Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hi, it's Steve Indig at sport law. Leave me a message, I'll get back to you as soon as I can.
[00:00:07] Speaker B: Hey Steve, it's Dina. You aren't going to believe what just came across my desk. We need to chat. Give me a call.
[00:00:29] Speaker A: Welcome to the latest episode of Sportopia. We're so excited to share our knowledge and have conversations about healthy human sport.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: Today, Steve and I are going to talk about self care and how important it is for leaders to model a healthy way of being. Before we get to that, Steve, what's coming across your desk?
[00:00:48] Speaker A: I had the luxury, dean, of spending the morning with a long term client to talk about multiple things that usually come across my desk. Bylaws, policies, safe sport. And one of the things he articulated to me was the cost of complaint management. And its not something that I was surprised to hear about, but it was interesting, of course, to make what I think is happening a bit of a reality, and thats the related cost of managing complaint management, particularly where the trend is through independent third party management and the costs associated with that case manager, with the investigator, with the panel members. And this client had spent six figures to date and they weren't even about, they're about three quarters through their fiscal year, they had budgeted about half that. And of course, we're only three quarters into the fiscal year of their budget. So it is something I think sport needs to pay attention to and be proactive. And when I say being proactive, it's about trying to find the right people, people at the right price or having the right budget set aside. So you're not shocked when there is a particular case that may go outside the scope of what we think the normal cost is. But it's really possible, and it is happening to suggest that these cases aren't coming.
[00:02:08] Speaker B: I remember, I think it must have been. I don't know, Steve, seven years ago when we were noticing the shift, the more intentional shift around maltreatment. I think we said internally that safe sport was going to bankrupt sport. And so it's a real balance, isn't it, that we need to strike between the policing and the ensuring clarity around the acceptable behaviors and the unacceptable behaviors. But as you and I know, it's all the 50 shades of gray in between that causes a lot of the slippery slope between I never intended to cause harm to. You're now causing harm to me. And here we go through the, through the process and bridges get burned and trust tanks, which really is soul sucking work. Right. When we talk to our clients?
[00:03:01] Speaker A: Yeah, of course, it's not something they like to deal with, but it is a necessity in today's environment. But to reiterate what you just said, dina, is it happening? Yes. Are organizations properly prepared? I'm going to say probably not. And really, again, it's about having that forward thinking of what people do I need, what skill sets do they acquire. It going to cost me to create that fair procedural fairness of complaint management and independence. And it's something we're still figuring out and we will probably for a little longer. What's new with you?
[00:03:38] Speaker B: Well, I think I want to talk about something that actually is making my heart sing, and that's the ongoing work I'm doing with clients. In particular, a number of coaches, sport coaches, are coming to us to do deeper development work, and we're using a psychometric tool called the Nova profile that we've spoken about here before as part of a cultural transformation project with one of our big clients. And the experience I'm having in having these, I'll call them very intimate conversations with people where for many of them, it's the first time that they've actually had a moment to be witness, to really understand themselves, to have language, to be able to frame their behaviors when they shine, when they really feel that they're compromised or they get frustrated or angry. And then for them to understand and appreciate their motivations, what drives them as human beings, and the core values that they too often feel but don't really express.
So these projects that we're doing, Steve, myself, and the other leadership coaches, is really important work. And as you and I have talked about, we are champions for this kind of proactive work. Our theory is if we give people additional knowledge, we give them tools that will help them expand their emotional intelligence, we reward this kind of behavior. I think we're going to see the 20th century command and control, more military style of leading and coaching. We're going to start to see that take a backseat to more humanistic practices.
So, yeah, so that's what I've been kind of like immersed in the last couple of weeks, and that keeps me feeling lighter amid some of the heavier.
[00:05:31] Speaker A: Projects that we're in segues very well into. Of course, today's topic where we go a little bit deeper into ourselves, our personalities, our work life balance, and talking about self care. And of course, the definition, Deena, of self care is not a legal one, but more of a leadership.
I'm going to flip it back to you. What are we talking about today? How do we define self care. Why is it important?
Why are we spending a podcast talking about this?
[00:06:03] Speaker B: Yeah, such great question, Steve. Well, you know, and I think some people on our podcast probably already know that when I'm not doing this work in sport, I serve as a grief doulae. So I help people who are bereaved understand what's happening to them. And I also support people who are at end of life and accompany them and their families in a holistic experience. And so, when I think about self care, I might not think about it the way that the marketing agencies are promoting self care as bubble bath and retreats and yoga, although those things are really helpful to and for us, self care is actually an ethical imperative. And when we think of taking care of ourselves, we really have to understand, well, what does that mean? What is it that I need to feel nourished for me to feel like I'm safe, for me to feel like I'm in my body, that I'm not holding all of this anxiety and frustration, that I feel like I have agency and autonomy, that I can self determine what I want to do more of and less of. So, self care as an ethical imperative means that if I'm in a career, for instance, where as coaches, for instance, we are there to be in service of athletes, if I can't be really strong and ensure that I am orienting the care of myself as that ethical imperative, I risk burnout. I risk being compassionately fatigued, where I just can't take it anymore. So it was a revolution for me to hear from one of my professors, Steve, that self care is not just a nice thing to do, and we often use that oxygen mask to talk about it. It's actually an ethical imperative. The minute I heard that, I kind of stood up straighter, and I thought, yeah, I need to take care of myself. I absolutely need to do that if I'm going to continue to do the kind of work that I do. What do you think?
[00:08:17] Speaker A: Well, I know I can speak about it from my own perspective, Dina and you and I started after the founding partners. We continued on sport law, and one of the foundational pieces was work life balance. And we spoke about this in pre production today. I kind of laugh because we started this with. With that in mind, and I'm not sure that I know we've done. I know I'll speak for myself. Done a good job at that. We're so busy and work kind of creeps in, and having a virtual office, it's. It's always around, and one of the things that I struggle with is not so much the time that I work, but the presence that I have outside of work. So I could be having family dinner at one of my kids activities, but I'm thinking about work, and where I need to try and spend some time is being present is what's happening in front of me. It's not work related. And that's how I see it personally. It's not necessarily always about, oh, I need a 15 minutes break, and I should go for a walk or take my dog, which is a good excuse to get out for an hour. But it's more that mental presence is what I struggle with.
[00:09:29] Speaker B: You know, Steve, if, if you're okay.
[00:09:31] Speaker A: To play, let's go. I'm not paying you for this session.
[00:09:36] Speaker B: When, when I have clients who come to me sometimes, we'll talk about the quality of present.
So, if I were to ask you, what does that actually mean to you? How do you know that you're present in, in relation to your clients, in relation to your family? Like, what is it that you're checking for?
[00:09:56] Speaker A: It's funny. I don't feel like, I don't feel it, Dina, with respect to work, I feel like my work, I'm very present. It's more outside of work where, yeah, there's family activities, there's family dinner, there's family weekends away. And being present in that moment is sometimes challenging for me. But it's so important, too, right?
[00:10:17] Speaker B: Yeah. And you know, what you're modeling here is the noticing. The first thing we have to do is notice, oh, I noticed that I'm getting distracted, and I notice that theres a pattern to this. And then I notice that maybe Im bringing my phone at the table and the beep goes off, and then I get distracted. And its like squirrel.
[00:10:37] Speaker A: Yeah, very much so. I dont take my phone to the table. So thats a good thing. But it is about drawing that distinction, and its just really important. Yeah. Being present and understanding how I feel and when I feel it is really part one. Right. It's the first step.
[00:10:54] Speaker B: It is the first step. And what I really appreciate about this is one of the things I admire about you, Steve, is your capacity to manage time.
I think on almost every single occasion, and we've traveled a few thousand hours together now over the last 15 years, you begin on time, and then you end on time. In fact, you've taught me the value of, of time, because I know sometimes I'd like to give away my time, and you are there to remind me that's not being in service of myself or the clients, you know, truthfully. And that's actually an ethical imperative as well, is, you know, what is our time and how do we value our time, and that is a beautiful kind of connection to what is my presence, and how do I know that I'm actually being present in the moment in front of someone? My intention when I'm with clients is I want them to feel like they are the most important human to me in this moment.
[00:11:52] Speaker A: I agree. And again, I know I've said this already, professionally, I don't feel like I have that problem. It's personally. And the work kind of drags, just drags my mind back into, how do I solve this problem? What am I going to do with that client? Have to write this letter, oh, my. When am I going to do that? Tomorrow. I have nine meetings all day. So does that mean I'm working tonight and we're waking up at four in the morning or six in the morning to do it? So that that's kind of what I carry with me. What are some trends, Dina? Help me. How do I ensure a better work life balance?
[00:12:25] Speaker B: Well, I think there's a couple of things, and we just kind of modeled that. The first is we have to notice it. So when we're working with our clients, we need to invite them to say, well, tell me more about an average day. What do you notice about your average day? What's your practice when you begin your morning? Do you, you turn to your phone and then get overwhelmed? Do you have a practice of looking at your phone and organizing your day the day before? And, you know, Steve, it reminds me on time management, I worked with an athlete who was retired, and she came into my life through a project with one of the nsos. And I was working with her and eight other national provincial level coaches, and she, you know, this is an olympian. And she was saying to me, I don't know how to organize my time. And I said, well, do you want to practice? Why don't we put in place some structure around that?
And so I think that this models, we all have different muscles, right? So if I were to share a little bit more, what she did is she created some structure on her Sunday evenings, because that's when she felt most relaxed, less anxious. She wanted to have a sense of what the Runway was ahead of the week. The second thing she did is she put some free time in her schedule because, like you, she was noticing that her days were super long. And then between, you know, she her and her partner. Her partner was commenting on, you're never really here. You're here, but you're not here. There's the presence again.
[00:13:59] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure.
[00:14:01] Speaker B: So we built in a practice where she finished her day at a certain time, and then she gave herself a buffer of an hour to clean up, to get organized, so that when her partner came in, she could meet her fully present and then understand. Just like in sport, you know, we talk about rest and recovery, periodization.
You know, I think our. One of the trends is that a lot of our clients need to learn how to periodize their own performance. How do I create ebbs and flow in my calendars so that I have these mini sabbaticals called the weekend, maybe, or I take a Friday off, which has been, as you know, my practice. Pretty much all my Fridays are dina time.
And so having structure, I would say, is one of the key things that I work with as clients to help them kind of buy back time or use their time differently. I'll pause there because I still think that you're one of them wizards when it comes to time.
[00:15:02] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, being an athlete throughout my whole life and then a coach for a long time, time management was extremely important. I have to do my studies or my work before practice and after practice and get to sleep. So I think that was a really good skill to learn at a very young age is time management. And when you don't have that schedule, you'll. I'll do it later. And then it's 11:00 at night, and you haven't done it. You know, I never had that problem because, you know, I knew I had practice, and I knew I needed to eat dinner, and I knew I needed to get to bed on time later in life. Now, it's. It's actually probably my kids are a blessing because they make me stop, and I want to stop and to be with them and take them to their 97 activities.
So it is a. It's a forced stop. So that's. That's very helpful for me. You know, doing it by necessity is. Is really a positive right now. Still have to figure out a little bit more about doing it for myself.
[00:16:03] Speaker B: Yeah, I. You know, maybe this might help. Steve, you. You are already filling out some of the ways in which, you know, when I support clients, we talk about the biopsychosocial model. Right. Of human development. So you talked about bio, like, the biological needs. I need to sleep. I need to have good nutrition. I need to work my body. So those are like foundational pieces, because without that, everything else kind of crumbles. Then you talked about the interpersonal lens. What is my relationship with the people in my life that matter to me? Right. So for you, that's your family, you know, your children, of course, your close friends, your work friends. When there's good balance in there, you feel at your best. The third level is spiritual. So as a jewish man, you know, I love and admire your I commitment to your religion and the ways in which you practice that. And your son is going to have a big celebration this year and all of the ways in which you've returned to the homeland. And you regale me with some of those stories. So I really appreciate some of the spiritual kind of practices that can feel healthy to us right, when we're trying to reclaim that health in our lives.
[00:17:16] Speaker A: Yeah, sometimes those holidays, no matter what religion you are or beliefs, gives you or makes you stop. So we just recently had a jewish holiday that made us stop for a day and a bit. And, yeah, it's great. And sometimes those four stops are super important. As you know, we work Dean, a lot of weekends with presentations or travel, and then these stops happen. So I do appreciate the stops, whether it's a holiday or my son has a tournament in London, or Caledon would, you know, love driving down there with his teammates and watching them thrive. Or my daughter, who's now started competitive swimming. We're off to Berry this weekend.
[00:17:55] Speaker B: Here we go.
[00:17:55] Speaker A: Here we go. It's payback time for my parents. So, yeah, I like those four stops. And yeah, my schedule does kind of create them just based on the life phase that we're in for sure.
[00:18:08] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly, Steve. I mean, I love, I call them disruptions, and we tend to have a negative bias towards disruptions as opposed to inviting them as, oh, it's an opportunity for us to pause. Right.
[00:18:21] Speaker A: I'm laughing because our lives, work wise and personally, are extremely busy. Both kids are in high performance sport and dance and singing, and so we have something almost every night. And last weekend, my wife took the kids to camp and I was home for 2 hours by myself. And at first I didn't know what to do because that never happens.
But I laid on the couch. It was awesome.
[00:18:49] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I love that, that stillness that you're speaking to. And that kind of brings us to the in. You know, we talked about interpersonal, right, the relationships between us and others. But what about the intra personal, the relationship I have with myself, which speaks to my capacity to understand who I am, what matters to me, my core values. And so, you know, that moral line that we have, how do we know that we're living our life in alignment with these core values, right. So being able to, when we have these transitions in our life, Steve, and that might be another thing that you might be observing, is moving into transition, right? Like these coming. Getting closer to that next decade. Hint, hint, right. The children moving into preteen hood and teenhood and what that means for you and your family. So I find when we talk about life in transition, that is also another kind of lens that I use when I support my clients who are coming to me with bigger questions around, who am I now? So I use what we call a loss line. What is my capacity to be in transition? As maybe a chapter of my life is closing? And sometimes that happens in a way that's really hard because someone we love has died, or we've had an illness, or there's a forced transition, like you've been fired from your job, or there's a divorce, the ending of something. But sometimes those endings are voluntary. Like, think of athletes who are retiring from, you know, their career. Or I'm choosing to end something, and I'm feeling good about how I've ended something. So it's really healthy, I think, Steve, for us to understand our attachment, two things, and how that, too, can. Can create some tension.
[00:20:36] Speaker A: Well, since this is my therapy session, I'll just continue to talk about myself.
But I'm very cognitive, Dina, like, the hectic lifestyle that my family has right now, five years from now, will kind of stop. My son will be hopefully off to university somewhere, and my daughter will be in grade ten or eleven with a driver's license. And that won't require me to be ubering around the city of Toronto on a nightly basis. So I'm definitely aware of that. And thinking of my own history. When I didn't get hired back from my articleing position, that was a scary moment for me. I had significant debt from law school and no job and no prospects of a job. So it was very scary at the time, but also an opportunity to be like, okay, what do you want to do next? And here I sit, to be quite honest with you, 21 years later. But those things that you just spoke about, whether it's a career change or loss of employment or kids moving out, like, it could be positives rather than negatives.
[00:21:39] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's true of anything, Steve. There's a shadow side to experience in life, and then there's lightness and joy, and sometimes they're intermingled. Right? Like when our children leave home. It's bittersweet. You know, it's sweet because we're happy that they have the autonomy and the independence to go off and thrive and succeed in the world. And then it's bitter because the life that we knew it as a family of five, in my case, has ended, and that can create, and it's normal and healthy, and most people don't talk about that. We don't typically talk about the pain that we carry, you know, this invisible backpack that accumulates all of the broken dreams and the losses. And you're giggling again.
[00:22:22] Speaker A: I'm giggling, Dina, because just recently, you know, when you. When you see somebody you haven't seen in a long time, what's the normal thing we say, hey, how's it going?
[00:22:31] Speaker B: Right.
[00:22:32] Speaker A: But do you really want the answer?
[00:22:35] Speaker B: Well, as we get older, we likely need to have the quality of presence there. We're coming back full circle.
[00:22:42] Speaker A: We're gonna just say, nice to see you.
[00:22:46] Speaker B: It's nice to see you, and see you later. I don't know if I want to know everything that's been going on.
[00:22:52] Speaker A: Correct?
[00:22:53] Speaker B: Right. Yeah, it's true. So, Steve, you know, we've talked about some of the ways that we need to model what we want more of in our life. And it starts, I think, as you said, with awareness of how am I in this situation? What am I knowing about these or observing about these practices that I hold as truths in my life? And, you know, fun fact, Steve. What often, what we get to do as coaches is we get people to. In their habit, in their natural habitat, to do things differently. So, for instance, when you're brushing your teeth morning and evening, let's hope, can you do it mindfully? Can you actually be in that as opposed to being distracted with TikTok or whatever else, or I in your head, knocking off all the things you have to do tomorrow? And this quality of honing our presence, like, really attuning to what's happening inside of us, calibrating to what's happening inside of the other person, you know, people won't remember what you said or did. They will remember how you made them feel.
And that's Maya Angelou, right, this amazing poet. But what she. If we were to go on what Maya is saying there is, in order to feel someone, you need to feel it within yourself. People can feel you feeling them. And we feel this. Like, right now, you're in Toronto, I'm in Ottawa. We can feel it when we're connected. Right. There's a quality of our presence. Our eyes are connecting, our voice kind of deepens, and it slows down. That's, I think, what people are longing for more of.
[00:24:31] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I absolutely agree. I don't know if I have much to add to it. I mean, there's definitely some truth to that where when we engage in people, we want them to care. We want them to listen, we want them to understand. We want them to be caring, you know? So I understand that, again, for myself, it's just, again, about presence and remembering where I am, what I'm doing, and what's important. And I say this, I probably shouldn't say this on a podcast to our clients, but when I'm on my deathbed, I'm not sure I'm going to be saying, I'm glad I wrote 300 sets of bylaws in my career rather than did I, you know, was I a good husband, a good father, a good, you know, great to my kids, gave them a good path to follow. So sometimes we forget our priorities because work becomes all encompassing. And I think working in sport right now, it can be all encompassing with all the different things we have to do.
[00:25:28] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree, Steve. And what I would say is the last kind of lens that I use, and you just kind of picked up on it, is our capacity to understand what's going on inside our bodies, right. Which we call our soma, our somatic. And that quality of presence, it's not going to come from the brilliant brain. It's going to come from your beautiful heart. People will feel you caring about them. And I think that that's. I mean, one of the first things you said to me, I think it might have been in a lunch 20 years ago.
[00:25:59] Speaker A: The infamous lunch.
[00:26:00] Speaker B: The infamous lunch was, we hug our clients.
And it's true. I mean, I think that one of the things that really jazzes me up and has kept me in sport this long is not only watching people perform miracles right on the field of play, but it's the space between, you know, the athletes and the coaches and what happens between them that creates this.
I don't know, this unforgettable experience that draws me in every time, like, it moves me to tears, to watch young people achieve their ultimate goals. Right. That is something that just lights me up.
[00:26:42] Speaker A: My son's baseball coach, Dina, has been working.
This will be music to yours, has been working with his team, and it's been the same core group of kids for five or six years now, so know them very well. And started in implementing values and team expectations and team values a couple years ago. And when you're talking to a ten year old or eleven year old about values, they get it and they can spill it back, but do they actually understand what it's all about? So he keeps doing it. Every year we set team values and team goals, and there's a lot of comments in the background going, oh, the kids don't understand this and why are we doing this? And I know from my own experience as a swimmer, we used to do a lot of meditation when I was eleven or twelve, and we used to giggle our brains out during meditation or literally fall asleep. And in retrospect, as you become an older athlete or an older individual, you start understanding the value of it. And just the other day, my wife asked my son and a bunch of family friends that we had over for dinner, is there anybody who inspires you? And my son said, my coach, he said, well, why? And he said, well, I love the values and the way he makes us think about our team dynamics and the things we're trying to achieve. And I was like, wow, okay, it's working, right?
[00:28:03] Speaker B: Oh, that's a fantastic story, of course, because as a coach myself, right when I was coaching the we ones, I would bring, you know, the true sport principles, these seven principles, and I would ask the athletes to each kind of as part of the indoctrination to the team, which principle spoke to you the most? And we would get to understand their love language. You know, for some, it was going for it, others was playing fair, others was giving back. But the synergy that gets forged by your son, by Phoenix, saying, I really, he's one of my people because he makes me feel good and he makes me think about things that really matter to me. And it can start when they're really young. That's what we're really shaping through sport, right, is hopefully confident human beings who will go on to be confident and compassionate leaders.
[00:28:54] Speaker A: You know, it's a good message for our listeners that we may not see the results of the hard work that we put in. Right, right away, and maybe it is days later, weeks later, years later, but there is so much value in it. Dina, we are probably running out of time. I really appreciate the one on one session for my psyche to talk.
[00:29:17] Speaker B: We didn't know we were going to do this, right? So for our listeners, we just kind of ripped. This is what we typically do. And so, yeah, it was my pleasure, Steve, to kind of think about how we are trying to walk the talk with respect to self care and really understanding what that means and setting aside all the trends and what's out there, just maybe modeling for you and I having a conversation around some of the ways in which we as leadership coaches use some of our tools to help guide our clients when they're more contemplative, which is the energy you brought to the conversation today. So why not?
[00:29:52] Speaker A: I'm shaking my head. No one can see I'm shaking my head, but I'm not sure how this turned into a personal session. But I'm more than happy to share and thank you for your great advice and listening to my life deficiencies and complications and all of the above. Thanks again. Dina. In the episode notes below, you'll find some sport law blogs where you can find out more information related to our conversation. We always want to thank you, our listeners, and we're so grateful to share our vision of Sportopia with you and to elevate sport.
[00:30:26] Speaker B: As always, to have your say in Sportopia, email us at helloportlaw, CA or on social media at Sportlawca to let us know what you want to hear about next. Until then, stay tuned for the next episode and be well.
