And the other thing is really to expand my grant writing because we don't have a lot of opportunities to be on the community to make those connections and to, you know, look for sponsors. I've really turned to grant writing this past year. I, I found that grant writing one is very cathartic, right? Like you sit behind a computer, you talk about your incredible organization and you ask people with lots of money Coca-Cola please give me $40,000 to be able to do ready for kindergarten for, you know, communities and Prosser and it's, you know, like that kind of thing. And so you're like, okay, so they have the money, it's an incredible program. Speaker 4: And I get to share about this incredible program. And so to be able to, to do that, it feels very achievable, right? Like it's something that can be like, and I did this, this, and I did this. And at this moment in time where like, everything is so like, can I even leave my house today? Like as a grocery store, I'm going to be open, you know, still a year later, it's something that's actually very achievable that I can check off my to-do list. I've written 45 breaths this year. He's like, you know, that kind of thing. I'm like, yes, it has been a successful gear and, and it has been successful. You know, the people are very generous. Grant makers are very generous. And I think COVID, you know, has really highlighted the importance of our mission. You know, literacy is when schools closed and libraries closed and you know, so many, so many children and families stuck at home that our mission has become more important than ever. And so grant makers have seen that and it hadn't have given us a lot of money. It's been a very successful year for us. That's great. A lot of wins to celebrate. Speaker 3: So how do you avoid burnout and negativity? How do you feed your mental, emotional health and wellness on a regular basis? Being an executive director. Speaker 4: All right. So there's a couple of things. So I have my little COVID pod. Everybody has them, but I have my little, my little COVID pod. It's my family and my parents who live here and, and then like another little family and we all follow hand COVID guidelines, which we've been doing for like a year now. And surprisingly, we haven't killed each other. It's like, you know, it's just like, how are we still friends? But, you know, so we, we do, we do like large family dinners every week where we all get together every Friday evening and we just hang out and have fun. You know, I just, I really make sure that they're, that we have quality time, and we don't talk about work. And you know, like I don't, I, I choose in the past as an educator, you hang out with other teachers, you hang out with other educators and you spend most of least in my experience, you spend most of your time talking about work. Yeah. And so, which is so annoying, I'm like, come on, we're, we're intelligent, smart. Speaker 3: We're holistic. We have more people. We have more of a life. Yeah. Well, let's, let's Speaker 4: Just talk about other things. And so I really worked at not talking about work. And so, yeah. So there's that. And then I go on a lot of walks. I'm all about like, I just, I'm not a runner. I've never been a runner, but I really enjoy walking. And so I generally find like a loop that works. I'm like, okay, so this loop is like a mile long. Okay. So I'm going to go on three of these loops today and I've gotten in my steps and I feel good. And it really does help, like bring down the stress. And then I listened to a lot of audio books. Like I am a, I'm a poor sleeper. And so helps me, like, de-stress at night I can put an audio book and listen to a book and it just helps me like shut off the cool work brain and then last but not least a good top cocktail and how stance party helps ease the stress. That's you know, my husband and I are we really miss going out dancing. And so we have quite a few dance parties Speaker 3: In our house. A little tick talk for you. All right. No, no, no, no, no, no. It's not that we're not, we're not fancy dancers. No, none of it was choreographed. Yeah. How do you go about getting things done? My, my guess is you're an achiever because you were an educator. That's what I picked up on. Cause there's endorphins that, you know, go through you when you cross something off a list. So how do you organize yourself? Get a little granular with them. All right. Speaker 4: So I'm all about my to-do lists, but specifically Google calendar and task list. So I love the Google suite because everything is interconnected. So I have my email. So when you emailed me asking, if I could be on your show, I will add that to my task list. And then when I have time, I will get to it. I have I, and then I add a little due date onto my calendar by when I have to have it done. And then, you know, and then I, I have this, I have some of the questions that you sent me. I have an, an, a document, which I attached to my to-do list, which is also connected to my calendar. So I don't lose it and it's all there. And then when I'm done, when we're done here, I'm gonna check it off my list. And I'm going to feel great about myself today. I have achieved something, you know, and in, in, in an organization like this, where achievement is, it's not an everyday thing. You know, if you get a grant, like if you get an email about a grant and I got $5,000, right? Yes. That's an achievement for the day, but you don't get a lot of you don't get a lot of daily wins. And so having that task list of likes, yes, I accomplished that. I call it keeps you motivated. It keeps you going. Speaker 3: It does. Yeah. Does well before we head to our next question on looking at the bigger picture, a shout out to our sponsor, located in the Parkway, you'll find motivation, new friends and your new coworking space at fuse. Whether you're a student just starting out or a seasoned professional, come discover all the reasons to love co-working at fuse come co-work at fuse for free on Fridays in February, enjoy free coffee or tea, WIFI printing conference rooms, and more, and bring a friend. If you use this, where individuals and small teams come together in a thoughtfully designed resource, rich environment to get work done and grow their ideas. Comprised of professionals from varying disciplines and backgrounds. Fuse is built for hardworking, fun, loving humans. Learn more about [e-mail] or stop by seven to three, the Parkway in Richland, Washington. So Elizabeth, easy to get trapped into simply reacting to crises and leadership. How do you specifically step back, take a look at the bigger picture of what the organization is doing and maybe even in your own life? Yeah. You Speaker 4: Know, it's a little hard, it's hard to, especially this past year where so much has had to be reactionary, as things are constantly changing day to day, right. It's, it's been really hard not to just be reactionary, reactionary, reactionary. And do you actually take that step back and say, okay, what are we actually trying to accomplish this year? And so for me, when COVID hit and we were like, okay, what are we doing? I took a, like a, I think it was even, it wasn't even a full day. I think it was just like, you know, a good six hours of freaked out and just like, no, I was like, okay, now let's get together as a team virtually because our office is at an elementary school in Kennewick. And so we had to shut down, like everything we should have. Like, I literally hauled by printer out under my arms and like, you know, Speaker 3: A little small desk at a home base. Cause I'd never seen it. So Speaker 4: Homebase has been my house for the last year, but we do, we have a, we have a couple of portables over at canyon elementary school in clinic. Yeah. So, which we've been solely caught getting back into, which has been nice, but yeah. So had a freak out and then said, okay, what can we, what can we still do? All right. We can, we can pit it, our programs that we have, there's the word of the year, by the way. Sorry. I used, I'm really not going to say, you know, like it's the, it's the, I know. So how can we transition from being in-person? So we ha we had in-person tutoring in elementary schools, and then we also have our early childhood education program ready for kindergarten, which was also in person. So I got with my program directors was about community outreach operations manager and said, okay, what can we actually do? Speaker 4: And so we, in my incredible team, again, we're able to take what we were doing, which everything was in person and say, we're going to do it virtually. And we did, like, it was, we closed down on Tuesday and we were doing the virtual program on Monday. I mean, it was like that. And so, yeah, actually phenomenal. And my operation like operations and community programs, cause it's the same position because we're small. What, how can we ensure that we're still getting books in the hands of families? If we can't be on the community, if our volunteers, a lot of our volunteers are seniors and it's like, they couldn't be on the community. How could we still get books out into the community? And so we said, okay, let's partner with organizations that are handing out food and clothing, like second harvest, for example, or communities in schools and other organizations like that. The boys, girls club, who were saying, you know what, we're still gonna, we can provide food and clothing to these families. So we said, books, literacy is just as important second to food. [inaudible] Thank you might as well. And so how can we, how can we ensure that, you know, we're saying that literacy is also an essential need and so partnering with them and saying, okay, you're already out there. Can we give you the books? Can you distribute them for us? Our, can we come up instead of a table and be behind you in passing, you know, books through windows and things like that. And so doing a lot of drive-through events, but really partnering with those community organizations that are already out there. And so that's, we really, Speaker 3: Did you have those partnerships prior? Or did you go after them? Once COVID hit? Speaker 4: It sounded like the boys and girls club and the way we've always provided books to them for like their afterschool program and Karen like that, but communities and schools and not really, and that's become a really big partner for us. We've also partnered with Cooper cupboard out of WSU. Who's providing like, they have a whole like food and food and clothing closet out there. And we said, okay, can we also get books out to your families? And so they partnered with us and second harvest as also like one of our big ones that were out there probably once a month or so partnering with them. And a lot of partnerships, it's a lot, it's a lot. I think we, we ended up having something like 23 different community partnerships this past year with new ones that we hadn't had in the past, but which was new for us, you know, which was, yeah. But our organization is so old. It's hard to tell like maybe in the past we had had those, those partnerships, but you know, transition happens a new leader come and go. And so, you know, it's good to, it's good to breathe new life. Speaker 3: Necessity's the mother of invention or, or connection, I guess. So it has a board that you have to change your strategic plan. Cause you probably have a strategic plan every one or two years. Did you have to go, all right, this is back burner. This is back burner. Here's some new stuff. Speaker 4: Oh, so interestingly enough, the board and I were crafting the strategic plan at the time, of course, because they had just ended their strategic plan. The executive, the previous executive director had just exited. And so they're like, okay, we'll wait to craft the new strategic plan with the new executive director. So I come on board, we had been working on it for a couple months and then COVID hit and everybody kind of for about three or four months, just kind of like disappeared into their own little bubble of panic. And so every, and so right. And so a Speaker 3: Little bubble of panic and I quit quickly on that one hashtag Speaker 4: That's what it felt like everybody including myself, right? Like if I'm not serving my, if I'm not doing exactly, if I'm not being reactionary exactly to what I need to do right now, I'm just like focusing on my family and trying not to look at the numbers and freak out about swapping in this country. And so, yeah. And so our strategic plan got put on hold. So we're, we're finishing up this month. Long story short, we're finishing up this month, which is good because I think like, because we are, things are starting to open up, schools are starting to open up, you know, the community is, is getting back on its feet, that this is a good time for us to look ahead the next three years and say, where are we going? What do we want to do? What, what have we done? That's really worked successfully this past year. Speaker 4: And the hybrid model, as everybody is saying, the hybrid model really is the future. You know? And so we are going to end up keeping a lot of the things that we did in those partnerships that we've created and the model of reaching families, the families that really want to reach those low-income families, those really needy families, the families that actually need educational resources and tools and not just yeah, those families. And so the model that we have at the moment is really serving those families. And so we really do want to continue in the same thing. Speaker 3: How do you best lead organizational change, knowing how hard it is for most people in change and your organization has been here, like you said, for a long time. So you probably came in, you took the job and it's like, alright, you looked around, you probably assess the situation I'm putting COVID aside just for a moment. Right. And so what's your view on that leading change. Speaker 4: Okay. So I have a view and then I have what happened with this job, which are interesting. Okay. So, you know, from my view to best organizational change, you have a clear vision of where you want to go, right? You set up step-by-step goals and getting there, you empower your staff to run with their ideas, to get there. You support your team. When they feel at a loss, you utilize the experience and knowledge of your board and you make the connections to bring in funding and change. Then you celebrate every step. Wow. That's all easy because that was your textbook answer. You know, like those are the steps in real life. You know, walking into an organization that's been around for 25 years. Organizational change can be very difficult, but this is the way we've always done it. This is how we've always done. This is how the previous executive director did it. Speaker 4: And the one before them, and this is how we do it. And so I have to say, COVID saved my life for this, like for this, or for actually being able to create organizational change within this organization in a fast way, in a very speedy way, COVID made it, it had to happen. And so it was, it became, you know, necessity, the mother, the mother of necessity. Right? And, and so we were able to make those changes, which might have taken three years in a year. You know, like we, we knew that we wanted to take things more hybrid to take it less out of. I'll give you a great example. So like our ready for kindergarten program in the past, we had a workshop that were set up in elementary schools. We took our, we loved our laptops. We took all of the supplies over there. Speaker 4: Parents would sign up, they would show up, we would have childcare. Parents would attend. They would sit in this class. It was very spoon-fed to the parents. They would leave, they would get a box of resources and they would go home. Right. And that was, we would do that three times a year. And we had, we had good success, but we, but my, my program director was like, well, what if we, what if we could do something where like, they could learn it at home. And they have the, you know, they were doing like online education, you know, online learning is really becoming trendy, but it just wasn't the model. Right. And I'm sure it would have eventually become the model in the future, but it became, she was the driving force to make it the model during COVID. She said, okay, I have all these ideas. Speaker 4: She worked with a national organization and they created it and we've had astronomical success. Like more, more parents are participating our community in this program than I've ever had never participated because they can do it at any time. Right. Especially, we always really wanted to get parents who had newborns to two-year-olds. Right. That's really like the early, early age. And that's always been the age that's been impossible to get. Right? Like the numbers were always terribly low and this year they've been higher than ever because parents can do it at any time. Right. They're at home, they're nursing, they're feeding, it's 2:00 AM the baby's crying that can't sleep, whatever. They can just sit on their phone and do this program and get that early child education to ensure that their child is successful. And so it's been great. It's been absolutely, absolutely fantastic to be able to do that quick transition, but what have happened, but it's going to take them a lot longer. Speaker 3: You did get blessed with that, but it's not all bad. Yeah. Yeah. With change. Wow. So ready for kindergarten. I know about the program. Some of our listeners may not get, can you do a quick 30 seconds on it? Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely. And I'll tell you about team read as well, which is our other, our big program. So ready for kindergarten is an early childhood education program. We provide three classes a year and we provide all the tools and resources to ensure that the parents are the teachers at home because a lot of children are at home with their parents all day with a parent or a caregiver all day. And we know even if you're not, but the parent is the first teacher of every child. And so ready for provides those resources and tools to the parent to ensure that they have the knowledge and background, to be able to ensure that their child is ready on the first day of kindergarten. We S there are a lot of children in the Tri-Cities who start that first day of kindergarten, two or three years behind their peers. Speaker 4: So if they're starting at the age of a two-year-old at five, how long is it going to take them to catch up? Maybe never. I don't want to be, I don't want to be a pest, but like, you know, like they're always behind. They're always behind. And then that's, that's not fair to them. And that's, and that's and no fault to parents in the Tri-Cities, right? Like parents, no fault to parents anywhere. Right. It's parents, every parent wants the best for their kid. No parent is like, I to hope my kid fails, you know, like, Speaker 3: No, Speaker 4: Trust me. Like, no, I'm a, I'm a mom, no parent wants that. And so, you know, this is just providing that early childhood educational background for parents. So that way they can ensure their kid is successful. Yeah. It's, it's a phenomenal program. And then we also have team read, which is a tutoring program where we provide tutoring for children who are behind moving for, for first through third grade. And that's in the elementary schools in the past, we've actually had tutors from the community, volunteer tutors, come in and provide them. One-on-one tutoring for 30 minutes a week to, to children who are behind this year. We have changed it. I'm not going to use the P word. We have changed it so that children are, the parents are actually getting the tutoring resources to be able to provide that one-on-one tutoring, that targeted one-on-one tutoring for their kids at home. So the teacher evaluates the student, they said the child is at this reading level. And then here are all the resources. So we provide all the like level tutoring resources for the parent to be able to provide that one-on-one instruction at home for the kids. Speaker 3: Okay, great, great community resources. Wow. So one of the most difficult tasks of a leader is when you must have a difficult conversation with a team member, how do you bolster the courage to do that? Speaker 4: So this was a really hard thing for me initially. You know, I was really young getting into leadership. I got my first principal's job when I was 29. And I was the leader of, you know, managing some teachers that were long in the tooth, you know, like in their fifties and sixties had been there forever, who were just like, how dare you leave me? And I had to have those. I had to have some difficult conversations, especially bringing in, you know, new educational theory. And they're like, but I've been doing this for 30 years. What do you know kid? And I'm like, this is what we're doing. And so having to have those long conversations and I used to be a crier like where I would get like, so emotional, you know, like freaking out like panic, like shaking. And I'm like, don't cry, don't cry. Speaker 4: And so I took this great class from this author. Her name is Jennifer Abrams. She's an educational her, she has a background in education, and it was, it's all about having hard conversations. And she takes you to those steps. You don't have a clear idea of what you want to communicate before you go into the conversation, like already have it in your head, be clear and concise. Like you don't, don't apologize for the fact that you're having this conversation. Like you don't own it. It's not, you lay out the facts had documentation to back up your meeting, practice beforehand, out loud. You can actually hear the words coming out of your mouth. You're not like, you know, you might have practiced them in your head, but actually say them out loud before you go in, take a second person with you, a board member or another leader in your organization. If you're afraid, you won't be able to get through it. And then she said, this is my favorite part. She was like, if you're going to cry, clench, just like collect your booty and the whole back of tears and it'll hold it and then share what you need to share. And I'm like, okay. And I have to tell your work. I haven't cried through a single meeting. Speaker 3: Wow. That's a very practical tip. Speaker 4: I know. I just loved it. It was so great. No one has ever shared that. Speaker 3: That's awesome. Well, finally, what advice would you give to new leaders or anyone who wants to keep growing and gaining more influence? Speaker 4: I have to say like take every opportunity to get out into the community, to meet new people and to really share your vision for your organization. You know, a lot of leaders are passionate. A lot of new leaders are passionate about their organization, but when they might, they might be too passionate and not listen. That's the one thing, right? Like, you know, you're, you're super passionate, but you don't actually listen to what other people are saying. You're just so worried about getting your words out, so, you know, share your vision, but then also take the time to sit back and listen to what other people are saying. Keep current, make yourself a professional development plan. As we talked, like, what is your professional development plan makes you actually have one be looking to the future? What am I, what am I, what am I struggling in? Speaker 4: What do I need to work on? And then reflection, reflection is key to growth. You know, did you make a mistake? Did you get, you know, did, did the board sit you down and say, Hey, this is an issue. Okay, it's an issue reflect, how can I, how can I own this? It is my fault. What did I do? How can I fix it? So a way, you know, so I can learn from the future and really just, you know, it's, it's what that reflection is key and owning your mistakes, not being like, well, is that my it's not my fault. You know, they just hate me. They're just out to get me. Well, even if, so, even if that's true, you did hurt someone's feelings. So how can you own that? How can you take it on, how can you move forward and how can you move forward? Not just let it hold you back. Speaker 3: Good stuff, good stuff. Well, how can our listeners best connect with you and also connect to the programs? All of Speaker 4: Our events can be found on our website on Instagram and Facebook, which [e-mail]. Speaker 3: Well, thank you again, Elizabeth, for all you do to make the Tri-Cities a great place and keep leading. Well, let me wrap up our podcast today with a leadership resource to recommend it's growing forward service training. I would love to come into your organization, maybe do a lunch and learn, or a couple hours workshop that will help build the leadership skills of your team. So you can resource [e-mail], and we'll customize something that will fit your schedule and your budget, and sort of beef back up professional development for your, for your people this year. Again, this is Paul Casey. I want to thank my guest Elizabeth Barnes from the children's reading foundation of the mid-Columbia for being here today on the Tri-Cities influencer podcast, we want to thank our TCI sponsors and invite you to support them. We appreciate you making this possible so we can collaborate to help inspire leaders in our community. Finally, one more leadership tidbit for the road to help you make a difference in your circle of influence. It's the great Stephen Covey. He said, listen with the intent to understand not the intent to reply until next time kgs keep growing forward. Speaker 2: Thank you to our listeners for tuning in to today's show. Paul Casey is on a mission to add value to leaders by providing practical tools and strategies that reduce stress in their lives and on their teams so that they can enjoy life and leadership and experience their desired results. If you'd like more help from Paul and your leadership development, connect with [e-mail] for a consultation that can help you move past your current challenges and create a strategy for growing your life or your team forward. Paul would also like to help you restore your sanity to your crazy schedule and getting your priorities done every day by offering you is free. Control my calendar checklist, go to WWE dot, take back my calendar.com for that productivity tool or open a text message 2 7 2 0 0 0, and type the word grown Speaker 3: Tri-Cities influencer podcast was recorded at fuse SPC by Bill Wagner.