Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hi, it's Steve Vindig at Sport Law. Leave me a message. I'll get back to you as soon as I can.
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.
[00:00:39] Speaker B: Welcome to the latest episode of Sportopia. We're so excited to share our knowledge and have conversations about healthy human sport.
[00:00:48] Speaker C: Today we're going to talk about why it's easier to stay stuck when dealing with conflict. We've noticed that there is increasingly a shift towards binary thinking, meaning if I'm right, you must be wrong. This either or perspective makes it so hard to navigate the messy realities of leading, volunteering, coaching and competing in sport. In essence, we're missing the point. When we're not focusing on what we're trying to accomplish, which is creating an enjoyable and rewarding experience for children and youth, we end up getting distracted by personalities, politics and posturing. So I'm really excited to be connecting with you, Steve, on this juicy conversation around human experience. But before, before we get started, our typical question. What's coming across your desk again, Dean?
[00:01:36] Speaker B: I just look at my calendar and say, what's going on last week? What's going on this week? And I have a couple meetings this week and did one last week. And it's a regular, regular thing for people to reach out to us and say, how do I get involved in sport? I love sport. I want to work in the sports sector.
So I have that conversation a lot. And what I found interesting was a bit of naivety. I had one individual reach out. He had 20 years experience in law and was looking to reach out into the sport community and wanted to do work. And as normal, I give them the test that CoC funds NSOS to PSOS for AAP carding, and if you don't like it, you can appeal it to the sdrcc. And if you can't translate that, and that's a test to all our listeners, then you're not necessarily engaged in the sports sector.
And it's all about learning about what that means and getting involved in the sector. Volunteer for a board, volunteer for an arbitration panel as an investigator, as a coach, and start learning about the system. I think there's a lot of naivety that, well, I played sports so I can work in sport, and I think I had that naivety too when I started my career 20, almost 25 years ago, that my, my competitive background and my coaching background would be a very successful tool into what we do at here at Sport Law, but it doesn't translate. And I think people need to know that you have to be in the system. It's a very complicated, multi tiered, multi leveled system and just get in and learn about it. And then you could start seeing where your skill set will, will support the sector or where you might want to grow your, your skill set to, to work in that.
But it's just interesting that people routinely reach out and they talk about their experience of being an athlete. Or one individual I spoke to told me, I said, what do you know about the industry? And they said, well, my child plays house league sport. And I kind of, that was their, that was their expectation that they understood the system. And I kind of laughed to myself, unfortunately, knowing it's far more complicated than that. But to anybody who wants to get involved in sport as a professional, always try to get in, try and learn about the different systems, the different levels.
And as I said, just get in and then you'll feel yourself around and get on Cirque, see the news, read the newsletter. It always tells us what's going on and what events and what educational opportunities there are or what jobs that may exist. So, Dina, what about you? What's coming across your desk?
[00:04:25] Speaker C: Well, building a bridge on what you just shared, Steve, I think this is what we're going to be talking about, right? We can only kind of argue or see someone else's perspective from the perspective that we're holding. And so it's interesting if I'm coming to a conversation with a worldview that is more informed by community sport, I'm not really understanding the different dimensions that sport exists in other levels. And I think that that's true for, you know, the many kind of perspectives that we hold. So I appreciate we're going to be probably using some of that in this conversation.
What's coming across my desk right now is there's a couple of exciting things I've been asked to do to be an emcee for an international competition, and that's kind of fun. I haven't done that in a while.
And that really warms my heart, just being able to serve in that capacity and then another kind of speaking gig too. And this is something that you'll probably smile about.
When I started doing my work vocationally in grief and loss and bringing in that lens, that way of holding change and attachment through that prism of grief and loss literacy, I think you said something like, good luck trying to, you know, bring this into the Canadian sports system.
And that was well over A decade ago. And I think now, having spoken at several conferences, you know, I've written a book on the topic and cited actually three stories of athletes who shared their story of love and heartbreak through the Canadian sport, you know, system. The experience they had, it. It's now, I think the environment is such that people really want to understand the significant transition that athletes go through when they're starting to think about leaving sport behind.
And that requires not only time and space and compassion and devoted practice, but also understanding that for athletes in particular, their entire childhood and young adulthood has been attached to a high performance sport experience.
And the unattaching of that creates pain and a deep sense of sorrow that takes more than a minute to get over.
And so I'm really grateful to those that are reaching out to me now so that, so that we can give not only athletes more information. Often when people come to me who are, who are grieving, the first experience they feel is relief. Relief that their experience is being validated and there's actually a name to talk about what it is their experience because sadly, so many of them think that they're going crazy. Right. So those are a couple of things that I can look forward to. So, and we're going to talk about, you know, your least favorite word on the planet, which is so interesting as someone who's a lawyer, how you are averse, allergic to conflict. It's something that really keeps you up at night. So maybe say a little bit more about what you're noticing right now. So, so that our listeners can maybe get a better sense from our different perspectives and worldviews how to manage and, and help people navigate the complexities of human inter when things go south.
[00:07:54] Speaker B: You know, I've said this on previous podcasts, Dena, like, what motivates me in the professional work that we do is helping sport. And I just simplify it by saying moving from point A to point B. But unfortunately, Let me stop there. What I mean by that is moving forward, it's doing things that are progressing the organization, whether it's helping with a strategic plan, policy development, trying to create ideas for revenue generation or increased participation or further success, as they define it, is fun, it's motivating.
But a lot of our work is moving sport from point A to point A. It's where there's a conflict or a complaint that the outcome is going to resolve the issue, but not necessarily move the organization forward to their desired outcomes or their desired goals. So I'm really struggling with that point A to point A type of file, where a lot of times it's just people fighting.
We're seeing examples of two factions arguing they're the board of the organization and going to court and spending thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to argue that, no, Dina, your group's the board member. No, my group's the board member. And of course, normally, what does a judge say in that case, neither one of you is the board member. Go have the members elect a new group.
So I see it from. We're seeing that argument. We're seeing competing clubs in the same neighborhood who would be far more successful amalgamating and not splitting resources and field permits and all the other things that they have to split because they see it as competition, that we must do better than the other. This is the kicker. Not for profit.
Your idea or your goals are to promote your purposes, your objectives, not to crush the other. Not for profit down the hall or down the block. So I'm really struggling with dealing with decisions that are being made by likely people who are conflicted. As you know, Dina, we do tons and tons of board trainings. And when we do a board training, the first thing I do is I say, you know, tell me who you are, your name, tell me what your profession is, and tell me why you're a board member. And 99% of the time we hear, well, my son or daughter plays.
And that's that. Of course, at a club level. And we're starting to see at the national level, Sport Canada, or the good governance code mandating levels of independence, which is.
[00:10:46] Speaker C: Which is great.
[00:10:47] Speaker B: But when we start looking at the fundamental fighting that we're having within sport, it's probably because somebody has a personal vested interest and is not seeing the big picture of how do I make this sport better? And I'll let you respond to this diatribe in one second. I remember, Dina, there was one board member I was chairing the AG GM were acting as scrutineer for the election. And the president had been there for years and lost the election.
And he looked at me and he said, thank you.
I've been able to support this organization for eight years.
And now they've decided to move in a new direction. And I'm happy to have every second Sunday free now and I can go work on my garden. And I thought that was just a fundamental fabulous mentality of not being bitter or upset and letting the organization move in a new direction. He felt he had done what he was required to do. And I just see people fighting that all the Time and forgetting about the purpose of what sports about and what we're trying to achieve.
Go.
[00:11:57] Speaker C: Wow.
You feeling a bit better?
It's, it's so revealing, Steve. You know, our words shape our world. And so it's not surprising to me when I hear you, you know, saying the competition that sets in, right? And I like to say now collaboration is our new competition. Like can we replace these false constructs right from the beginning we're here to crush the competition says, you know, a coat to these little five, six year olds. So already the system is designing an experience for these little children and youth and really starting to create these false divisions when they're not necessary. And you said it like, let's begin with the end in mind.
What is the intention here?
What's the objective? And can we wrap smart systems, approaches, policies, procedures around this new experience that we want to have? And sadly, what gets in the way often is the structure. And the structure is invisible but felt, right? So the structure around sport, this volunteer driven nature that requires volunteers to devote their time and experience in an increasingly complex vortex of situations that, and we know this to be true, the vast majority of them are not trained in, don't have the time for, and are in over their heads.
So I think it's really important when we're trying to not only manage conflict, but we want to try and eliminate conflict, the reasonable things that we might expect. So a couple of things that are coming up for me, and this is informed by leadership literature, I did a training several years ago around what I call a holistic approach to holding dissenting worldviews.
And that was understanding binary ways of thinking. And so one of the teachers was talking about polarities, right? These two polarities which we might think are mutually exclusive, but in fact she teaches them as being mutually reinforcing. And her definition of these polarities is that it requires us to hold multiple truths, some of which might be these polarities which are the state of having two opposite or cont. Contradictory tendencies, opinions or aspects. So for instance, in sport we've been grappling with, and I write about this in the blog we've been grappling with, we either are going to focus on the end results, podium finishes, or we're going to focus on the well being of the people inside the ecosystem.
Those are polarities. Because the assumption here, the either or thinking is either you have to win at any cost or you are going to have to focus on the well being of everyone and then the winning doesn't become possible.
You know, we had Cath Bishop, the Long Win author of the Long Win, on our podcast last year, and she's. She was also disrupting, you know, the, the dominant narrative of this either or thinking. And I think that in Canada, organizations like otp, the Coaching association of Canada, cpc, coc, all of those acronyms you spent time earlier describing. Steve, Leaders have been really trying to expand beyond the system, which is really designed around either or thinking. But the leaders in the system have been pushing for a much more holistic worldview. So I think part of our conversation today is going to help us first of all acknowledge that the system is limited. It was designed in the 20th century when things were a little bit maybe blacker and whiter. Right. In terms of their perspectives, where we had more time and space to make decisions.
We want to talk about privilege too. A lot of the systems were designed by people more for people like them. Sport in and of itself, elite sport, has often been, I'd say, accused of being more elitist, more white privileged, and more male in its expression. So when we understand all of that, these positionalities that are the realities for the decisions that were made, I actually like to see conflict as a good thing. Right. Conflict can be this tension between perspective, but I also think it's an opportunity for growth. So. Your turn, Steve.
[00:16:44] Speaker A: Go.
[00:16:45] Speaker B: Well, I agree. I don't have a problem with conflict.
I think conflict. When I say that, what I mean is I don't want everybody of a board of nine to be thinking same way.
Excuse me. And if every decision that's made is made on unanimity, that means there may not be somebody thinking differently. So I don't have a problem when I say the word conflict. What I mean is thinking differently, but also utilizing that mentality to say, like, as a group of nine board members, what are we trying to achieve here and are the decisions that we're making leading to that outcome?
And simple things I've said probably on previous podcasts is eliminate the use of the word I or my or me when you're discussing a particular topic at the board level.
But I still fundamentally think that a lot of the way we create our governance is based on people who will put their hands up. And a lot of times that is people who have kids or they themselves were involved in the sport.
And I understand that's the foundational aspects of a board composition. But we need to start moving a little bit differently, trying to ascertain those independent people who could be a sober second thought or be the uncomfortable one to say hey, Dina, you. You're talking about your son or daughter.
To ascertain a benefit, an increase in salary, a role in the organization, and that independent person might have the ability to say, dina, look, I know you're not probably doing it on purpose, but you're advocating for a personal or family benefit, and that's deemed a legal conflict. You have to recuse yourself.
I just want, holistically, for people to start thinking about what's in the best interest of that six year old. And I know it's not just about the six year old, but maybe that's the simplest way of thinking about it.
To kick a soccer ball, to put on a pair of goggles, to grab a hockey stick, whatever it happens to be is, are we making that decision?
And we've said this before, Dina, like, if we were relying on athletes and children to fund or create the work that sport law needs to do, we'd be bankrupt.
It's the decisions that are being made by adults that lead to infighting, that lead to conflict, that lead for work that takes us from point A to point A.
So I want to flip this back on you, Dina, and say, what are your thoughts on why people get stuck in those positions?
What training, what way of thinking can they do, what can they do differently to expand the way they think?
[00:19:40] Speaker C: Well, there's a couple of things, Steve. I mean, I think you said it. So I take a position, right? And uninformed, maybe, by what are the leading practices?
What's the alternative way of looking at this?
As a, as a board of director, let's say, in a community sport organization, I'm going to bring my experience to the table. I'm going to bring my worldview, which is limited. When we say people have limited worldviews, limited perspectives, it's because it's true. We can only see what we can see.
That's why self development is so important. Because the minute that I acknowledge I have these areas that I don't see now, I can choose to kind of turn my head and oh, I don't see that. So how can I learn about someone else's perspective? Right? That's where, you know, being humble and being conscious of my unconscious and conscious of my incompetence is such a gift, right? So that's that spirit of humility. I think that's really, really important. I see you laughing.
[00:20:45] Speaker B: I just want you to say that again. It played off each other,
[00:20:50] Speaker C: right? So this ability to pause, understand my limitations, acknowledge that my perspective is my own, and then open up with Curiosity to kind of lean in, no matter how much it might be hard, is to then ask the other person, well, how do you see it?
So inviting people to teach us about how they're seeing what they're seeing and being curious about that, that requires, I think, a degree of maturity in our leadership development that I'm not sure people bring when they're coming to a board experience or a leadership experience, and especially at the board level.
One of our former friends. Well, not former friends, former partners, Rachel Corbett, was fond of saying, you know, people park their brain at the door when it comes to their. Their role as a. As a director. And that's because we. We have these professional kind of experiences. And then when we come in as a volunteer, somehow, because we usually volunteer where our children are, we have an opinion and this is the other, you know, p. That I was going to speak to.
So we have perspectives about things, but then we also have preferences.
And the preference might be, I want that coach because I know that coach is going to put my kid on the team versus that coach, or I want that coach because that coach is male versus that coach. Right. So we just need to be conscious of our preference. And then I'll complete with principle. Right. So we have perspective, we have preferences, and then we have principles. And when we are debating arguing from a place of principle, that's where we have to adopt a much more open, expansive, curious perspective. Because someone, Their worldview is often cemented with values and beliefs that have been, like, calcified over time. Right. And for us to untether someone from their.
There are principles, Steve. It requires a ton of work. That's where I usually come in, is helping people expand their worldview. And you can't just do it overnight. Right.
[00:23:07] Speaker B: I'm going to add another pd. That's power.
Yeah.
And this one I struggle with as well. I just. What's coming to mind is I was doing a governance, governance review with a local hockey organization.
They had a very operational board, director of operations, director of equipment, director of canteen, house, league, rep, team select, etc. Etc. They also had paid staff.
And the work that the paid staff were doing was very limiting because a lot of the majority of the operations were being done by these volunteers. And of course, my recommendation was let the board govern, let the staff operate, which means taking that authority, Dina. That you have to run the canteen back to staff.
And I ran into roadblocks because people, I think this is my opinion, started attaching their personality and their power to that role in the community.
Oh, Deena's the. I'm being a bit. A bit ridiculous here, but Dean is the director of canteens, and I actually seen that role numerous times.
You control the canteen, you control the hot dogs, you control the hamburgers, and you don't want to give that up to the staff who are paid to make sure there's enough hot dogs and chips and pop.
I. I'm really struggling with that, Dina. Like, I just don't believe that that leads to the best interests of the club.
[00:24:43] Speaker C: Yeah. You know, Steve, it. It is true.
And this comes back to this grief and loss literacy, Right.
You curious how I'm going to make that linkage?
[00:24:55] Speaker B: I'm all ears.
[00:24:57] Speaker C: So people attach.
People attach to people, to pets, to roles, identities.
They attach to objects, they attach to land and experiences, and they make meaning out of those attachments. Right? And we know that we are wired to belong.
It's a biological imperative from when we're infants. So if we know that that is the undercurrent that is playing through everything, then we can imagine that that person who's the director of canteen, we don't really maybe know their life story.
Chances are this is their way of exercising what you said earlier. Power. Power over maybe others, power over their situation. Maybe they're deriving significant, you know, pleasure out of their contribution. And when we start to take that away from them, they see that as a loss. Right.
So instead of. If we understand that, if we just understand that people need to feel like they belong, they need to feel like they're valued, they want to be appreciated. You know, I like to say to people when we're designing change, not about them, without them. So this is where we would have conversations. This is where we would talk about succession planning. This is where we would talk about the bottom line and a vision supported by values. In the absence of doing that, people become then entrenched in their limited worldview, because we all have these limited worldviews. And depending on how much power they have, you brought in such an important component, Steve, because power, often it can be something we can see and witness, like power of size, power of skin color, power of gender, power of money. But a lot of power sometimes is invisible, too. And unless we understand the power struggles that are at play, we're actually putting people at risk.
So I like to think what is possible when we slow things down, when we begin with the end in mind, when we engage people in these change initiatives, we are far less likely to have to grapple with unnecessary conflicts. Right? We can then Maybe understand and normalize, humanize the natural tension that's going to arise when we're telling someone, listen, Berta, you've been the, you know, the director of the canteen for 40 years, and we're going to need to do things differently. And we want your help in helping us map this out because it's no longer sustainable.
So then we arrive at what we call a third way.
So there's my way of seeing the world. There's your way, Steve. And then if we can stay connected in a conversation, we usually arrive at a third way, which is far better, more innovative and creative than if we had staying stuck in our separate perspectives. So for me, I'm an advocate of a third way.
[00:27:57] Speaker B: I'm all for it. I mean, I'm trying to simplify it as we're running out of time. GINA Just as we bring this to a close, it's like, what, what can we recommend to people?
And you know what I'm coming up with, Dina?
[00:28:10] Speaker C: Common sense does, when you find it, let me know.
[00:28:15] Speaker B: I will. I know it's a on lifelong search, but like the decision that we're making or the position that we're taking, is this in a common sense perspective. Makes sense for the organization, makes sense for the athletes, makes sense for the coaches, make sense for our financial position, or are we going to spend a hundred thousand dol on legal fees to get from point A to point A.
So I just hope people look at amalgamation.
I think they look at reasonableness, common sense. And again, I think about this all the time, about trying to put as much effort you can into recruiting and screening the best decision makers that you can.
[00:29:00] Speaker C: So reasonableness, right, Steve which as a lawyer, you, you really bank on people being reasonable. And we know that you've, you probably make a career out of people being unreasonable. And my actually experience is usually dealing with people who are in the unreasonable realm and asking them what is it about the situation that is causing you to feel this way? And when people feel not judged in their experience, where they might be behaving unreasonably, but underneath that, there's usually a reasonable explanation. Has been my experience. Not always, but I'd say the vast majority of people who are behaving unreasonably usually have a justifiable reason for that. And sometimes it's because their kid was harmed.
And so the whole thing around conflict feels secondary to the fact that their child was harmed. So until we kind of deal with that, I think we're going to stay stuck.
I wrote down here this language of architects of change, if we can hold our work as sport law consultants and lawyers, as architects of change.
So we're coming here trying to understand the lay of the land and then identifying ways where we can bring in different perspectives. And then we start to wrap some strategy around how do we want to navigate this change initiative, this project? What would be our values, for instance, how would our values inform how we want to go through this change? What are the legal requirements? What does, as you say, Steve, our policy, say about how we should navigate this? So if we can approach these change experiences, as architects of change, we know from our experiences we strike a small committee.
We task them with the terms of reference we communicate to our people.
Here's what we're going to do. Here's our reason for this. What say you? We engage, engage, engage right in our work. We like to say we can only go as fast as the speed of trust. And then we come up with a plan. And so that plan needs to be implemented and evaluated and we make course corrections. That is, I would say, just a quick snapshot of what the science says is an inclusive change innovation.
And we know it's not easy. Why? Because of this bertha, who's been 40 years as a director serving in a role that brings her some form of, you know, power, maybe, and privilege, and she. And deep satisfaction. So how do we want to say thank you to Bertha while we're, you know, escorting her to the door? We kind of have to use a change, you know, initiative to be able to do that in a way that minimizes risk and increases compassion. And maybe I'll complete Steve by saying more and more of the work I'm doing. And this is straddling both the sport law work, but also spending time in the medical model, right? Helping people who are navigators of change all the time, understanding the secret ingredient of compassion, compassion for ourselves and compassion for others. If we can create conditions where people can see each other as humans and understand we can make mistakes, then we can apologize and we can work to restore the harm that we was created. That helps to not avoid the conflict, but deal with the conflict in a way that we can be proud of.
[00:32:29] Speaker B: Thank you, Dina, for today, as as we will continue to podcast, we will try to solve the world's problems one episode at a time.
But there's always something to talk about. So I appreciate you spending an hour with me and vice versa.
In the episode notes below, you'll find some sport law blogs where you can find more information related to our conversation. Today. Thank you so much to our listeners. We are so grateful to share our vision of Sportopia with you and to elevate sport.
[00:32:59] Speaker C: As always to have your say in Sportopia. Email us@helloportlaw CA to let us know what you want to hear about next. Have a wonderful day and we look forward to connecting with you again on our next podcast. Until then, be well.
[00:33:20] Speaker A: It.
