Worldwork Bonus: Assisting Girl Scouts to continue their journey to become future leaders

In this collection of bonus episodes, we’re looking at the concept of Worldwork, which embraces the idea that we are continuously impacting the world, whether we are conscious of it or not. Whilst Worldwork can involve big acts of altruism and community spirit, it always starts with self. Across the course of these 5 bonus episodes, you will be hearing from Worldworkers from across the globe, who have all used ORSC tools in very different ways tools to serve their wider communities. 

In this podcast, Katie talks to Brandon Raines about his Worldwork Project: assisting Girl Scouts to continue their journey to become future leaders. Brandon's coaching plan focused on providing the girls with tools and competencies geared towards finding alignment. Throughout the discussion, Brandon discusses his key learnings, including overcoming his fear to allow the system to be creative, intelligent and resilient and trusting the system. 

Brandon Raines is an Organization Design and Enterprise Coach who has worked with public and private entities, both large and small.  He has helped organizations and individuals emerge from near failure to thriving models of success.  Brandon is a noted author, speaker and presenter on topics of leadership, organization design and teamwork.  Brandon is a Certified Enterprise Coach with the Scrum Alliance.  He is also trained and certified in Organization Relationship Systems Coaching and certified by the Disney Institute in Customer Relationships. Brandon has a deep background in Information Technology organizations as a Software Developer.  Brandon has also served as Chief Operating Officer for a mid-size company where he instituted many organizational and leadership practices.  

The Worldwork Project is a key element in the ORSC certification journey. It allows students to apply the ORSC™ materials in the real world and develop themselves as change agents. At CRR Global we hold all our students as change agents and train them to be conscious of what impact they want to make in their world. We believe that everybody’s impact –whether conscious or unconscious— sends ripples out into the world. It’s up to all of us, as world workers, to keep our communities safe and healthy. For more information about World Work and the ORSC Certification programme click here.

We believe Relationship Matters, from humanity to nature, to the larger whole.

Transcript

Key 

KC – Katie Churchman 

BR - Brandon Raines

[Music intro 00:00 – 00:06] 

KC - Hello and welcome back to the Relationship Matters podcast Worldworks Special. We believe relationship matters, from humanity to nature to the larger whole. I’m your host Katie Churchman and in this collection of bonus episodes we’re looking at the concept of Worldwork which embraces the idea that we are continuously impacting the world whether we’re conscious of it or not. Whilst Worldwork can involve big acts of altruism and community spirit, it always starts with the self. Across the course of these five bonus episodes you’ll be hearing from Worldworkers from across the globe who’ve all used organizational and relationship systems coaching tools in very different ways to serve their wider communities. In this episode I’m talking with Brandon Raines about his Worldwork project: assisting Girl Scouts to continue their journey to become future leaders. Brandon is an Organization Design and Enterprise Coach who has worked with public and private entities, both large and small.  He has helped organizations and individuals emerge from near failure to thriving models of success.  Brandon is a noted author, speaker and presenter on topics of leadership, organization design and teamwork. In addition to being a Certified Enterprise Coach with the Scrum Alliance, he is also trained and certified in ORSC and certified by the Disney Institute in Customer Relationships. Brandon has a deep background in Information Technology organizations as a Software Developer and has also served as Chief Operating Officer for a mid-size company where he instituted many organizational and leadership practices. Brandon’s Worldwork project focused on coaching a girl’s scout troop to help them to continue their journey to become future leaders and give them tools and skills. The coaching plan focused on tools and competencies, focus on the goal and constant attention toward alignment. Key outcomes including defined roles for troop leader and girls and clear goals with a roadmap for reaching them. So without further ado I bring you Brandon Raines. 

KC – Brandon, welcome to the Relationship Matters podcast. I’m so pleased to finally have you on the show. 

BR – Thank you so much for having me. This is so cool for me so thank you. 

KC – So I’m excited today to talk about your Worldwork project, so perhaps you can give our listeners a topline about your Worldwork project which was quite different from the other projects people may have heard of. 

BR – Yeah, probably like a lot of them because you struggle trying to figure out what am I gonna do. Do you wanna do something that is meaningful, and so at the time my daughter was in Girl Scouts here in America and there had been many, many attempts of their troop leader, reaching out to me for help on different things and just as a parent I could observe some of the dynamics that were happening in the troop from my daughter’s perspective, and from the other girls and from the troop leader. And I thought huh, maybe, that’s a system to take a look at! Since she had been involved, since my daughter had been involved, I completely admire the organization. What they do for young women is just incredible and you see these women who grow up and take on these amazing positions doing really good things in the world and it’s like, you know, when you see organizations like that you wanna be part of it. So I reached out to them and I said hey, I am part of this organization, taking these classes and I’m trying to practice, could that be of some help to the troop? And they bit, troop leader and the girls alike. And I think most of them were like I don’t know really what this means, but we trust you Brandon so sure, we’ll give it a shot.

KC – I love this project on so many levels. Firstly I’m a big fan of the Girl Scouts or the Girl Guides as we call them over here, I was a girl guide, I think it’s a real source of empowerment for a lot of young women around the world. And secondly I love that you took ORSC to kids because I feel like that’s such an important system for so many people, families, schools, communities, clubs like the Girl Scouts, and yet don’t know how to bridge that divide between sort of the theory, the heavy language you use sometimes and kids. So tell me more about how you stepped over that edge? 

BR – Yeah. It’s interesting you say that because it felt to me like this awesome confluence of possibility, right, because you have naturally this organization who intrinsically is trying to impart wisdom and good practices and good habits for young women. And I thought here I am in the midst of you know certification and coming up with a Worldwork project and wanting to do something good and I had an opportunity to maybe contribute to that. It felt to me like it was just awesome, an awesome opportunity not just for them but for me too. And so I thought there’s a possibility of helping the girls work better together because they do so many events throughout the year together, it’s an opportunity for their troop leader and some of the other volunteers, volunteer parents, to work better with the kids, and then for them to work better, for them to learn some skills so they can go off, you know, as they get older, working with other groups of people, other systems in their lives. It just felt right to me. 

KC – Ah so you were helping their system to thrive, and also then to, I guess, empower the next generation of systems inspired leaders, in a way. 

BR – I mean how cool is that? Even if it’s gets a little bit of a nudge there, the edge’s really sung to me. 

KC – So I’m sure we have a ton of curious parents listening in, or people like yourself who are a parent and seeing, maybe, the kids football team and wondering how they can use this systems work with those younger people. So what were some of the steps you took and what practical tools did you apply when you were working with the girls? 

BR – So, one of the things that I think as we learned was appreciating and respecting the system and the wisdom of the system. And this applies, right. It’s one of those, don’t underestimate just because they’re kids the wisdom that they have, it’s really kind of respecting it and recognizing it and like pulling it out a lot more. And that’s something that kept coming back and back and back to me is like these girls are smart and they’re good, and, you know, just a little bit of light touch there, a little cool question to throw in or not so good question, quite honestly, and all of this really nice stuff comes out. So I think it, for me, was very rooted in they’re going to be working, they’re going to be in this world where they’re continuously going to be working with people, other people, other systems, other teams, organizations, and just being able to remind them of that, sometimes, and be curious about what does that look like and how do they show up as individuals and as a group throughout. So we worked a whole lot on just that concept of, you know, honestly, team work. Which is what happens in sports, it happens in a troop and it happens again for them in life when they start working in companies or forming their own companies in their own lives. 

KC – It’s interesting what you say about they’re going to be interacting with systems as they go out into the world and so why helicopter parent them in this moment? Because this is a rich source of learning and I love your admission of I don’t necessarily know better, but I guess that is the urge as someone older or a parent, to think that you know the answers, but what if they have a better answer? 

BR – And again, you know, I think I was a little bit lucky in choosing the Girl Scouts because these are girls who are naturally bright and talented, and the structure that the Girl Scouts already provides is like we’re trying to create or help create and inspire women to be independent and leading, and so I could lean real easily into all of that stuff. 

KC – Yeah, that’s interesting, it’s a structure there and systems probably added another layer to how they interacted together? 

BR – No question, I think every now and again I threw something in there that maybe they didn’t consider or just wanting to highlight a little bit more, just the concepts of well, in saying it explicitly, how could we work better together? How do we want to be with each other? Them being exposed to those kind of questions and thoughts I think they kind of intrinsically did it, because the troop is so good and they’d been together for a really long time. They may not have talked about it openly and so I think at times it served as a great reminder of who they are and it’s like oh yeah, that’s what we do. So yeah, it’s great to hear that from each other I think is what they experienced very often. 

KC – They sound like such a model team that so many organizations could learn from! 

BR – Katie – yes. Absolutely. Again, for years I had been sitting in on a lot of their events and I’d just sit in amazement at what they do together. I’ve been on camping trips with them and it doesn’t take a lot. I think another aspect of it was shedding some light for the troop leader too, you know, because she’s a parent too. And she eventually pulled me in, and it’s often times an interesting thing is you see the girls get older and older and recognizing when to pull back a little bit more and letting them lead more, letting them take the reins a whole lot more was an interesting dynamic to observe and coach through. 

KC – I’m wondering, what lessons did you learn from this experience that then maybe you took out into your life or into your work in leadership and teams? 

BR – Well one, I’ll just repeat it, is you know the systems being naturally wise and just being able to respect that, recognize it and figure out how to let that flourish. I think that’s a really important thing. You don’t always have to jump in. You don’t always have to have the right answer or even the right question, just giving, creating some space to kind of let things emerge. And then there’s the light touch. There’s the light touch of sometimes yeah, throwing in a question of something you think and sometimes just to get the conversations going is something that I continue to learn and apply with different other systems that I work with. And I think the other good thing is roles. I am always amazed at, you know, for our parlance, the inner and outer role and helping systems to recognize which ones exist and creating the space of particularly role fatigue, you know, the troop member is like you know what, I’m tired of making a fire every single time, can I get some help? Those kind of conversations where just the main thing is they emerge and the rest of the troop kind of rallying and saying oh yeah, I can totally help, I just thought you liked doing it all the time! So yeah. I think those are hilarious and I can tell the different story in a different context with an IT group that I’m working with but those keep emerging and emerging so it keeps giving even less and helping the team to identify those things and helping to emerge and talk through it. 

KC – I hugely appreciate your vulnerability, Brandon, around sort of getting out of your own way as a coach, because I think we all know that as coach, that need to impress, to have the right question or even the right answer and actually it doesn’t really matter, what you’re there to do is shed a light on them and help them see themselves as a system. 

BR – Yeah, don’t get me wrong there are times when I have to learn how to bite my tongue and I sometimes have a big bruise on my tongue… yeah, I think that’s hugely important to be able to do, and no doubt there are times where it’s like oh maybe I should have said something right there, but more times than not I think those things, you trust your gut and it turns out to work out pretty well. 

KC – And you mentioned about I work with the Girl Scouts, I work with this IT team, so was their no real difference, do you feel, between working with younger people and working with professionals in a corporate setting? 

BR – Oh gosh, my clients may not be so happy about this answer but… yeah, not so much! 

KC – How interesting, how interesting. 

BR – Yeah, you know, the vocabulary is different in those different settings, and certainly with the troupe there’s a lot more light heartedness, you know, I can ask them, sometimes I can go some different places with them that it takes me longer sometimes with some of the IT teams, like I can ask the Girl Scouts silly questions like hey, what’s the cookie that best represents you all? I might not be able to get away with that on the IT team… 

KC – That’s brilliant. They do say that as adults, because kids are obviously playing games on the playground and yet we’re just doing the same thing, playing different games, and you could totally replace the fire maker for the one that always has to keep time in meetings and they’re so tired of that role – how interesting. 

BR – So, so true. It is so true. Those themes, they tend to pop up in lots of different contexts. It’s interesting to observe. 

KC – Because I think probably, and I’m talking about myself here but I imagine this is how other people feel in the community that working with kids feels like a big edge and yet, to your point, they seem more intuitive and more wise, particularly when it comes to some of those metaphorical questions. 

BR – I think so. Certainly, I’m sure many people have seen this and books have been written about it, is the guards that the kids have is a lot lower. You know, we build up these guards around ourselves, the older we get we tend to and so, it sometimes take a little bit longer to jump those fences and those guards. But yeah, very much intuition. This is why I say trusting them is a huge lesson that I keep learning and then being able to recapture that with us as adults seems to be the trick there. 

KC – And as a father, when you’ve taken your systems coaching hat off, aside from working with the Girl Scouts, how do you apply some of that holding them as intelligent, generative and creative, that must be hard at times I’m sure? 

BR – Oh goodness. Yes it is. Yeah we may need to do a whole other podcast on it. Yeah, I think those same skills, they come in all the time for me as a father and it’s interesting because the more I learn, the more I practice through my coaching, the more I see it sometimes creep in, and times where I’m like oh gosh, I stepped into it on that one. But yeah, it’s always like this delicate balance of letting them be, letting them discover, and then being able to talk about well how did that work out? What did we learn? What did you learn? How could we do better as our little system here, throughout that, whenever that pops up again. So yeah. I very much use a lot of those skills to my benefit and sometimes to my detriment I think. 

KC – Do they know the terms now? Are they throwing some of the questions and ideas back at you? 

BR – Oh gosh yes. Yes, and my oldest who is in the troop, she’s taking like psychology classes even in high school and she throws them back at me a lot. It’s funny even, at the beginning of Covid we sat down as a family and we said listen, this is going to get rough. Let’s talk about when it gets rough how’s it going to be with us? And I can still see, it’s still on our refrigerator where we wrote it down and we refer back to it a whole lot, even as Covid persists and you know, we said that this is something that can help us and we can refer back to no matter what just as a family. 

KC – And do they hold you accountable as much as you hold them accountable? 

BR – Oh heck yeah, probably more. 

KC – That’s brilliant. 

BR – Yes. I get all the time ‘Dad, that’s not what we came up with. You seem to be breaking our rule, dad’. So oh yeah, they love those moments. 

KC – That’s the beauty and the challenge of your loved ones knowing this work, you get, you’re in a rage and my partner will say to me ‘so what’s the 2% truth in what they’re saying?’ Just like not needed. Gonna take some quiet time now. ‘Is that stonewalling there, Katie?’ 

BR – Yes. Yes indeed. I think the phrase we say is like look – you can’t use my tricks on me. That’s not allowed. 

KC – So from this Worldwork project what would you love to see happening in your systems and beyond? I guess what’s the sort of ripple effect you’d like to create from this? 

BR – I think for me the sweet spot and I’ve believed this ever since I started learning about ORSC and a lot of this way of being is how we can connect with each other better as human beings. Just by siting down and having really simple conversations about expectations, kind of dismissing assumptions and talking about hey, and embracing this idea that conflict will happen but we can still maintain our humanity the positive parts of our humanity, and that’s one thing we talked a lot about in the troop. It’s one thing I love to carry through no matter what context I’m in and there’s so many issues out there in the world where I think being able to sit down and having at least a basic conversation about where I’m aligned to, particularly around how we treat each other, even difficult spots, is something I would love to carry through. 

KC – That’s very powerful. And also, an incredibly wise teaching to empower the next generation with and I get excited when I think about what might be possible if we’ve got  a generation of thought leaders with that as their foundation for conversation and communication and connection. 

BR – It’s exciting to think about the possibility, right? It’s like we need you, we need you desperately, just to make us better. Just to make humanity better, and what better way, like you said, to do that than with the next generation, that’s always the hope. 

KC – So around this theme of inspiring the next generation, what tips would you have for someone who’s listening to this, would love to do some work with maybe their family or another system involving young people, what ideas do you have for them sort of entering that system and working with that system for the first time? 

BR – I’m of the belief that amazing things happen when you ask permission. And so, starting off with an idea, turning into it with humility, particularly – it may be clunky. I was very upfront with the truth about that, are you willing to play a little bit around this? The hope is that all of us to get better, that was my approach, you know, they took to it and trye to my word there were clunky parts! And we worked through it. So just being able to embrace that a little bit, for everybody all around, it seemed to help a whole lot. But yeah, that permission piece seemed to be pretty critical. 

KC – It seemed like that normalized the clunkiness probably for them as well? Because this work isn’t smooth, we know that. 

BR – Yeah, I think you’re spot on with that, of it normalizing exactly that. It was helpful, it was so helpful I think for everybody. Because I can usually hear the like sighs of relief I think from everybody once I was kind of revealed as ok, there’s going to be some clunky spots and that’s ok. You know particularly for teenagers working with other adults and trying to… this is not us grading you, this is not a project, this is something for us to work with each other. 

KC – Part of being human. Part of being whole. Yeah, what a wonderful way to create that connection up front, to be honest and open about how you are in the world and how it won’t be perfect. 

BR – Exactly right, because that’s the real world! 

KC – That is the world Brandon! Oh my gosh. And what a wonderful gift to share with this group of, they sound like such a fantastic bunch of human beings! I’m so excited to see what they create in the world together, and beyond. 

BR – I think that, of course I have some bias but I think they’re a wonderful group of human beings and, like you, I can’t wait. I can’t wait to see. 

KC – Thank you Brandon, you’ve inspired me to no end and you’ve got me excited about the next generation of thought leaders. So thank you for bringing this to the community and sharing your wonderful project. 

BR – My pleasure. Thank you for helping me to relive all this because that was a really fun and special part of my experience with them so thank you. 

KC – Take care Brandon. 

[Music outro begins 22:06] 

KC - The Worldwork project is a key element in the ORSC certification journey. It allows students to apply the ORSC materials in the real world and develop themselves as change agents. At CRR Global we hold all our students as change agents and train them to be conscious of what impact they want to make in their world. We believe that everybody’s impact –whether conscious or unconscious— sends ripples out into the world. It’s up to all of us, as world workers, to keep our communities safe and healthy. For more information about Worldwork and ORSC certification do check out CRRGlobal.com/course/ORSC-certification. We believe relationship matters, from humanity, to nature, to the larger whole.