E13 Parentification: How the Roles We Chose Are Closely Linked to Our Past

In this podcast, host Laura Perez Earhart interviews guest Dawn Sipley, CEO and founder of Sipley the Best, an HR firm. They discuss the concept of parentification, where children take on adult responsibilities in their upbringing. Dawn shares her personal experience of being parentified and how it influenced her behavior in her professional life. She talks about how childhood experiences can shape leadership styles and discusses the importance of self-awareness in recognizing and addressing these patterns. The conversation also touches on the impact of parentification in relationships and the role it plays in leadership success or failure. Overall, the podcast explores the connection between childhood experiences and professional roles. Welcome to Coachonomics Presents Podcast, a part of the ECS Network. This is our new Masters of Leadership Teachable Moments Series. I'm your host, Laura Perez Earhart. I'm the CEO of Epiphany Consulting Solutions, a management consultant and executive coach. My guest is Dawn Sipley. With nearly 20 years in human resources, Dawn is the CEO and founder of Sipley the Best, where her HR firm supports and educates small business owners to take strategic decisions in areas of hiring practices, recruiting talent, talent retention, termination, and training, including other facets of human resources. Dawn's former years were spent supporting businesses with their hiring needs as a corporate recruiter, staffing company, or consultant. During those years in staffing, the concept of Sipley the Best was born. At that time, Dawn clearly understood the link between her natural talent and the abilities she gained from her tumultuous childhood upbringing. She quickly used her skills around negotiating and reading people to do what most thought impossible. Her epiphany was how she showed up at work. Her behavior, beliefs, and how her attitude were all linked to her past. Have you ever pondered the reasons behind your career choices? Have you ever detected familiar family dynamics unfolding in your workplace? Perhaps you've noticed certain colleagues who seem to mirror siblings. That's kind of scary. And your emotional responses to them, which provoke unexpected hostility. For many individuals, childhood behaviors, emotions, or beliefs are like lingering specters in the shadows, capable of seeping into their professional lives. In this podcast, Dawn Sipley delves into the profound connection between our childhood experiences and the professional roles we assume. She explores how our interactions and relationships often mirror our early family dynamics and offers valuable insights into enhancing your self-awareness, including recognizing behavioral patterns and visceral reactions towards possibly those you lead, including business partners and colleagues. Welcome to my show. I'm thrilled to have you here. You have such a compelling background and a unique set of circumstances that pave the way to understanding why people do what they do, how they interact with others, and the role people take on at work has much to do with their upbringing. Talk about that. Yeah, it was a discovery that I kind of stumbled upon myself around three years ago, kind of in the middle of the pandemic. I had been with my employer for 12 years. I had earned sweat equity in the company, but I was finding myself super frustrated with my circumstance. And as that relationship began to unravel and decline, instead of looking at my business partner and saying, why has he done this to me? I kind of asked myself, how did I even get here to begin with? And what I came upon was something called parentification, and it was something I had never heard of before. And for me, it really resonated. So for folks who don't know what parentification is, it is the inappropriate duties that are given to a child given their age, so age-inappropriate duties. So for me, that looked like parents that had drug addiction and mental health issues. So I was very much parentified by my single mother in assisting with household duties and responsibilities. So there's two types of parentification. One of them is instrumental, and one is emotional. And for me, I experienced both. So instrumental is the things that you do. The household chores, the rearing of younger children, the caring for and decision-making of the house. And then emotional parentification is instead of a parent checking in on a child's emotional state or kind of being there and helping them get through life, it's the child that's really showing up for the parent in a really big way. You know when dad comes home and he smells like that, that things are going to happen that will be violent or uncomfortable. And so you really get this hypersensitivity to people's emotions around them. And I discovered that's why I was such a good recruiter, because I, from a very young age, had been reading the body language of my parents and their party friends and figuring out who was safe, who was dangerous, who was telling me the truth, who was lying. And I had this innate ability to read people. And for me, just to give an example of what my parentification looked like, when I was 13 years old, my mom left me home alone for a month to enter a rehab program. And she told me not to tell anyone. So I was left with a child in kindergarten, my younger sister, and for a month I got her to school, I got myself to school, I cared for our pets, and I told no one. And it just seems wild for me to kind of think about what that looks like. But how that played out in my adulthood was I had a need for control. I found a lot of comfort in control, so I took leadership roles enthusiastically. I kind of had boundary issues, because I never had boundaries in the household. I told my mom what to do, so how was anyone else going to tell me what to do? So boundary issues and authority issues, which were displaying in that partnership relationship, were something, I had a savior complex. I am a terrible friend. Do not tell me your problems unless you want me to solve them. And I will be the person that shows up for you in a way that no one else will show up for you, because much of my self-identity doesn't come from who I am, but it really comes from how I serve others. And so I really had an identity crisis on who was I if I wasn't giving to others. And then, of course, we live in a world where that is just, can be very abused by friends and family, and they know that you'll never say no, and you'll always show up in a really big way for them, and you end up over-sacrificing. I see a lot of nonprofit leadership often has a lot of parentified upbringing in their leadership. They were the savior of their family, and now they're going to be the savior of the world, and that's why they got into nonprofits was to affect this change that they saw worthy. When I was in the world of staffing, the real privilege of working in the staffing industry is you would get really close to executive level leaders, and they would say, you know, I would ask them, well, why am I here? Well, these people just don't want to work, and we would go through these interview processes, and it was really interesting to me to see which candidates they chose and which candidates they didn't choose. And then once we got candidates seated in those roles, how were they managed by these leaders? As I got to know my client base more and more and kind of shared a little bit of my background, it was often the parentified leaders that had really risen to the top. We are afraid of taking risks, we're bold, but then we have this other kryptonite, right, that doesn't allow for us to have long term healthy relationships because we are so in need of that control. And for me, it was really interesting to learn how this very real situation I had found myself in was really a product of how I was raised, and it was from learning what, for me, parentification is and how it displays that I found it really curious that no one anywhere that I could find talked about how these childhood experiences of trauma and neglect affected leadership style, and that's kind of where I dove into it. That resonates with me quite a bit. I've observed over the years how people demonstrate their skill sets, their personalities through in certain situations, and I'm watching, I'm observing the interactions between these people. I can pick out general personality styles. So it's pretty easy to see the roles that people sign up for in their lives, both personally and professionally. You've come to a reckoning, and I could see how it's helped you in many ways, but also I could see the step backs behind this. So first of all, parentification is not an actual word, right? It's not in the dictionary. Yeah, it's not in the dictionary, but it's certainly observed by the world of psychology, which I have no official training in. I would like to just say that I'm not a psychologist. I am a life learner, and I love to really read, and being in HR, half of HR is influenced by what are we motivated by, what are we demotivated by, how do leaders get people to go to extraordinary lengths to succeed at the end of the day. Yeah, and I've seen those leaders that are really good negotiators, right? They can persuade their teams. They're very persuasive with other people. And then I see those who play more of the role of a mediator. I just want everybody to get along. So if it's a child, for example, that was raised in a tumultuous or hostile environment at home, and they tried to be the peacekeeper, that is a trait that follows that child into adulthood. Yeah, parentification, I've looked it up. I was just fascinated with it, but I could see how psychologists are diving into that. So I call it the ghosts in the closet that have been with us since we were children, and we become domesticated. We take a lot of those upbringings forward with us in the world, and some of them have negative consequences, and some of them create success for some people. Yes. It's learning how to survive, learning how to be negotiators, learning how to persuade their audience. That's what makes or breaks a leader. That's the different part that makes them so different, those that thrive and those that succeed and those that completely fail as leaders. I love that example that you gave about the family conflict and the peacemaker. So for me, I was parentified because of mental health and drug and alcohol addiction, but it can also happen in divorces where children end up trying to mediate between two angry parents, and then the parents get divorced, and now the young lady is the woman of the house and the son is the man of the house, and they're given these big burdens at six, seven years old, and now I have to take care of mommy, I have to make sure daddy's okay. Or it can happen through poverty, through just a lack of resources or the death or disease of a parent or someone else in the house where they just naturally step up because their sister now has cancer, and the mother is distraught that she's losing one of her babies, and so the big brother steps in and consoles that mother. And so it's not always these stereotypical ideas of what you might think of as parents with the best intentions when life just kind of happens, but either by design or by default, that child steps into those age-inappropriate types of things. So it can be very short-term and really spike, you know, and have an impact on a child, or it can be subtle and really prolonged as well. So it's not just, and that's the part about trauma, neglect, and abuse, is it's not always overt, especially on the emotional side. You know, on the physical side, we can really see how the instrumental forensification can take place, but that emotional side has a lot of gray area on when is it checking in on mom and dad just to make sure they're okay because I love my parents, and when does it turn into caretaking and reliance and an unhealthy type of relationship? Yeah, exactly. And you'd mentioned earlier, which a lot of, especially women are prone to, is not being able to say no, but also stepping in, being that rock for everyone but herself, putting everybody else first. Share some experiences that clients have shared with you about their realization, a parentification child, and how many of them are successful despite their colorful backgrounds. Thankfully, it does more good than harm when it comes to the business side of things. So they end up being natural leaders. They take onus for other people very seriously. Where it kind of starts to fall apart is in the more complex relationships. So when they do get into those leadership roles, the kryptonite for them is how to engage in a close relationship with your subordinates or coworkers without crossing boundary lines. For me, I had one client that she was a female and she was raised by her father, and she ended up in the trades because she had always been a daddy's girl and things like that. So that right there really influenced the trajectory of her life, having that strong male influence. And then her relationships with her employees ended up being unhealthy in a way that she got involved in things that were not related to her business and were related to those personal affairs. She was giving out personal loans. She was assisting people with, you know, private crises. And I do believe there is an employer burden to be present for your employees, but we still have to always be keeping the business mind first. And as the CEO and president of her company, she was getting her boundaries kind of confused and was stepping into roles that she shouldn't she shouldn't really be stepping into. And so when I came in as a business consultant, I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, you're going over to your employees' houses and sitting in their homes and you're you're lending private money. And well, no wonder they talk to you that way or no wonder, because then she was sharing with them, well, I've been through this and I've been through that. And it's hard to be a leader when you're in those intimate type of relationships. So for her, that's kind of how it displayed. So she was not able to set that she wasn't setting boundaries and and you're right, as a CEO and owner, it's it's our responsibility to stay on our lane and draw those boundaries, know how much to share and how to engage with staff, set the tone of friendship, which is not a friendship. I mean, it's a friendly, healthy environment is what we what we set out as CEOs to create for sure. What impact does parentification have on someone's career? I know that you're talking about this one client, but what let's talk about the impacts and the leadership style or relationships. This type of mentality may impact, yeah, negative or positive. Yes. So the leadership style that I've really seen come out the most in parentified children on the D.I.S.C. model, and that one's pretty widely known. So I like to reference that one a lot, is a high I and then a D right behind it. Most people that may not be familiar with D.I.S.C. talk about what that those initials lead to. Yeah. So for me, I represent that same model. So for me, when I'm at my best, I really want to show up for other people in an empathetic, present way that's able to listen and really put the needs of my team first and then I'm able to guide them with my D.I.S.C. along the way. But when I'm in distress or operating out of a place of fear, my D.I.S.C. will take over and I will become what I call mission over people. And it's about getting the job done. I don't really care how you feel. We need to suck it up, buttercup, and forge forward. And then that does damage in my relationships. Even for me, you know, it sounds crazy, you would think someone who knew better would do better. And even though I kind of just discovered this three years ago, it became blatantly obvious to me that I had parentified my own child. Having been emancipated at the age of 16 and moved out at a very young age, when I look at my 15-year-old, I have extremely high expectations on her performance because I had performed out of necessity so strongly. So I have to kind of watch myself on how that develops inside of my household. How it shows up at work often, to get back to your question, is we become workaholics. We find a lot of pleasure and a lot of comfort in the things that we can control, create, maintain, and push forward. Where we have a hard time really accelerating is in those more intimate relationships and navigating complex relationships. For me, I'll go to the ends of the earth for someone, but once you're dead to me and you've betrayed me, you're gone. And I won't even think a second minute about it. And I've walked away from what could have been maybe longer-lasting relationships just out of the ill-tolerance or muddiness or yuckiness or a hard conversation. How do you work through it to recognize that some of these elements that you're talking about may sabotage you? For me, my greatest way to work through it has been inner child work. Since I have such a savior complex and I have such an empathy towards other people's suffering, I had to learn how to love myself the way that I would have loved young Dawn, and rather than having such high expectations of myself all the time. So I tried to do the things that I would advise my own daughter to do. So demonstrating self-care and not having guilt over it, telling people, no, I can't show up for you in this way or do these things for you in this way that I normally have done. Controlling my tongue. A lot of people have that problem. Yeah. Yeah. Because since I grew up in such a colorful, diverse area, there was a lot of communication that was done that was not professional or appropriate, but I felt like I was edgy and open. And that's not necessarily the case. It's kind of rude and uncalled for. You can learn a new language and everything, but I wanted to display myself as someone who was nonjudgmental and open-eared and stuff, and I would show up to these places and kind of trauma dump and try to find the other victims that I could have in my little brood and protect. And they loved it because they've been traumatized and they enjoyed being cared for. And so they wanted someone to have their back and protect them, so they felt shielded by you. Correct. Because, you know, there's a lot to say about having filters. Emotional intelligence is an amazing thing. That's where the path I'm going down right now is, you know, my background is a big part of emotional intelligence and having the ability to know how to listen, to know how to filter our thoughts and our opinions in a way that we can deliver what we're wanting to say, but in a more appropriate manner, right? So we can be accepted and digested, but yet we can still be eloquent. We can make our point strongly, but yet we tailor it for the audience. When I work with clients, you know, there's a lot of impulse control that's needed or, you know, they lack the ability to filter what they want to say and spend a lot of time talking about how to phrase statements or how to ask those provocative questions to elicit engagement and gain feedback and insight, especially at that executive level, tailor their communication where it's going to be digested and accepted and appropriate. Well, language is just absolutely the most powerful tool that we have as humans. It's what sets us apart from every other creature on this earth, but you can't expect to understand other people until you truly know who you are and what and how you listen to your body. So, you know, through breath work and meditation and pausing and when I feel something go, oh, that I felt that strongly. Why would someone walking into a room saying something like that pierce my heart in that way? Because I don't think that their intention was brought with the impact that it had. So intention versus impact is something that I'm always kind of looking at. And then, you know, just being able to name my emotions is a huge part of emotional intelligence, because when I started on this journey, I was just mad or afraid or frustrated. And that was about the extent of which I could express, you know, my emotions. But finding those other emotions inside of what anger, you know, looks like because maybe I'm humiliated, maybe I'm not mad, I'm embarrassed that I messed up in some kind of way. Or maybe I'm just frustrated because I haven't had enough sleep or I didn't eat well, you know, because I'm not doing my self-care. Or maybe I'm just feeling super distant because I'm in a state of disassociation. So having gone through trauma and abuse as a child, I'm very easily dissociated from situations. And so then my empathy goes right out the door. You know, I'm watching my life, my business happen in a third party perspective instead of being in it with the people that I'm supposed to be leading. Yeah. So I want to just make a statement real quick, Dawn. So, you know, you're talking about breathing, meditating, you know, some listeners out there probably thinking, oh, God, this is woo-woo stuff. No, it's not. You know, it's reality. It's a way to create balance and it's a way to build a level of self-awareness. And it's about knowing thyself, right? The better you know yourself, you understand why you do what you do is going to help you overcome different situations. You're going to be able to handle them much better and be cognizant of what you want to say. And the point you want to make helps those leaders become more effective in their approaches. Be aware of your thoughts and your patterns in order to start making that shift. There are methods to this, whether it's you're able to quiet your mind and meditate for five minutes. Just being still. If you can sit in your office, right, and take some deep breaths before you pivot and go to your next meeting because you know it's going to be a doozy of a conversation. Very important for folks to find a way to be grounded and to prepare when they're walking into or even when they're not prepared and they walk into a situation where it's like, oh, wow, I wasn't expecting this. Right. And then you react with emotions. I think the biggest injustice that we've ever had to mankind is social media and the constant interruption of technology in our lives. Because before, when we were pumping the gas, we would sit there and ponder about the meeting we just last went to or think about what we might say when we go into our next meeting. And now it's just like when we have that moment of silence or quiet, we pick up our phones and we just start scrolling rather than having a reflection time behind the steering wheel. You know, whether we're listening to podcasts or we're scrolling on social media, we're just so overstimulated. And through media, we're told that feelings are bad. Like, oh, I don't want to. If you're feeling stressed, take this pill. You know, don't want to think, go out and have a drink. Don't, you know, want to do this. And, you know, like, God forbid you feel your emotions and you just sit with them. You know, we've become very good at masking our emotions, where emotions can really help to guide you if you really pay attention to them. To your point. Absolutely. How can our listeners better understand how their past may directly be connected with their professional experiences and role at work? What step or steps can they take to better understand that? I mean, the first step, if this any of this kind of resonates with you, dive into the world of YouTube and listen and hear about what forensification is and see if any of it brings up any emotions or thoughts kind of around it. And so after you have a better understanding of what it is, be cognizant of your reactions when you're in the workplace and when you've had those emotions before or what could be motivating those those heavy kind of emotions to be there or their reactions to kind of be there. So, one, it would just be to educate yourself, always be learning about what what it means to be a leader, what it means to have had certain life experiences, what does empathy look like in a professional environment with with solid boundaries? No one is going to fix your life but you. That is the good news or the bad news. So if you have an area of frustration or an area that you really feel that, you know, I love what Jordan Peterson says that if you sit on the side of your bed and just really, really ask yourself, what am I doing or what am I not doing that's stopping me from the person that I want to be tomorrow? Well, it's a hard question. And and sometimes you have to give up things that you take great pleasure in or you have to bring on new things that you take no pleasure in, you know, maybe going to the gym or eating right or, you know, doing these breathing techniques because then in the beginning, it's just going to be motion. But we have to get out of this. I'll do it when I feel like it status and just start doing the work that we know that kind of needs that needs to be done. Doing some of those things like breathwork, self-reflection, journaling, look into inner child work. If you have been a victim of childhood trauma or neglect, inner child work can be really healing to really get past that anger and resentment and that sense of grief that comes with not having a childhood. You know, for me, I was always called an old soul, you know, and I was always praised for being such a responsible young lady and such a good girl and and, you know, always so helpful and things. Well, it was because I never I never got to play. I didn't know what play meant. I still it's terrible. I don't play games. I really don't. I find them extremely stressful. I don't take any pleasure in it. I would much rather read a book on on something that has impacted my life because I feel like play is wasteful and it's just a terrible, it's just the saddest thing. But kind of going through those motions of growth and stuff like that, I'm learning how to to open up those things. So just be be your own rescue boat. Yeah, you're talking about you weren't able to be a child. I could see how that would affect everything else, even play. Who has time to play? You know, you're constantly on as a child and you're looking at parenting your siblings. There's all this adult responsibility on your shoulders, so that would make sense that you don't play games, you didn't play with dolls and you didn't spend time doing that. So as an adult, you know, you see that playtime as a waste when I can be doing something productive such as work or the household or running errands where some folks have experience and I've talked to them where they realize I need to incorporate more fun into my life. And, you know, I maybe they've said that, you know, over and over again, Laura, I've been told that, God, you know, you look so serious or it can't be that bad. And realizing that, wow, I do have this serious look about me. So they've practiced and they've learned to make those shifts that takes a lot of time and patience. It's not a check the box, right, Dawn? It takes diligence and work to change those things that we no longer want to be a part of our lives, both personally or professionally. So we're talking about emotional intelligence, but also emotional resilience, which plays a large part in how an individual navigates their emotions and experience and attitudes towards their discovery. Can you talk a bit about that? So let me just kind of give you an example of how I've been able to provide myself with some emotional resilience. Have you ever like just come home from work and you're like, I've got to deal with the family. I want to cook the dinner and get the kids in the bathroom, I want to clean up and do all these things and everything. And you walk in your door and your husband has announced he got a babysitter. Well, aren't you just rejuvenated and ready to paint the town? Like you were just exhausted five minutes ago, right? Oh, yeah, I got my second wind now. Right, right. But this resilience comes about us when we bring things into our life that bring us pleasure. And I adore my husband. I think he's just absolutely the best. And so I get tickled pink when he gives me, he loves me the way that I like to be loved, which is quality time together, because I didn't have that as a childhood and acts of service. Because for me, finding those things, I don't play, but I do go fishing. And after a really long, hard day at work, even when I don't feel like it, I do it. I pack up the kayak. I'm out there on the water and I'm catching fish at three o'clock in the afternoon. Because if I don't, I won't be a good leader for my people tomorrow. I have to clock out. I have to practice this emotional resilience of putting things on pause, showing up for myself so I can do that elongated game, because you can't burn the wick at both ends, you know, for too long. So I'm always checking in with my leaders to say, it looks like you have a hustle on now, but where's the end? When do we know that we can put the keyboard down, we can shut the monitor off and we can just walk away? Because even when we do do that, sometimes mentally it's still there. And so we're sitting there at the dinner table, but we're thinking about our work issues and things like that. So for me, emotional resilience means living life in my different buckets, doing the true clock out and then really being present for the people that are the most important in my life. And the saddest tragedy of my entire life is that when my children were young, I was so just immature and scared that I showed up at work in really big ways, but I didn't show up as a mom in really big ways. And it wasn't until, you know, my children got a little bit older and I learned what parentification was that I realized why my workaholic tendencies existed, because the boundaries were cleared, the goals were understood, the activities were simple enough. But, you know, navigating a marriage and raising children is gray and messy. So for me, that's what emotional resilience is, is learning how to to truly be present and then not allow that disassociation to take over my life. Because it can be really easy and people do that through drugs and alcohol, gaming, pornography. They clock out mentally in a bunch of different ways and they're not even realizing what they're what they're doing. Yeah, they're not cognizant. So in order to be cognizant, you have to be mindful of the thoughts in your head and what you're spending time doing. But I also like what you're talking about with resiliency is the self-care part. And, you know, that's that is not woo-woo. It's about knowing when to pause and knowing when to recharge and refuel. Right. And you're talking about burning the candle on both ends or when that wick is going to go out. I know that I've had challenges because I can be a workaholic and I literally have made it a point where, you know, I have a post-it and I make sure that I look at my schedule and I clock myself out at a certain time or make sure that I take a break at a certain time because I can just keep going. And then by the time I look up, it's the end of the day. And I thought that I just started my day, you know, that mindfulness. And it is for everybody, man or woman. And, you know, childhood challenges do not discriminate. Right, Don? It is what it is. But it's not just childhood trauma. It is also other elements that we've grown up. Different folks have grown up, brought traits forward with them that also have maybe sabotaged them, professional development, getting advancement. But also those that have had trauma, it totally affects them in a different way. But when it comes to emotional and social resilience, it's about knowing this, knowing the self and being really thoughtful about, like you said, sitting at the edge of the bed and did I really connect with people today? Did I engage others the way they should be engaged? Did I do what I said I was going to do? You know, that's the mindfulness part. That's the part of us as leaders that we should spend, we need to, not should, we need to spend time thinking about at the end of the day, I do that. I do that self-reflection. Do I do it every day? No, I don't, Don. Do I practice it? I do. I am mindful when it comes to that because that is very important to me and it's important when I engage my staff, but it's also important when I'm engaging my clients. It does affect my personal and professional life, you know, because when I'm family, friends, I do the same thing. I deliberately set out to be mindful about my surroundings and the people that I'm with and the engagement part. What if we move people who are struggling with their role, their mindset or behavior at work to partner with a coach or a therapist or maybe even both to improve their situation and to learn to advance their outcomes at work? Every great leader has always had a mentor, a coach and someone. You can't lead yourself to places that you've never been. You just can't. So when you are looking for someone to assist you in achieving some of the goals that you want to achieve, I would be very careful on who you choose as a coach or a therapist and make sure that their backgrounds, that their story and that their methods are oriented towards your personality. And I've seen a lot of people, oh, I had one and then it didn't work out. And, you know, it was like, did you vet him? Did you interview him at all? It's amazing to me how people would just, you know, call the number on the back of their insurance card and go to the closest therapist. Well, the therapist might not be the one that you need. We come from all different walks of life. But 100 percent, you have to have, I say that there was a village that still raises me to this day, whether it's my pastor, my professional mentor, my community leader that I have. I have leaders and mentors in different areas of my life and a paid therapist. So I like to kind of go down that path, not just with one person, but have someone who's doing life really well in an area and then try to build relationship. And it doesn't have to necessarily be a formalized type of relationship. Just find someone who's killing it. You want to be like when you grow up and start hanging out with those people. When I started changing my circle of influence and the people that I hung out with, my mindset changed. The law of averages is a very, very real thing. And I always found myself being attracted to. Socially, in the business world, I wanted to move in big rooms, but socially, I found myself attracted to rooms of people of low intelligence, low accomplishment, because I felt like I was I was at the top. Well, they weren't helping me get anywhere. They're not going to take me anywhere. So surrounding yourself with people that you admire, I think, is is really, really important. And then being willing to invest in it as well. You know, we invest in our apps and we invest in our Starbucks and we invest in our cars and in our outfits and our in our looks. And, you know, I'll never understand some of the beauty trends that we have that are just so ridiculously expensive. But then when you ask them last time they read a book about, you know, emotional intelligence, leadership, you know, or anything that would kind of level them up, they're they're really at a loss. Get someone in your life that's already been where you're trying to go. I think that having both a therapist, a good therapist and a good experienced coach who can help you as the therapist is helping you work through the mental and emotional set of this, the coach can guide you to achieving those goals, hitting those marks, work with you on the performance side of of work. You're talking about interviewing them. So I'm going to pivot a little bit. We're going to go into the job market around interviewing. I hear from employers how competitive and how increasingly and incredibly tough it is today to hire top talent and retain top talent. So now that we've unpacked how behavior, attitude and mindset are formed, let's talk about what we can do to take action to improve overall performance and how we show up at work and the roles that we take on. Let's discuss hiring strategies and what employers, leaders, HR professionals need to know today. How does understanding parentification serve or help with recruiting talent? Yeah. So I've recently been using the analogy, you know, a good leader asks their employees how their weekend was. Right. Not that they care a whole lot about what they ate for Sunday supper or anything, but they want to take a good leader takes the temperature of their flock. These who needs attention, these who needs extra, you know, support and then gets the business going on a Monday morning meeting. But an amazing leader, a truly present leader that's able to guide people from varying backgrounds, they know how the people got to be who they are today because of their life experiences. So for me, one of my very favorite interview questions to ask is, what do I need to know about your childhood to understand who is sitting in front of me today? And man, the answers will blow you away. I would like to add that the first answer is your PC answer. That's your polite answer. Too many people that are in the interviewing process ask the question, they allow the person to answer it and then they move on to the next question. Stop doing that. Say instead, share with me a little bit more about that. And then what else? Is that all? Anything else you would like to add to that? Go deeper. Go deeper. Go deeper. Because the real truth, the fascinating part is going to be the second and third question deep. In an interview process, they'll give you they'll give you a plain Jane answer on the surface. But then as you kind of unpeel that, it'll it'll be a little bit different. That goes for all interview questions, by the way, not just not just that one. So I think really understanding holistically that humans come with all different types of life experiences that were as polarized as we feel the left and the right and the conservative and the liberal. We are just a whole spectrum color wheel of of different things. Personalities are not linear. They cannot be categorized just in a disk model. But instead, there are a plethora of of life experiences and really kind of taking the pressure off of trying to understand everything that someone does and just allowing people to be who they are and then to be curious about how they got to be where they are and then just kind of resisting that idea of over labeling folks. If you approach recruitment leadership in a way of curiosity, without judgment that people want to be seen and heard. I mean, that's why social media is so powerful is is everyone wants their platform. So be the boss that creates a spotlight for each of your people. And if they feel truly important and seen, no one coming down the line is going to be able to offer enough money to steal them away from you. Oh, absolutely. Being validated, being heard, being seen and also feeling safe in the environment. Right. To share without feeling judged. But it's interesting, though, to start out with that kind of question about tell me about your childhood. What do I need to know? I'm sure that the interviewee that that sets people back right away. You should see their face. I bet. It's usually one of the the last questions that I ask once I've really built rapport. And also leaders need to realize that that they don't have the right to all information. You have to earn the right to hear my story. I gave a very high level explanation of just smidgens of my childhood, but I have very close friends that have no idea of a lot of different circumstances that I've that I've been through and would genuinely be shocked. So don't be offended or hurt when people just show a sliver of themselves to you. These are long term relationships. We're with each other eight hours a day. We will get to those deeper, deeper levels soon enough. So just because you pay their paycheck doesn't mean you're entitled to know everything about them. Earlier this year, I did an episode specifically on emotional intelligence and how to use it to craft emotional intelligence questions into the interview dialogue. So I'm curious, Dawn, what's your take on EI as an interview best practice? I love it. I think it needs to be at the forefront of all organized relationships, whether it's in your place of business, in your house of worship, in your school system, you know, really learning and understanding and ask questions that are emotionally intellectual or just is absolutely powerful. And then broadening your ability to use language that is edifying and shows gratitude. And I think if you are a person that is thankful and edifies those around you, that you will be an influential leader. Nicely said. That's brilliant. I like that. What should employers do and how should they think differently when recruiting and retaining the right talent? One, they should know what the job is. Too many bosses think they understand what the lower level positions that they're hiring for actually do. One of the things that I go in as a consultant is I'll ask the leader, so what's this job entail? And then I'll ask the person that's leaving the position that will be refilling, so what's this job entail? Totally different answer. Then you go to the people below that person. So what does your boss do? Totally different answer. You go to a different department, what does this person do? Totally different answer. They have no clue on the day in and day out of these jobs. They rely too heavily on their people. That's why I love me some undercover boss, is because those bosses are going into the workplace and they're experiencing what those different roles are. And I think a true leader is able to do that. So that's one. Just understand what the job is, the pressures are, the pitfalls, the privileges of that role. And then two, hire slow. Have a three interview process. Take them out to dinner. Spend some time with them. Too many employers are hiring out of a sense of urgency and desperation. They do a 45-minute interview. They didn't drool. They didn't cuss. You're hired. And we really need to step up our threshold of what it means to be excellent. And then that means we have to be excellent because we can't ask our people to be or do things that we are not. Right, it's demonstrating exemplary leadership, right? Being that model. Exactly. So the idea of good enough. And that just doesn't come to profitability, but that comes to character as well. So gossip is absolutely intolerable to me. It is the one thing that I see in all toxic environments. So being a person who does not gossip, who does not repeat the stories of other people, that's not your story to share, and being a trusted space for their employees and then not tolerating gossip at all either. And I think if you got rid of gossip in the workplace and people showed up with that gratitude, like I said before, that we would have dynamic elite organizations that automatically become profitable. I love what Crystal Parker once said, you know, oxygen to a company is essential, but it's not the reason why, you know, and that's the same for profit. Like we have to have profit to be in business. It's essential, but profit isn't necessarily for most the reason that we exist in business. Most entrepreneurs aren't necessarily in it only for the money. There's other motivating factors that are behind what they do. And they have a really strong why, you know, because if you don't have a voting for why, when the going gets tough, we're going to fold up and go home and say, just never mind, it's not worth it. But when our why is strong, and if, you know, Simon Sinek has a great message on this, then you can weather pretty much any storm as long as you keep your dignity intact. Dawn, thank you so much. This is just compelling information, and I know that the listeners are going to take some great nuggets of wisdom away, not only to help them evolve their own approaches and leadership and their personality and understanding why they do what they do. But also, this is about, you know, helping those hiring managers and leaders to think through the way they recruit, the way they approach interviews, and the interviewee to draw out those compelling insights and be more diligent when it comes to the hiring process. Absolutely. I think if they do those things, that they'll see a lot more job satisfaction among their employees, and they'll see an ease of management among top-level leadership. And high retention. Absolutely. And all employers, that's what they're looking for, is a higher retention rate. Also, just creating a healthy work environment, which all employees want. For employers, we want to be the employer of choice. Yes. One thing that I coach my career coaching candidates on is when they're in the interviewing process, they should examine two places in the workplace, the break rooms and the bathroom. So I want all your leaders to go back and see how well they've invested and how comfortable of a space are their break rooms and their bathrooms. Does the furniture match in the break room? Is there food on the inside of the microwave? Is there, you know, forgotten leftovers in the fridge? Or is it clean and fresh, and it has snacks and drink options, and it smells nice and is nicely decorated? Same with the bathroom. Does it have an odor? Is it single-ply toilet paper? Are there amenities in there for, you know, for freshening up in the middle of the day? Where is your employer mindset when it comes to taking people past how they make you money? So go back if you're really unsure of how good of a leader you are. Go check out your break rooms and your bathrooms and see if you would want to leave your grandma in there for an hour. Well, I think that's a fantastic note and a great way to end this podcast. Dawn, again, thank you so much for your wisdom and your expertise. And I'm going to look forward to future podcasts. Thank you so much for having me, Laura. It's been a pleasure. All right, Dawn. Take care. That's it for this episode of Coachanomics Presents Podcast. If you're interested in being a guest or you're a subject matter expert, please go to my website, www.epiphanyconsultingsolutions.com, and submit your request on the Let's Chat link. You can also find me on LinkedIn or my website, epiphanyconsultingsolutions.com. We hope the content and conversation will give sparks of inspiration. If you love the show and learn from it, pay forward and share my podcast with your colleagues and friends. I'm Laura Perez Earhart. Until next time, take care. Stay safe and live well.