What Are Leaders Not Trained to See Until It’s Too Late?

0:00 The topics and opinions expressed on the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests, and not those of W four WN Radio It's employees or affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsement for radio show programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability, explicit or implied shall be extended to W four WN Radio It's employees or affiliates. Any questions or common should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W four WN Radio. This is Beyond Confidence with your host d W Park. Do you want to live a more fulfilling life? Do you want to live your legacy and achieve your personal, professional, and financial goals? Well? Coming up on Dvaparks Beyond Confidence, you will hear real stories of leaders, entrepreneurs, and achievers who have stepped into discomfort, shattered their status quo, and are living the life they want.

0:47 You will learn how relationships are the key to achieving your aspirations and financial goals. Moving your career business forward does not have to happen at the expense of your personal or family life or vice versa. Learn more at WWWA. You don't divpork dot com and you can connect with diva ants contact dants divpark dot com. This is beyond confidence and now here's your host, div Park. Good morning listeners. I am so thrilled to share with you all. My book is out and is doing very well because my clients had asked me to write it because artificial intelligence is everywhere and it's hard, i know, like wait to start what to focus on. So if you all are interested, you can go to Amazon and grab a book a copy of the book which is The AI Agency. And today we we'll be talking about something a little harder conversation and just stay on to listen to it.

1:54 Welcome Chuck Oh, I appreciate it. So glad to have you on our show track. Thank you. Share with us. If you recall a moment in your youth there a person or an experience left a positive mark on you. Well, you know that's that is a very good question. And there is something that left a very positive mark on me. It could have turned out totally different, and that is you know, when I was twelve years old, I had somebody that was high on drugs that attempted to abduct me off the street and the person that did that was the police found him and then they arrested him and they took him in the custody. But you know, that's not what changed my life. What changed my life was when the officer came back to my home to check on me, to make sure that I was safe and that I was okay, and to reassure me of that.

2:58 It changed my life. It gave me a different perspective of what policing was, what protecting people was, and that really gave me a glimpse into what I wanted to accomplish in my life. Was to be able to have the ability to make somebody else an impact like that in their lives. To know that they mattered, that they care, that someone cared about them, and that they want them to be protected. That is such a powerful statement that creating that impact, letting even if it's one person, known that they matter and they're important. So when you grew up, tell us about your journey, what direction did it take?

3:39 Well, because of that, I eventually became a law enforcement officer myself, and later during that time of being a law enforcement officer, I spent twenty years in that career. Eighteen of those years was as what they call a drug recognition expert. So I was an expert witness and court going in and testifying as far as what impairment looked like. And I think that's something that I was able to cling onto because of not only the experience I had when I was younger, like I just mentioned, but because I felt drawn to that to protect people.

4:20 I started seeing a lot in the workplaces. I started seeing a lot with individuals. You know, the most dangerous blind spot that I see in leadership is confusing silence with compassion. A lot of times it's because we don't know what to look for or how to react to it. M huh. That's that's really important point, confusing silence with compassion before we go to it. I'd love to hear what for your learnings throughout your journey. You know, you took the learning and experience you had as a child and became a law enforcement officer. So during your journey, because it's such a hard place to me, you're seeing a lot of tragedies and a lot of lost opportunities and young lives or for that matter, what did you bring home?

5:19 You know that was one of the hardest things to do, is to be able to separate the things that you experience in that career and then go home to your family and try to block out those things. I did the best that I could. Sometimes those things did carry over, but I was wise enough to be able to recognize that I had a really good relationship with my wife. She's been she and I've been married for thirty five years. She went through a lot of this stuff with me. She's my rock, and I think that's really important too, is having somebody that is going to understand when I came home, there was times where I just needed to be by myself, to power down a little bit and getting a different frame of mind. One of the things that I did do early in my career is I intentionally lived about forty five minutes to an hour away from where I worked. And I did that because I didn't want anything that I did in my professional life to affect my family. I wanted to be able to go to a restaurant and that run into people that I may have had to had dealings with or had to arrest or things like that. It was very important for me to try and keep that separate. Not that my family didn't know a lot of the things that

6:51 I saw because we talked about it. I think that's one of the most important things that you can do in any type of a leadership position when you go through things that could be traumatic or things that are very life changing, or they can affect you in your mental health as well, is to have the ability to talk to somebody that you can get those things out. And that was an important part of my life. My wife went through a citizen's academy, and a lot of police departments offer that not only for community leaders, but for also officers families, so they can go and experience or see some of the things that officers have to do every day in their life. So when that officer does come home and they're having a bad day, they kind of understand maybe something is going on with this, and there's a little bit more empathy and compassion to be able to address that within the family and to keep it from affecting you and your family.

8:00 That's the biggest thing. So as we kind of talk about it, and you talk about empathy and compassion, how did you bring it to yourself. Because as it is important to bring compassion to others, it's also important to bring compassion to yourself, because I'm sure there were times when you are not able to help people and you're exactly direct, like, what could I do more? You know, that's an interesting question that you're bringing up, because I think that in law enforcement there comes a point in time that you have to make some decisions because you get to a point where you see so many bad things and you don't have the time to just work through all of those things, and you're going from one call to the next and to the next.

8:55 I was very blessed to be able to be called into be a school resource and that totally changed my career. It was the ability to make a difference with not only the community, but with those kids. You know, I may have had to take an incident report with a kid, or I may have even had to issue the ticket, and in some cases may even had to arrest a kid because of things that happened there in the school. But what was the most powerful thing for me was to be able to see that kid the next day, that student, to be able to build that relationship with them, to let them know and understand, look, part of life is making mistakes. It's what you do with that that counts.

9:45 Are you going to learn from it? Are you going to be able to change and to be able to develop that with them, to give them a different perspective. I think that's very important because there's a lot of perceptions in public right now as to how police officers are and how they interact, and that they are very enforcement oriented. When I was in the schools, I had a lot of leniency as far as deciding with the school is in the best interest of this student in their family to pursue something, because, to be honest with you, sometimes the discipline in the things that the school could do were far better than me putting a kid in a jail cell or issuing them a ticket. So I was blessed to have that because it changed my perspective.

10:39 I was able to start showing that empathy that we're talking about, to understand that, you know what, people are going to make mistakes, but you have to give them grace and be able to help them to get through that. To understand it. I still have students to this day that still contact me and thank me or doing the things that I did with them. So you don't understand really the impact that you can have by acting in that way, especially with kids. It also gave me a better perspective being a father going home and dealing with my own kids that were going through school and having compassion and empathy for them in some of their situations.

11:24 And it was probably the best thing that I ever did for my marriage and for my family because it gave me that opportunity to get into a different mindset in law enforcement, I think I had a far more impactful ability being a school resource officer than just a normal, everyday police officer. Not that that job isn't important, It's very crucial, but there's no closure. You go from one call to the next to the next, so you really don't get to see the back end of whatever happened to this individual. Where in my situation in the school, like I said, I got to see that student every day and see them develop and see them change. So it was very rewarding.

12:11 And you have talked about quite a few students whose life you impacted while keeping the confidentiality. Could you share a story as to where they were and when you met them, and then where they ended up. You know, I had a student that Emilia came to mind when you said that, because I was in the schools. I was in the schools as a school resource officer for ten years. I chose to be there that long because I had such a great opportunity and the ability to make change that I didn't have a desire to go anywhere else.

12:53 But I met a family that they themselves. The parents had kids that they adopted, they were able to have children themselves, and some of these kids came from backgrounds that were very abusive and bad, and they were on a journey with these kids to try and change it. And one of those students was a student by the name of David. And you know, David was a good kid. He made mistakes, just like. Any other kid. And I remember a time that he and a group of boys were caught in the restroom smoking marijuana and all of the students, all the other boys, admitted to it, except for David. He was adamant he hadn't done anything wrong.

13:38 And when I came in contact with him, I could tell that he was really tense. And he looked at me and said, no way, Officer Martin, you know me, no way, I didn't do this. And you know, on the surface, that really does make sense, you know, because I developed that relationship with him, and most people would just said, all right, let's just keep moving on. But marijuana impairment can leave subtle physical changes that unless you know what to look for, you're going to miss it. And that's what I did with David is I did an evaluation with him, and I saw that his eyes were dilated, his eyes were tremoring when he closed him and when I checked for convergence where he's able to follow an object in, his eyes wouldn't come together. In fact, one of his eyes drifted outward, which is a key sign of impairment. With that, and to be able to not only talk to him about that and then him finally admitting to it, and the bottom line is is, of course, he didn't want to get in trouble at school.

14:42 He really didn't want to disappoint his parents. But we had the opportunity to bring his parents in and talk and we were able to share what was going on, and there was a little bit deeper personal issues that were going on that he felt that this was the best way to cope with it, and so he and his family were able to make that change. And you know, the last time that I saw David, he was doing well. He often when we did have communication outside of school afterwards. You know, you got to figure that I did this fifteen years ago when I retired, and so most of these kids that I dealt with in middle school are now adults themselves, and so they recognize me, but they've had so much development change. A lot of times I don't know who they are until they talk to me.

15:27 And David, it was a pleasure getting to talk to him, and he got to meet my wife, and he thanked me for taking the time to understand that his emotions at that point were very fragile and to show empathy and concern. I could have wrote him a ticket. I could have done a lot of different things, but I chose to go with the school and to be able to do some counseling and some help with him there, and to involve his family. That was one of the more rewarding things that I that I got to do, and I got to do that on a continual bases. It just wasn't David, it was other students as well. We live in a society that we have so many different things. The school that I was in, it was primarily in a low income housing area. So I had a lot of different dynamics in that cases where you had single family, single families that were having kids in the school, where there was nobody home when these kids came home, and so how do you keep those kids out of trouble when mom and dad are at work trying to get through things. So it was an opportunity to help work with the community and to gain their trust to be able to help them in their leadership journey with their kids, to help leadership in the school be able to more effectively deal with issues that a kid was involved in that they may not have really known about themselves. But because of my ability to check

16:58 into the backgrounds and things that are going on, I was able to bring something to the table that was really needed for them to be able to make the best decisions involving these kids. Yeah, I know, and thank you. Thank you for your services and supporting our younger generation because they have the leaders. As you mentioned that it's been a while and that the leaders of today and you talk about leaders missing out on those like having blind spots. Can you tell us a bit more about that. Yeah, you know, we were so used to hearing people say leaders when they end up dealing with impairment or even other issues for that matter, saying well, you know we have a zero tolerance policy, Well what does that mean?

17:47 A lot of times leaders know they have it, but they don't know exactly what it does or how it can help in that situation. And what I've really concentrated on with leaders is just that's what I call blind spots, having a thirty second check in with somebody, being able to look somebody in the eyes, being able to ask someone how they're doing and then actually listen for an answer. Are they able to have that coherent conversation, Are they able to communicate well with you? And then being able to check somebody's normal baseline. Are they off balance? Are they you know, stumbling? Are they stuttering? Are they having issues that when you see them every day, this is totally new, There's something going on. I think a lot of times we're in such a rush to do things because we have time constraints, we have things that we need to do. But if you can just take thirty seconds as a leader just to check in with somebody, you're going to be able to find out in that thirty seconds just by looking at their eyes, seeing if they could communicate whether or not they have a change in their normal baseline. You're going to know whether you need to continue that conversation with them to figure out what's going on, or within thirty seconds everything's good, we can move on. I think that's the most important thing that we need to do. And active listening actually hearing what they're having to say to you and showing that

19:20 you care. Yeah, and you. Said that that we are in a rush, especially everything is you know, go go go, go, go, get it done, get it done, and finding that time so that just thirty seconds can make a huge difference. And you talked about active listening. Do you have any deeper tips in that. You know? Active listening is so crucial. I learned this early on as a police officer. You know, I often tell people as a police officer, I had this, even administration in the school come to me and they say, how did you get that kid to tell you this?

20:03 How did you know? And I looked over and I had a candy jar in my office and I sawved more incidents in that school with a candy dish than I ever did with enforcement. Because when kids would come into my office, or even school administrators or even teachers for that matter. A lot of times they were guarded. Sometimes the kids felt like they were going to get punished. And you know what I would do is I would slighte a Snickers bar across the desk to somebody and something would usually shift and then people would get comfortable and I would listen. And one of the things that I've taught my own family, my kids in general, and they if they were here, they would tell you this was a big thing with dad, is when I would communicate with them, and sometimes we want to be hurt. Everybody wants to be hurt. They want to be listened to. I would be in the middle of talking, and even in this well, I'll be millile of the talking, and they would stop me and they want to put in their two cents or what's going on. And I would look at them and I said, are you listening to react? Are you listening to hear what I'm asking you or saying to you? And when you had that reset with people, you would be amazed how different that conversation would be because one, now they know I'm listening. Number Two, they know that I care because I want to hear what you have to say.

21:31 But you know, it's kind of like my father told me as a kid. He said, Look, we can sing together, but we can't talk together. We have to have turns. We have to listen and understand so that we can figure out the best way to react and to help each other. So I know that active listening is such a crucial part of leadership for parents, for anyone just taking the time just to listen. You'd be amazed how many people will come to you and thank you when you really didn't say much in that conversation, but you allowed them the opportunity to say what was in their heart, what was happening in their mind, and then showing them the compassion and care and concern that you wanted to be able to help. I deal with people coming into my facilities every single day, and one of the things that I've taught my team is that look compassion in active listening or crucial, and when somebody comes in, even if even if you don't care, pretend that you do and watch what happens. And because of that, we've had less incidents of misunderstanding. We've had people come back and thank us. It's amazing what happens just through the ability to show somebody that you care and you want to hear what it is, they have to say.

23:02 Yeah, no. And that's powerful because what you're talking about is not only listening but also creating that space where you're bringing in that empathy, empathy and compassion. And when you do that, people know that you are creating that time you're sitting there with them. It's not about the rush. And you have talked about earlier on in our conversation about silence, compassion and empathy. Can you. Shed more light on that, you. Know, Sometimes the silence that we have with individuals, I've found is because they're trying to gauge whether or not they trust that you're going to be able to help them, or trust that you know what they say is going to be taken in the light that they want it to be taken into. A lot of times in law enforcement, I had to get over the stigma of I am just there to write tickets to punish and take you to jail. And sometimes even as a supervisor. Look, the hardest thing for people to do is to admit when they've done something wrong. And the reason for that is we don't want to get in trouble. We don't want to get fired, we don't want to get suspended, we don't want to have any of those things that could come as a result. I had a team member who

24:35 was very abused by the previous employer they had, and every time that she had made a mistake, when I went to go and talk to her, one of the first things she said, is, am I getting fired? I said, no, You're not getting fired. I said, you know, how are you supposed to be able to correct things if you don't know you're doing something wrong. You have to understand people are going to make mistakes and we have to give them that grace. But making somebody at that time with the silence, I think that's in you building that relationship of trust, kind of like what I was talking about earlier, having that candy jar there and being able to talk to somebody, you know, just asking somebody how you're doing, what looks good?

25:20 You know, how can I help you? And looking somebody eyes and being sincere and then doing the active listening that we talked about. And then if you know what's going to happen because of this as a result, what direction you're going to go to maybe you're going to go to if you're in a leadership position in a workplace, it's it's going to be having to send them to an employee assistance program for whatever issue they may be dealing with. At least having something that you can tell somebody, you know, telling them, well, you know what, HR will get with you tomorrow and they'll tell you what the next steps are. That's not good enough as a leader if you don't even know what your policies are or how the direction of this incident is going to go into. How do you expect your employees to know what their policies are and what they can and can't do. So you have to know those and you have to be able to give them some sort of information so that they at least feel validated and they know whether they could be suspended. I think it's in the way that you deliver it, how you talk to somebody, and how you say things. It's not just well you're probably going to be suspended or fired. Well, that's really going to cause anxiety with this person having to wait the next day for somebody to get a hold of them. Where if you talk to them and you say, look this is what our policies are. I don't know exactly what's going to happen. This could happen,

26:53 but these are the things that they will talk to you about. At least then they know that there's an opportunit unity for them to be heard, that we can work through this and whether it goes in a different direction and that's what ends up happening. I'm not saying my to somebody, but being honest in wanting to at least show that compassion and empathy for people. I think a lot of times that's the biggest key thing that we miss, is showing empathy to people. And it's so what you're sharing is that lays honest David compassion because you're not leading them down a different path or trying to squirt the issue. Basically, what you're doing is that listen, this is my understanding, this is what could happen, and will support you the best through this journey. So this way you are helping them ground themselves in the moment and leading them through it well.

27:58 And I think that if you think about how many opportunities that you had where you wanted to express something but you felt like you were cut off or that what you were saying didn't matter because we are in such a rush just to get things done. I don't how many times have you had people tell you that they were told by a leader, I. Don't have time. We can talk later. I think that that's wrong, the wrong way of handling any type of situation. We need to be present at that point, understand that each individual is having needs. And I know as a leader myself, you know I get bogged down too. You know there are days that I have twelve and fifteen hour days that I didn't plan on.

28:45 But I still need to be able to interact with. My team to be able to show them that one I care, and that two that they have the support that they need and that I'm going to do what I can to follow through to make sure they feel heard and safe and whatever else we need to do to take care of that. Yeah, and now that makes sense. And I know you have captured quite a bit in your book. Tell us how did you get to it and when did you publish the book? Well, you know, Mastering the Impairment Code is the book that I wrote. I did that after going to so many workplaces and seeing leaders struggle with understanding different dynamics.

29:37 And it's not just about impairment. It's also talking about some of the things that we've talked about here, how to communicate, how to draw these things out. Look, this isn't a book that's about punishment, okay. It's about trying to identify these issues before they get to the point where it becomes a crisis or you have an a excident in the workplace or things like that. And that's where we talked about earlier, was zero tolerance. Zero tolerance is reactionary. It's after the fact. You know. What I teach is those zero blind spots noticing and identifying things before they get to that point. So that's what that's where the idea for the mastering the Impairment came from. I also went through is Jack Canfield.

30:27 He is one of the. Individuals that did the forward to the book because I became an instructor for him because look, I was a police officer. Now I'm a boss for somebody. I need to learn how to have some principles of leadership to be able to teach and to train and debt and do those things. And so I became a master or an instructor for the Jack Canfield Success Principles, and it was life changing for me. It gave me a blueprint or a guide to go by to better not only myself but those that come to me. Look, I know that a lot of people aren't going to be with me forever. They're going to probably move on and do other things. But I think that during the time that I have that individual, it's my responsibility to try and help them be fulfilled in trying to be a better person than they were when they walked through the doork and came to work for me. In this book, we have other things. You know, it's not just impairment, Like I said, medical conditions. How many times have we dealt with that in the workplace and we didn't know because of hippa that somebody may have, you know, be a diabetic or they have epileptic seizures or things like that.

31:44 So how do you recognize that a lot of times people will view that and think that somebody is. Impaired when they're not impaired. So it's teaching leaders that you know, that compassion, that empathy, and that active listening skill we talked about earlier, that's in the book. How do you address those things and then understanding. You know, I think that a lot of times we have just certain drugs that we hear about in the news. Well we have people that are on prescriptions and sometimes they get addicted to those things. There's other things other than marijuana, which seems to be the big topic for a lot of people, but alcohol, alcohol is huge. You have to think about during COVID what were the things that people had access to alcohol, marijuana and prescription drugs. And a lot of times you did people that couldn't get to their AA meetings or they couldn't go to their support systems, so they started self medicating and start doing these things. Mastering the Impairment Code has been a journey that I went on that I feel very fulfilled in that hearing back from leaders. It came out in June of twenty twenty five, so it's only been a relatively short time and it's been well received, and I've had a lot of opportunities to go into

33:14 workplaces to teach people the things that I've told you here today and your listeners, focusing on leadership because it's a skill that I mean, I don't know how many people even as an entrepreneur when they develop a business, I think the last thing that they worry about is this the aspect of having to understand and realize that somebody could be impaired in your workplace. Because we're trying to do all these different things. It's usually an after fact, after an accident or a crash or a crisis, that we find out that we have a substance abuse problem and now we have to try and figure that out. So that's what this book is for. I'm not going to be able to turn anybody into a drug recognition expert like myself, but I think I'm able to help them identify easy things to look for that will lead them to those discussions and figuring out do we need to do drug testing, do we need to get medical help.

34:11 Do we need to look at our employee assistance programs to help people? Those are the things that this book brings about, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to write it and to have the impact that it's made on a lot of people. So basically identifying the issue before it becomes a major problem. And where can our audience find your book? Well, thank you. You can go to www. Dot masteringdeimpairmentcode dot com to learn more information there. You can order the book from there, or it is available on Amazon, It's on Barnes and Noble. It's in all the major book retailers that you would get your books and things.

34:54 Right now, I'm working on the audible book of it, so I'm hoping to have that out soon. If people are on Kindle Unlimited right now, you can get the digital version of the book for free. So that's one of the things I wanted to make sure that I get this out to people because it's so important, so important for leaders to have this. Now, thank you for sharing your wisdom, A pass and chuck any last words. Well, you know I need to acknowledge you. I need to thank you because what you're doing is very important. You have a book that you've just put out for your clients, and I think that sometimes we get caught up doing so many things for other people that we don't hear that care and concern and also gratitude for the things that we do. So I just want to take that opportunity to thank you for what you do and for taking the opportunity. No, it's important we need to hear that once in a while, and so I'm grateful for what you're doing. You're allowing me to be on your platform to be able to talk to your people about the things that are important to me, and that makes it important to you. And so no, thank you for this platform and the opportunity you give people to make change and to be able to get important information out to people.

36:24 It's very important. So thank you. Absolutely, and we are grateful that we are grateful for the work you are doing because it's so important that once people learn and knowledge is power as they get to know and they can help other people. And life is all about creating impact. Life is all about helping each other, building that community because we are all interdependent, and the stronger communities we build, the stronger leaders we build for tomorrow and even today, it's going to impact all of us and it's just going to make a better life for everyone. So thank you for doing and sharing your wisdom with us. And thank you wonderful audience for being part of her show, because without you, the show would not be possible. So reach out to us, let us know what you're looking for. Who can we bring, what can we talk about so you can live the life you deserve, and thank you on our tech genius for making the show possible. Be Valunta care until next time.

37:35 Thank you for being part of Beyond Confidence. With your host d v Park, we hope you have learned more about how to start living the life you want. Each week on Beyond Confidence, you hear stories of real people who've experienced growth by overcoming their fears and building meaningful relationships. During Beyond Confidence, Dvpark shares what happened to her when she stepped out of her comfort zone to work directly with people across the globe. She not only coaches people how to form hard connections, but also transform relationships to mutually beneficial partnerships as they strive to live the life they want. If you are ready to live the life you want and leverage your strengths, learn more at www dotwpark dot com and you can connect with wat contact at dvpark dot com. We look forward to you're joining us next week.