Listen to Episode 2:
About the Series
At Change Matrix, we have been practicing training in, coaching around, and incorporating into our work adaptive leadership for the last 25 years. Based largely on the work of Ron Heifetz and Martin Linsky, we feel this practice is an especially equitable type leadership. We wanted to create this particularly timely podcast series to share what we have learned about and are learning as adaptive leaders. Learn more about the inception of the Living Adaptive Leadership series.
What We Discuss in this Episode
Change Matrix Founding Partner Elizabeth Waetzig is joined by Johanna Bergan, Executive Director of Youth MOVE National, to discuss how she came into leadership as a young person and effective strategies she’s identified through her experiences supporting young leaders. The two talk about ways to make and keep adaptive leadership concepts relevant and engaging for youth and how adult partners can actively make space for youth perspectives to be meaningfully included in change work.
Transcript of the Conversation:
Elizabeth
Okay, welcome everybody to Living Adaptive Leadership, a Change Matrix Podcast Series, where we want to get curious about how people learn about, practice, and support others in their adaptive leadership approach. I am so excited to have with me here Johanna Bergan, who is the executive director at Youth MOVE National, a youth-driven, chapter-based organization dedicated to uniting the voices of youth nationwide.
Youth MOVE promotes youth leadership across child serving systems including child welfare, juvenile justice, education, health, and mental health. I have known Johanna since Youth MOVE started in 2007. I have loved getting to know her as a leader, a colleague, an advocate, and a friend. Welcome, Johanna!
Is there anything you want to add about you or Youth MOVE?
Johanna
Thanks, Elizabeth. Really glad to be with you all today.
I would add that one of the important ingredients of our work at Youth MOVE is really in the acronym of the word “move”: of motivating others through voices of experience. And one of the things that brought me to Youth MOVE – and keeps me in this work – is that we center those lived experience and pure voices throughout all of the change work, throughout the systems that you mentioned. And I think we have a unique approach and commitment to believing and valuing the leadership capacity of our young people who have been engaged in those systems and have that lived experience.
Elizabeth
Thanks for adding that. And I’ve seen that in our work together as partners – that they are absolutely in the center, and it’s inspiring – so thank you for all of the work that you do.
I’m just a little curious about your relationship with leadership. Can you tell me a little bit about how that started?
Johanna
Sure. I always think about my experience as being a reluctant leader. And that through my youth, I oftentimes would be voted into what would be traditional leadership roles by my peers. But my willingness to accept those roles – from being secretary of my church youth group, to role in my 4-H club – my acceptance of those roles was always based on the fact that peers, external audiences, had encouraged me or provided me confirmation and affirmation that I should be in those roles.
And as I’ve grown, particularly in my work, at Youth MOVE, I’ve realized that those roles and introductions to leadership don’t connect to how I believe and live leadership in today.
So, I really experienced an introduction to adaptive leadership through a professional development opportunity, through Youth MOVE in my early twenties. And it was at that point that I really was able to take my concepts of what has been a servant leadership approach – built through my youth and my community – connected with this language and framework of adaptive leadership, that allowed me to show how I wanted to live out leadership in my work now.
It has always been important for me to state that I did have to have an external learning experience that was very much dedicated to leadership, and specifically learning about adaptive leadership and its connection to system change, for me to be able to understand and step into a leadership role that I believed I was capable and could play. That has been a very different shift from the experiences I had with her leadership as a young person.
Elizabeth
Yeah, that’s great. So coming to leadership because people saw you as a leader maybe before you saw yourself as a leader.
And then there was this moment this opportunity to sort of look at it specifically, to sort of turn it over and think about it, and it sounds like your exposure to adaptive leadership came in a sort of traditional training. And there were a couple of, maybe, connections there? I’m sort of interested in what connected you to adaptive leadership in that early experience?
Johanna
Yeah. I think that I am had the opportunity to attend a week-long leadership training that was focused on adaptive leadership designed for system of care leaders. I was allowed to explore this topic in a room full of people who were passionately committed to changing children’s mental health. So I had this opportunity for an intimate peer group experience, based on our interest, although I would not identify myself as “peer” in any other way to the folks in the room – it was a very adult-centric system provider audience, and with myself and just two other young people being and people in that room – but I was accepted and welcomed into that space, and everyone in that training allowed space for me to sort of try concepts and grow in peer-ness with them because we have the same desire change goal.
The other thing about that experience that really connected to me is that the training was offered by a very diverse set of trainers with very interesting and divergent life experiences. Each of the facilitators and trainers showed up as a coach and offered mentorship communities from the moment I met them. That idea that there were all of these other passionate leaders who I respected, who I wanted to grow up and be like, were willing to offer growth and connection through this adaptive leadership frame, made it a space that was really welcoming and safe for me to keep challenging myself in that acceptance to try and fail. Now that you have someone that’s willing to let you repeat that process, I think those were really that peer group and that key coach mentorship opportunity, were key to my ability to jump in and be willing to grow as a leader from that point forward.
Elizabeth
Yeah I really want to appreciate that you’re talking a lot about this space that offered you the opportunity. And the space was scary, it sounds like, a little bit, at first. Because you were the diverse voice that was brought to the table amidst a lot of people that, maybe, didn’t feel like they were like you. Experience, age, profession…
Johanna
Yeah, definitely.
Elizabeth
And, there was also an opportunity for you to connect with folks and that made that experience move from scary to kind of exciting.
Johanna
Yeah, definitely. And have developed relationships with individuals in that cohort that have lasted seven or eight years later, to this day.
I think that that is another part of anyone who’s sort of stepping into leadership roles: that it’s important to have a connectivity with others that are on this same journey, trying to create similar change as you, so you to have someone to check in with. Whether for accountability or just a little bit of peer support and encouragement. That really was, those relationships I was able to start developing right from the beginning of my work with Youth MOVE, and I think it’s remains really important to me today.
Elizabeth
That’s great. I think what you’re highlighting for me is this idea that leadership cannot be, should never be, a solo act. It is in fact a collective act. And it requires those relationships that start in experiences like you’re talking about, but that are maintained through other experiences once you go back out into the world. So, leadership being collective, leadership being a shared act, it sounds like is really important to you.
Were there other things in that adaptive leadership approach – in your initial experience with the adaptive leadership approach – that sort of grabbed you? That sort of said “yes this makes sense to me”?
Johanna
Yeah. I think one of the other key takeaways, and I use it every day, is the definition of the technical challenges versus adaptive challenges. I was introduced to this language and this concept as a young professional who sort of thought I knew a lot of things. I also am someone who is a strong J on the Myers Briggs, and really believes – when I feel stress or anxiety or pressure – believe that a good checklist is going to save me. And it was really valuable, and remains really valuable, for me to daily look at things and say, “yes, this is a technical challenge and my checklist is going to help me,” and then also to name those things which are very adaptive and are going to need relationship-based work; that are going to need change-making strategies; and oftentimes my checklist is going to get in the way.
And being able to have that language; being able to commit to practicing using that language in my own mind; and also with my team, or anyone that I’m working with in the Youth MOVE network; allows me to not accidentally fall into managerial styles when I’m really trying to solve work and lead in a more complex situation, is probably the principle that I use most regularly.
I’m a fan and have talked in the past quite a bit with you, Elizabeth, about the value of getting on the balcony and getting out of the dance floor. Particularly because our organization is very youthful, both in our staffing structure and definitely in our membership structure, we get really excited about doing stuff. It’s really important in youth engagement that we get in, we create action, we get our hands dirty. That’s an important structure and component to youth engagement, and keeping young people engaged, and wanted to come back.
And at the same time, it’s really important to not just be in a do, do, do mode. And that concept of getting on the balcony, and inviting other young leaders to get on the balcony with me is something that is particularly important when we’re doing like multi-stakeholder multigroup, many young people from different places coming together to make change. So that’s another one that I first learned in that initial training that has stayed with me as important.
Elizabeth
Yeah, and I love the way that you described them both as sort of tensions, right? So the tension of “I really work best in that technical spot where I can check things off my list” and “I have learned to identify when the work is more adaptive than technical.” The other tension you identified, is that doing again, it’s the doing, doing, doing, which is fun and exhilarating and keeps people recruited, and engaged; and yet there’s a moment where sort of getting up out of that do, do, do and being observant of the forces that support and the forces that challenge the doing is an important part, particularly I would imagine, of your role as the Executive Director of this very important and very active organization.
So, I want to ask you a little bit – if you don’t mind if we get a little personal – I’d like to ask you a little bit about how do you continually stay attentive to that tension? And how do you work through it in a way that keeps you in alignment with these adaptive leadership principles?
Johanna
Yeah, I can talk about getting on the balcony strategies first. I also love to do, do, do. And so when I’m in a planning group or a working group, I really want to be a part of a part of the work. Yet, I have learned to identify when I get too deep in the work. For me, that might look like an observation of “Wow I’m doing some really little, tiny detailed work in order to lift this project off the ground, I’m not sure that is in my job responsibilities” and then at that moment I ask myself a couple of questions, which is: “Am I doing this because it makes me feel good? like is it is it a passion of mine and am I getting fulfillment? Okay then maybe it’s okay that I keep doing this,” or “Am I doing this because I’m avoiding something, another tension, or something that’s happening? Okay, that doesn’t feel as good a reason to stay in this ‘do’ mode,” or “Am I doing it because I’m concerned there isn’t someone else to do it?” And again, that’s a space where I’ve sort of trained my mental pathways to go, “That doesn’t feel so good, now doing these tasks doesn’t feel value-add anymore.” I think my role now is to walk upwards and backwards to that balcony. And oftentimes needing to bring some folks with me to say, now my job is to pause and have a conversation about capacity, or rule, or lift that’s going on in the team, and identify if others might also be feeling like we’re getting really focused on the do, do, do, and having forgotten some of our long-term goals.
For me going up in the balcony oftentimes means calling a new special team meeting outside of our regular process and really creating space to say, “this is the time we’re going to talk about the big picture stuff.”
The other thing that’s come up more recently in my work, particularly in all of the challenges that 2020 have offered us, is: when I find myself with decision fatigue, or floundering to describe the criteria I’m using to make decisions, it’s reminding me that I oftentimes don’t have a clear understanding of our goals and objectives; or maybe haven’t identified the outcomes that we’re really driving for, and I’m realizing that because I don’t have a baseline or at foundation to make decisions from. So that’s something that our organization has repeatedly, in 2020, stepped back and I’ve had to say, “I need more clearly defined objective,” “I need to know what outcomes matter to us and connect to our mission,” and if we can solidify those, if we can document those, then these decisions are all going to become easier. So that’s something I think that has been a more recent learning as I think about how to apply when to get on the balcony in my day-to-day role.
Elizabeth
Yeah, I feel like you’ve really done a nice job of tying two elements: one is getting on the balcony, the others engaging others in the work. Because you’re getting on the balcony when you’re noticing that you are leading in a solo way, in an individualistic way, and your value is around engaging others in the work. So, tying that balcony view to who’s doing, how are they doing it, what’s the objective?
Another thing you seem to tie it to is another way of identifying when it’s an adaptive challenge versus technical work which is, “I don’t know how to make this decision, I’m tired of making decisions, I’m not sure how to make a decision with confidence right now,” and that’s telling me that we have some work to do to outline the context for the decisions, and maybe even some of the values or beliefs that might be desperate, might be at play and different among the team, or even different between our organization and the environment within which it operates.
So, I think those are really two powerful ways of describing how you’ve applied the adaptive leadership approach over time, to not only your individual leadership, but the way that you invite others into the leadership effort and approach. Did I get that right?
Johanna
Yeah, definitely an Elizabeth. I’m hearing you articulate back to me one of my values which is input and learning from others. So I really operate from some core personal values that show up or affect how I choose to lead, and one of them is a great sense of responsibility to self and others. The other which is what you’re really describing back to me, and so I’m so glad that you’re hearing that, is that I really believe we all need to contribute to things, that we all need to be heard. There is very rarely ever an opportunity where “I” statements are going to solve the challenges that are in front of us, particularly as we’re trying to create change for young people across the country, and so I’m glad that it’s coming out as we talk today.
Elizabeth
Totally coming out and its power I’ve experienced you in the work world as well. I have never experienced you as someone who has an idea and wants to see it put in place exactly how you imagined it; you constantly seek the input of others, and you are always motivated by your service of other folks.
I want to turn our attention to that a little bit because, Johanna, one of the things that you have taken on at Youth MOVE and what Youth MOVE has done so well is elevating the voices of those with lived experience – particularly those who are under the age of 30 – who don’t always get listened to, who have powerful an important things to say. I’ve heard you recently talk about this idea that young people are leaders. We’re not developing leaders; young people are leaders. And we’re providing spaces for them to be the leaders that they already are.
I’d love to hear you talk a little bit about that philosophy, and maybe down the road we’ll talk a little bit about how adaptive leadership sort of specifically supports it. But first of all, how did you come to that idea?
Johanna
Yeah so that’s really an interesting question for myself, of how I came to it, and if it’s a mind shift for myself or for others? I would say, and I do say it regularly, that Youth MOVE National and our team truly believes that every single young person has the capacity to lead. It is really about being offered the opportunity.
And we particularly at Youth MOVE work really hard to offer the opportunity for leadership roles and responsibilities for young people who often aren’t offered those from other adults, or systems, or supports in their life. Young people who are a part of our Youth MOVE networks oftentimes have spent much of their youth receiving support, being offered support; and we like to flip that to say “Yeah, that support is necessary and helpful and each of these young people has something to offer as well, and let’s create a role for that.”
So that shift from believing that we need to create youth leaders to just understanding that youth can be leaders and simply need an opportunity; underlines everything that I do, and that our organization does in leadership space with young people.
I think what we have realized – and this came from experience that I had in adaptive leadership training and fellow early board members at Youth MOVE National also had similar opportunities – we realized that there’s a disconnect between the resources and opportunities adults have to make systems change, because they have more years under their belt, they have had professional opportunities where there’s development opportunities, people are invested in their learning, and there’s a disconnect with then the language that they have, and the framework that they have, that young people haven’t yet been able to experience. We think that a large part of that disconnect is actually made up for in the hopefulness, and the creativity, and the energy and the passion, and the lived experience that youth bring to the table. But we want to, at Youth MOVE, work a little harder to remove that disconnect.
So, one of the things that we’ve done over the last few years is adapt adaptive leadership training that we’ve experienced in our careers, and really create curricula and training opportunities for young people to be exposed to these topics, in a peer space with near-peer facilitators offering some of that same coaching, and mentoring, and safety of space to learn that I talked about being so important in my journey before.
And so, all that to say, I think there’s a little math formula in my head of activated, passionate young people with lived experience, some system leaders who are willing to let them come to the table, and if we infuse just a tiny bit of capacity building and ah-ha awareness moments around adaptive leadership, we really are going to be able to create tables where youth and adults are equal there in their voices, and equal in being able to be the drivers of change.
Elizabeth
So, can you tell me a little bit about the adaptations that you made? How to do take adaptive leadership and turn it into something that is interesting, fun, and most importantly applicable for youth? I found that adaptive leadership is, you know, it’s theory, whatever. But in order to really live it, to believe it… It becomes a way of being, right? It becomes who you are.
And so, I’m curious how have you adapted that theory, that curricula to help young people not only know it, but live it?
Johanna
Yeah, such a great question. So, it’s a journey we’re still on, right? We’re very committed to being on a learning and growth journey as we explore leadership.
The first thing we did is several of us attended adult-focused adaptive leadership training, and provided some critical feedback to coaches, right? About what fit well and what didn’t?
Our biggest takeaways in that early process was that case studies and examples matter. They need to reflect our real life. That means they constantly need to be changing. Like adaptive leadership for youth right now needs to reflect COVID-19, and the fact that we’re living in a global pandemic, and our education system is topsy-turvy. And if we don’t make those changes, our content is not going to land, no matter how great it is with young people. So it’s got to be real.
We also really wanted to infuse our understanding of trauma-informed practices within the leadership space. Safety, security, transparency, trust between the facilitators and youth in these trainings is of utmost importance.
For us, us that meant some adaptive leadership practice scenarios didn’t cut it for us. They weren’t trauma-informed enough, they didn’t create a strong enough safety net beneath young people, as we learned. And that’s something that we were clearly able to articulate early on, and that we carry as sort of a decision maker as we make changes to training throughout.
But I think maybe specifically there are two or three very tangible changes that we made that might help paint a picture of how we’ve done this adaptation.
So, the first is commitment to peer and near-peer facilitators. So, we believe that we want to offer adaptive leadership training to young people with lived experience by young people or younger people with lived experience. And so, that is a huge part of how we create that safety, transparency, and trust relationship between facilitators and young people.
When we think about the actual content – this was not my idea, I’m really glad this was a team effort – we were talking about mental models, and the ladder of inference, and all these great examples about how we were going to teach this, and someone said, “Mental models are like Instagram filters. So, you and I take the same picture of the same tree, but I put Nashville on it, and you leave yours without a filter. Our pictures look totally different.” And so we have continued to use that filter language to talk about what happens in our minds, and why we are looking at the same situation, but understanding something different about the context, and bringing our own different belief patterns there. So that that’s been really fun and exciting to use; and has been at one that clicks with everybody right away.
The other very tangible thing that we use when we talk about training, is that we do something that’s very practice based but also very individualized for young people. The first youth that attended our training came up with this. They were they were both gaining access to content it also telling us what we needed to change. They said there’re so many principles that we’re talking about, and new terminology, let’s try to make a map of what this actually looks like.
So we use a story of taking a drive down the road and then ask young people to articulate what happens on their journey so when you come to a T intersection, what does that mean to you as a leader, right? And what does it mean when you come to a place where you have to turn right or left? You will have to make a choice. You have to do something different. How do we apply adaptive leadership into that space? What does a yield sign mean on your journey, right? A lot of really great wisdom from young people being like, “slow down, are you taking care of yourself?” Self-care, wellness, responsibility to own being first and foremost, so that we can lead comes up in every road map that we make with young people. We don’t have predetermined criteria of what a yield sign means. Instead we’re offering a story and a framework for young people to identify, “Ah – in my life when this happens this is the thing that I’ve learned here that I’m going to use or practice in order to keep moving on my road map.” And I think it’s just been really helpful to take the language that’s in books and put it on to things that go great with poster board and markers. And allow young people, but our facilitators as well insist that they learn something new after each training, because we’re doing this practice based application while we’re talking about the concepts.
Elizabeth
Wow this is really exciting. What an amazing way to take what can be sort of theoretical but put it into an everyday experience.
I think I use parent-young person roleplays a lot because everybody’s been a young person, and many people are parents, and everybody can relate, everybody can relate to driving down the road, and having to make decisions, and think about other drivers. I’m kind of curious about the other people in the car, and who wants to go right, and wants to go left. I think that’s an interesting way to think about adaptation and how you participate in a group setting. So I really appreciate the example of how you’ve adapted that curricula.
Johanna, I have one last question for you. You’ve talked so eloquently about the work that you’ve done with young people to be leaders, to find their leadership, to maximize their leadership. And you’ve talked a little bit about being in spaces where it’s primarily adults and you’ve come into their world to develop as a leader, to learn about leadership.
I think it’s important that we talk a little bit about how adults, how adult partners, system partners, especially those who understand adaptive leadership, because we should be engaging stakeholders, we should be elevating diverse voices, right? And young people are obviously part of that group of diverse voices that absolutely need to be a part of this table. So, my question to you is: how can adaptive leaders on the adult side of the continuum do a better job of being adaptive leaders with young people?
Johanna
That’s a great question Elizabeth and particularly because I believe that as adult allies and system partners, being leaders in the space; we have responsibility, as you say, to convening diverse voices, to creating that engagement plan that creates change together, that we lead collectively. And to me I think that should look like a couple of really specific actions:
First, I think it means that as adult partners, we need to look around the tables that were at when we’re offered an opportunity to create change, or participate in a coalition, or a new collective initiative, we need to ask ourselves are the right voices here? And if we’re missing voices of young people; or perhaps we are relying heavily on the voices of one or two young people and expected them to speak for multitudes of youth; then I think our responsibility as leaders is to either pull up additional chairs to the table and invite those young people. Or to challenge ourselves to give up our own chair. If our expertise since systems change is already covered by others in the group, let’s get out of the way and let young people have those chairs.
I do think that we oftentimes accidentally draw ourselves a technical picture of a table that is “so” big: There are X chairs here. This is as many people as we can resource to do this work or manage to engage. But if we really challenge the conceptual drawing that we put down of how big our table can be, I find that almost always the table can actually be extended. I think this is particularly important for us to try to do, to bring those diverse youth voices to the table.
I also want to commit fully to the fact that young people who are receiving support and leadership training from us at Youth MOVE are continually going to learn and we’re going to increase capacity to show young people how to show up at a table and to bring your own chair. But in the ideal world that I live in, that burden that barrier for young people to bring their own share would be gone. And we would always already have the chairs prepared for them. I do think that there is ownership and leadership responsibility on the part of our adult partners and our systems to set an to expand that table.
Elizabeth
Yeah. We’ve got some responsibility, don’t we? And we need to own that as leaders, as participants as people who are passionate about the work I’ve been around too many tables where the inclusion of young people make it infinitely better. Not just better, but more relevant, because they know. They know what works. So I hear you, and I love the idea that we have to take on the responsibility ourselves for making that happen and be supportive in the invitation.
So, first of all I just want to thank you so much for your time. I also want to thank you for your leadership. I want to thank you for your passion regarding how you support young people to continue to achieve and lead, it’s exciting, and I also just love working with you. So, thank you so much Johanna for being here with me today.
Johanna
Yeah, thank you Elizabeth, so much for having me. Both on a personal level, love the opportunity to partner with you and your colleagues at Change Matrix, many of whom have been connected to adaptive leadership trainings that I’ve been able to access. And then also, just organization to organization, I’m always excited about what happens when Youth MOVE and Change Matrix end up at the same table, so looking forward to what will be sure to be more conversations.
