Transcript: How to Turn a Workplace Culture from Toxic to Flourishing // Ron Riley, Cookson Hills

The Flourishing Culture Podcast Series

How to Turn a Workplace Culture from Toxic to Flourishing

October 24, 2022

Ron Riley

Intro: Do you wonder what it would take to turn a culture from toxic to flourishing? Well, today we talk with a leader who did just that.

Al Lopus: Hi, I'm Al Lopus, and you're listening to the Flourishing Culture Podcast, where we help you create and lead a flourishing workplace. We find the problem many employers are facing today is readjusting to our post-COVID, hybrid world. The great resignation is still evident, where employees are quitting at record levels, filling millions of open jobs, even as we face a cooling economy and record-setting wage inflation. We know that having a flourishing workplace with fully engaged employees is the solution. So this week, we're talking about moving forward on the road to flourishing, no matter where you're starting from.

Today's podcast touches the heart of why we do what we do at Best Christian Workplaces. Our conversation is with a leader whose work is all about facilitating the transformation of at-risk kids aged 5 to 17. And when he joined the organization, he was faced with fixing a toxic workplace with disengaged employees. Our conversation is about how he moved their workplace from toxic to flourishing. We know it isn't easy to transform a workplace, and we know it's well worth the effort when we get to see your employees flourish and deepen their commitment to the mission and vision of your organization.

I'm delighted to welcome Ron Riley, the executive director of Cookson Hills. Ron has been with Cookson Hills, a children's home in northeast Oklahoma, now for three years. Ron, thanks so much for being with us on the Flourishing Culture Podcast.

Ron Riley: Thank you, Al. It's great to be with you.

Al: So Ron, before we really get into the discussion about workplace culture at Cookson Hills and your leadership there, describe for us the scope of what you and your team do at Cookson Hills. So what’s the mission of the organization, and how do you work that out day to day? What’s that look like?

Ron: Cookson Hills is a children's home, started as a school for boys, way back about 65 years ago. But we provide today home, school, and therapy for children who are at risk. This is a no-cost alternative for guardians who are looking for a residential placement for a child, but they want to stay out of a state foster-care system or some other kind of placement for their kid.

Kind of the day to day, what happens for us, we see children come; they enroll in our program. They live on campus in one of our child-care homes, and each home is staffed by a Christian house-parent couple, and that child will live there with a mom and a dad alongside other placed children as a family unit. We really think God knew what He was doing when He designed the family, and we want to let our kids know that come in what that family is like. So they'll be placed in a home, but they’ll also attend our K-12 Christian school on our campus. Our school uses a trauma-informed-care model to help kids overcome past hurts, and we also provide counseling opportunities and equine-assisted counseling and therapy for the kids.

So children have the opportunity while they're with their house parents or whether they're getting a Bible class in the school or going through therapy down at the barns, whatever they're doing, there's always an opportunity for them to encounter what God thinks about them, that He loves them, that He wants the best for them. And our hope is that they get to rewrite a better story for their life while they're with us and get to know the Lord.

Al: Yeah. Well, thanks. That's a great snapshot of life at Cookson Hills, that's for sure. And it's such an important ministry. And certainly, I know with kids that age, it's not simple, and it takes a lot of energy, doesn't it?

Ron: Right.

Al: The staff at Cookson Hills have been participating in the Best Christian Workplace Engagement Survey now for three years, going on four years next year. And the results of your organization over time have moved from an unhealthy situation to a flourishing workplace, even as I mentioned at the preface, from toxic to flourishing in a short period of time. It's really remarkable to see that transformation in such a short period. So when you came in as executive director, what were some of the first steps that you took to assess and improve your workplace environment, Ron?

Ron: I really had a unique opportunity in this role because I was stepping into our organization from a supervisory role on our organizational board. So as a local pastor, near the organization, I'd been on the board for a couple of years, and so I kind of had some insight into the challenges of the work, but as any board member will tell you, you may have oversight, but you don't see everything that you need to see from that seat on the board. So we invited—the board strongly encouraged our former director, and then I got to come in and follow up on that, but to reach out to BCWI to help with our staff. And so I got to use the data, and really, the open-ended questions were super powerful for us from our Survey to kind of focus our attention. And we focused in on staff retention, communication, and support. Those were the areas that really jumped off the page to us. And then we really had a good time even getting some of our just regular staff members to kind of form a subcommittee and talk about how the staff themselves could help each other in day-to-day life at Cookson Hills.

It's really a unique ministry. Most of us live on site, live on our campus in staff housing, so you live in the same place as you work, and everybody around you is in the same boat. So it has unique challenges that our staff wrestle with, and thankfully, we support each other through those challenges. And so I would say that Survey was one of the key ingredients to us turning the corner.

Al: That's great. Love to hear those stories. And so here at Best Christian Workplace Institute, we group the various factors that make up the flourishing-workplace model into categories. And two of the FLOURISH factors that really stood out, when we looked at your data, the things that stand out were life-giving work—and that may not be a surprise because of the meaningful work that you do—but also inspirational leadership.

And so let's focus on life-giving work for a moment. Clearly, the vision of your organization is to empower healthy individuals is important. That would give your staff a real, true, deep sense of meaning and purpose. But it's also difficult work. I mean, everybody living on campus, it's hard to differentiate work and a personal life, and especially with kids that face multiple challenges in daily life. So what are some of the practices or messages that you and your leadership team have implemented to impact the way your staff understand the value of their work that really makes it life-giving work.

Ron: Yeah. I think what has helped us is just having a very simple mission and vision and value statement, that they're not difficult to remember or hard to understand. As a staff member, you can identify real quick, okay, who am I serving? You're serving students who are at risk. How do I serve them? Well, you're either providing them a home, a school, or therapy, or you're a support staff helping with one of those roles. And why do I do what I do? Well, I'm helping kids write a better story for their life. And we communicate those truths over and over again to our staff, that you never stop assuming that they understand or heard it. But we have an all-campus meeting with staff. We’re reminding them again about, this is why we do what we do. And so we communicate that in our on boarding, staff meetings, training. And each department has their own niche in that that they communicate very well. And so it's just really about communicating those, that compass. Here's what we're doing; here's what we're about; here's how your part matters. If you're a maintenance technician for us, you have a valuable role in keeping those houses a healthy, safe place for our children.

And so the reality is it doesn't really take long, I think, for our staff members to have that real-life moment where they help a child write one of those new chapters in their life. And that's deeply moving. It's significant to see life change in the moment, and you know that God was with you in doing something very special in that child's life.

And so one of our mantras that we like to tag in a lot of our materials is, it's not foolproof. Things happen. It doesn't always work the way we want. It's difficult. This is a hard work that we do. And it's worth it. It's not foolproof, it's difficult, and it's worth it. And I think that really sums up the attitude of our people here. They’ll tell you this is hard what we do. They'll tell you they've had kids that didn't, they didn't see the fruit while they were here, but they know it was worth the investment. And they pray someday that God will bring that harvest in that child's life.

Al: Having worked with similar organizations, I know it's when those students will come back and meet with those people that really had such an impact—

Ron: Yeah.

Al: —over those years in their lives, that's another thing that I'm sure they look forward to.

But what I like is what you said. With life-giving work, and we coach our ministry partners on this over and over again, and that's explaining to employees, “Here is how your part matters.” I love the way you said that, Ron. Thanks.

Ron: Yeah.

Al: “Here is how your part matters,” as you talk about the mission and vision and values, always communicating it through the various stages of an employee's lifecycle with the organization. That's great. Well, clearly understanding the value of their work is certainly motivational for the staff.

Well, let's talk about another one of our FLOURISH Model factors that's high in your organization, and that's inspirational leadership. And that includes the attributes of trust and transparency and humility, which are three of the items that score really high at Cookson Hills. So as the executive director, how do you set the tone for this type of leadership? I mean, not everybody can pull this off. Are there some specific practices or processes that you and your leadership team embrace that cause your staff to feel like they can trust you, your senior leadership team, all the supervisors, and managers of your group? Are there any you can think of that you can share with us?

Ron: Well, just thinking through my story here a little bit, before coming to Cookson Hills, I spent about 25 years in a pastoral role, pulpit minister, and I think God really did a good job working on my heart to know that one of my goals in life, no matter what I was doing, was to seek the well-being of other people and just having that as kind of a center for my life: what are you doing as a leader that makes people better? because if you're not doing something that's making people better, you're, obviously, doing something that's hurting them. So I would describe my leadership as servant leadership, done some research and just some personal development in that area of my life as well.

So my goal, really, is the growth and the well-being of my team, whether that's small teams—the other directors and managers that are in my leadership circle—or if it's the whole organization. But I see a need to invest myself, both spiritually and professionally, in the growth of my team. So for instance, one of the things that we've been working on lately is how to be a coach. So if you're a manager, the model might be, “I tell other people what to do.” And we've been working on the idea of, “How can you coach? How can you come alongside your staff and help them as a coach?” And that's a really different model for some of our folks to learn that model. I try to model that myself with my leadership-team members.

I like to spend time working side by side with different staff members in their role. So as executive director, you get the privilege of kind of, you can pick on a day, sometimes you can just pick, “I want to go up to the school and hang out with some elementary kids,” or “I want to see what's going on over in the maintenance department.” But if I can pick up a hammer and work a small project with somebody, stop and just listen to somebody from our ministry team in their work environment, whether they're the daycare provider or teacher or the equine specialist—I have mucked out the stalls after the horses have been in there just to show that I'm willing to get my hands dirty to hear what they have to say.

That’s what we do with the kids when they come in. We have to demonstrate we can listen to them. And it's mind blowing how often they say, “You're the first person who's ever stopped to hear my story.” But I think some of my workers might say the same about their manager or leader. Like, “They actually care about me. They want to know my story.” And so that's a value that we have, and I think each of our managers do a pretty good job of making sure they listen to their people. We can't solve—and a lot of people don't need us to solve their issues, but they do need us to hear what's going on in their life.

And again, going back to the Survey, I mean, that's what it is. It's a listening tool. It's a way to hear what's going on inside of the hearts and minds of our employees. So that would be some of the things that I'm doing.

Al: Well, those are great examples. Yeah, fantastic. I often talk with people about managing by wandering around. Well, you're not just wandering around; you're picking up the hammer. You're picking up the shovel to shovel some manure. You're—

Ron: Right.

Al: —helping do the work. That's even going further. That's true servant leadership in that regard. And again, your employees are only successful when you're able to kind of show that kind of compassion, if you will—

Ron: Yeah.

Al: —and concern for them. Good for you. That's fantastic.

Well, another topic, and I even brought it up—you brought it up, and I focused on it for a minute—this work-life balance. And—

Ron: Yeah.

Al: —it's an area at Cookson Hills that you score well. And sometimes when you've got work and then family time or personal time, but it’s not divided by transportation, going from work to home, because now your work and home is the same—

Ron: Yeah.

Al: —could really cause employee burnout. I mean, that's a hazard in your type of work. It's 24/7 in many cases, especially with kids with multiple complex needs. And you've got house parents, people are living in, they experience long days. So how do you help your staff achieve a good work-life balance, Ron? Are there some practices that your managers can use to help prevent burnout? And that's been an issue with COVID that we've seen in so many organizations: frontline workers experience—

Ron: Yeah.

Al: —burnout. How do you keep them energized for their work when it comes to work-life balance?

Ron: Yeah. It’s definitely a big concern for us. It's definitely something we monitor. I know when I was on the board, that was one of the areas that motivated us to kind of push for the Survey. And we felt that there was burnout happening. And so while, you know, we were able to kind of turn the corner on that a little bit, it doesn't mean it goes away forever. It's like it's always something you have to be mindful of.

One of the things that I've tried to implement is just giving our managers a lot of freedom, a lot of flexibility with their employees through COVID. I mean, our motto was space and grace. We're going to have to give each other some space. Sometimes that meant, I mean, they weren't coming in to work. They were going to have to somehow work from home. But also give them grace, knowing that, you know what? If they're not clocking in for 40 hours, we're probably still paying our employees, and we're all going to get through this together. And so that’s a very obvious example of COVID. I’m sure a lot of other people had to do something similar.

But that attitude kind of permeates our culture in a lot of other areas. We are in a rural setting. There are times where a parent has to run a kid to a doctor. That means if they're a house-parent couple, that means that the dad is probably home watching six or seven kids by himself while mom and one of the kids is off to the doctor. That's difficult, and there's no solution for that. There's not a way to fix it. But that might mean they're going to need respite sooner than what they were expected to get it. So maybe they're going to get some days off at the tail end of that.

So it just depends on what's going on in the life of our people. Being a careful manager to know your people well and when they're not doing well, pressing in and just seeing, “Is there some way we can help with this?

This year our focus post pandemic has been mental health. That's been kind of our thing we've talked about in each of our staff meetings. And we've even added a counseling service that Cookson Hills provides free to our staff. So it's accessible any day of the week. They can call; they can have a teletherapy session. It's not emergency, so, like, if it's something really bad, they call 911. But if they just need someone to talk to, within a day they're going to have somebody on the phone talking to them, or they can schedule an office visit at a provider's office.

But those are the kinds of things that we're trying to be thinking ahead, what could we do to alleviate burnout, to help with just the stress, the day-to-day stress? And just being managers who know your people and are willing to give them that flexibility. We have a policy manual, but sometimes the policy manual needs to be just changed or ignored for a day for some employee, because that's what's going to keep them here for a long time.

Al: I trust you’re enjoying our podcast today. We’ll be right back after an important word for leaders.

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Al: And now, back to today’s special guest.

Well, I like that. So three things just really strike me. You mentioned space and grace. But then I love that you said—and you said it a couple of times—know your people well. And that's a proverb. Know the condition of your flock—

Ron: Yeah.

Al: —is the way it comes out in Proverbs. And also connected to that is mental health and actually providing some counseling as a resource to help people as they deal with mental-health issues post-COVID. Well, that's great.

And, you know, even from the Survey results, we know that your people feel cared for, they feel supported, and especially as they carry out their responsibilities. And, you know, it's always interesting what employees will share with open-ended comments. I know as we did the Best Christian Workplace and do the Best Christian Workplace Survey amongst our own staff, I was always on pins and needles: okay, what are they going to say now? Right?

Ron: Mm-hmm.

Al: But for Cookson Hills, there were several mentions in the comments about training that you offer your employees and how employees really appreciate the opportunity to learn and grow. So that's uplifting growth in our Model. So share with us about your training programs, Ron, and how you invest in the growth and development of your employees.

Ron: Yeah. So each department has its own model for training. So our school looks different than ours. Our children's family services department looks different than our maintenance area. But for our school, we are an ACSI-certified school, so we actually have access to training through them. We do a professional-development retreat with our teachers every year. We also do, we use RightNow Media with ACSI, that has trainings that they can pull up on a smart TV so they can get their continuing-education credits that they need for that work.

And then, this year one of the things that we were able to provide our teachers was a mentor to come in from another outside organization and just kind of provide that 1:1 feedback. It's not my principal. It's not my coworker. It's just somebody who's been in education a long time. And I have these questions about just what it is to be a teacher. And so they're getting that 1:1 feedback. So lots of things for the teachers that way.

Likewise for our house parents, there’s trainings that they are required to do for the state so that they're qualified to be in the homes. And that's one thing. But we have regular in-service trainings, covering the topics that matter to our child-care providers. And so if you're a mom and you're like, “Hey, I've got a student that's struggling in this area, what have we got to do that?” we have a resource room that's filled with stuff about those things. And then, usually, if you've communicated that to your manager or your social worker, they're going to be bringing it up in a training down the road. And so you kind of know that you can just voice a concern about, “Hey, I'm struggling with this,” and lo and behold, that's what we're going to talk about in a month, because it's not just you that are dealing with that; everybody.

And it goes all the way down to our maintenance department, making sure they have the proper certifications. We have a large campus, many buildings. They have to provide water-certification trainings for those folks, and things like that.

So that comes a lot from my chair, just making sure that we have put that into our budget ahead of time, that we're not just scrambling at the last minute trying to say, “Oh, we should probably do some training this year.” No, it's expected. Everybody has a training budget, making sure there's enough communication ahead of time. We get all those things planned out. That’s probably the hardest part, just getting it set on the calendar and making sure it happens. And we’ve got good leaders. They’re following through on that.

Al: That's great. Yeah, fantastic. I love all of that. And it seems like everybody in their area of gifting or in their area of responsibility, that you really focus on what's the development plan? How do they keep sharp?

Well, the young people that come to Cookson Hills have experienced many challenges and, perhaps, instability in their lives. And having more instability doesn't help them, I know. So that's really important that your staff have stability; that you've got low turnover, high retention; so that the students don't have any more of this continuing change as they go through their young life. So one of the factors that you showed really improved is the hiring and retaining of highly capable employees. So when you think about hiring and retention, what is it about your hiring process and staff care that leads to engaged employees who want to stay at Cookson Hills? And I ask this as we still are in this great resignation, where we've got a lot of open jobs, and there's some discussion of a possible recession coming up. But we don't—you know, even the last, most-recent reports don't indicate there's any indication that it’s slowing down the employment picture. So this is really a key issue. What are you finding?

Ron: So for us, you're right. It takes a long time to find a good employee, and you invest a lot in them, getting them here in the front side. So finding mission-minded people who love the Lord and serving children has not been an easy task since I've been here. And there’s a lot that goes into it.

I would say we, of course, have to have a very careful screening process. I think anybody in ministry work, whatever you spend on that screening process, however you're doing it, you probably—it’s good. We review it every year just to make sure there's not something we're missing, because one bad employee could really hurt a ministry. And so we put a lot into that process.

We're looking for people whose passion, faith, and servant heart will align with our vision and our culture. And that last word is the important part to me: keeping our culture true to the mission and vision and then helping our staff align to that rather than trying to align everything in the mission to every individual we have. And I think there’s a—in my heart I want to hear people, and I want to provide for them, want to help them. But I have to be careful not to try to align my mission with that person. I've got to bring them, shepherd them into the fold and align themselves with what we're doing here. And so that's how you keep an employee, I guess would be what my thought on that is, align them with the mission that's here.

As you're listening to them, you're hearing maybe where they're rubbing a little bit against that, and you're finding ways to help them see the reason why we do things, to help them see that. And the reality is, you won't keep everybody. Not everybody's going to be at Cookson Hills for 20 years.

Was a really, an interesting anecdote today. We did a state recertification, Al, for fingerprints and background checks for our people. But it only has to be done if you've been here five years, and so they said, “Well, how many do you have?” And we had, like, 13 or something. They're like, “Thirteen! Nobody has 13. How do you keep them that long?”

Al: Wow, yeah. Well, great.

Ron: It’s like, “Well, they just love the ministry.” So they came to us this year, which is nice. So it's a long drive to Oklahoma City, so we were just fine with them making the drive to us.

So that was just an anecdotal little feather in the cap, saying, “Okay, we're doing something right. These people are sticking around.” I think I told you once, being at Cookson for five years is probably like 15 years of ministry. And what I did as a minister, it's a very difficult ministry. There's a lot of loss. There's a lot of emotional distress at times. So if they're here for four or five years, they've had a really good run. But we do have people that have been here 25 years or more, and so those are the ones” that you can just see their heart. They just, every day, “What can I do to make Cookson a better place? It's pretty fun to see that.

Al: That is great. Yeah, fantastic. And I love your three characteristics: passion, strong faith, and servant heart. I mean, so you talk about that, I'm sure, as you're interviewing employees, and saying, “These are characteristics of what it's like and what we want in people that serve here at Cookson Hills,” right?

Ron: Mm-hmm.

Al: Yeah.

Ron: That’s right.

Al: Yeah.

Well, let's talk specifically now about spiritual formation and the work at Cookson Hills because the spiritual aspect of any Christian organization is just a huge part of the culture. And in your funding description, you mention that Cookson Hills doesn't take government funds, and so you can freely teach your students about life-changing hope of Jesus—

Ron: That’s right.

Al: — no question, no issues there. So, fully your funds, or your revenue is all contributions.

Ron: Yeah.

Al: So in the open-ended questions—again, one more of these open-ended responses from the Survey—and it mentions that people really love the focus on Christ and the mission of the organization. So are there some specific steps that you and your staff take to keep this Christ-centered focus in your work? How is this Christian foundation lived out in the workplace and in your everyday rhythms there at Cookson Hills?

Ron: Yeah. It's really vital that Christ is the center of what we do here. We always say, if God ever decides to shut us down, it's not for lack of children that need served. It's because we've lost the vision and the mission that He's put us on. So for us, every part of our ministry, each department, they have a way that they're developing Christian formation in a child's life. So if you're in the home, you are doing devotions on a—maybe it's every morning or every evening or whatever your rhythm is for your family. If you're in the school, if you're in kindergarten, Bible is integrated into those kindergarten lessons. If you're up in high school, there's an actual Bible class. There's a Christian-worldviews class. So each department’s finding ways to make sure that they're doing the work of discipling a child for spiritual growth.

We look at even our equine program with our horses, and even that has a spiritual component as they do some—we would think of it as building social skills or something like that, but there's more to it than that. So it might be we're working through the fruit of the Spirit down at the barns, and you're going to learn how to help your horse have patience. And what the child is really learning is how they can have patience. And those horses are such a reflection of the child. It's just a fascinating thing to watch as they come down there kind of with a grumpy attitude, and lo and behold, that horse has kind of got a grumpy attitude. And our equine specialist, Lynette, says she has seen God show up so many times at the barn that she stopped wondering about it. It's just the reality. He's there when the kids are there, and the horses seem to know, “Oh, this kid needs a dose of reality today, and we're going to work on patience,” or whatever it is.

So outside of that, just even our own staff, they have their own small groups that they do amongst themselves. Not required, just stuff that they decide they want to do. I know there's a group of men that get up about five on a Tuesday or a Wednesday. They meet together for coffee—I think that's the big motivation—and the Word. They're just reading through. I’ve showed up to that one about once a month, and I don't have to be there every week because they never get very far. They've been in the book of Matthew for about two years, so I know they'll still be there when I get back.

And then we do other things that are somewhat like, I would call them, like, a Boy Scouts or 4H kind of clubs on our campus. And the staff love doing that. So they get to, basically, volunteer, not something they're paid to do. But if they have a gift—maybe they're good at quilting. We've got a guy that does Legos and robots and kind of brings all that together. We've got another family that loves to garden—and so they'll take this passion of theirs, and they'll share it with the kid in a class-type setting. But it's supposed to also bring in something biblical. And so if they're doing woodcarving, and they're all trying to carve a special animal, they're going to be hearing about God's creation during that. If it's Lego robots, about how God has given us such beautiful minds to create such interesting creations. So it's lots of things like that.

So, basically, it becomes a holistic lifestyle for many here on campus. We grow together in faith, and we grow as we share our faith with our kids. It's just really one of the beautiful things about Cookson Hills that you only see if you come and engage and are part of what we're doing here together.

Al: Holistic lifestyle, yeah.

Ron: Yeah.

Al: That’s great.

Well, given the journey that you've had over the past three years to provide leadership and really moving to a flourishing workplace at Cookson Hills, what would you say to a leader who is discouraged today? We've been through a lot here in the last couple of years. Perhaps one of our listeners has stepped into leadership and is aware that they're leading an unhealthy workplace, much like you stepped into one. So how would you encourage someone to move from discouragement to actually start the journey toward engaging employees and towards moving your organization towards flourishing?

Ron: I'm trying to remember the name of who was our coach after our first Survey. But reading the open-ended responses, I was quite discouraged. It was difficult to read things that I read. It was really hard on some of the other staff that were in leadership positions to read through their departments’. But I’m pretty sure the gentleman that helped us go through that, he said something to the effect that all feedback is positive; they're talking to you. Like, it sounds bad, but at least they're talking to you. They haven't shut down.

Al: Yeah.

Ron: They haven't given up hope that it could get turned around. And so that was helpful. I probably needed that coaching again the next time we did it. It was just, it's just one of those things. All feedback is positive. If they're talking to you, if they're sharing to you, you may not be able to solve it, but they're telling you from their perspective what they see, maybe not the way it's supposed to be. And so that was really helpful to me to hear that encouragement.

It also helped me go, okay, so instead of just being down that they said this, what are some of the easy things that we could do to answer those open-ended responses? What are some ways we could actually get some wins in the short term? What would be a victory? And so we moved right into, when I got here, talking about retirement programs for some of the people that had been in ministry their whole life and never, ever heard about retirement benefits. Like, that wasn't a thing. But working with the board, we made some changes. And so it wasn't something that I could do on my own, but together as an organization, we said, “We need to help our people with their pay or with their benefits. And this is something, we can do that.” We can't make it easier to work with the kids. We can't change the difficulty of when one kid leaves or one kid disrupts the whole household for a week. We can’t change that. That’s just going to be hard. But if it's about pay structure or benefits, or if there's things that we can impact, we ought to, and we should do it soon. While they're listening, there's a new guy in the room, so they're going to listen and see if it's going to get any better or any worse. And so that's what we did.

I would say—some people may not be ready to do a Survey, but I would say, at the very least find a mentor, find a peer. When I was in pastoral ministry, I was always on the lookout for a neighborhood minister who would be willing to just be a sounding board, someone that would just hear me, hear my heart, because it is hard. There's a lot of mess when you're working with people. There's just a lot of difficulties. And so I would go and talk with them and just say, “It's just been a rough week,” or “This is what's going on.” And the good ones that you find, they would pull out something positive for you to focus on. They would give you maybe a little bit of a test or, “Hey, go try this.” And maybe it worked or maybe it didn't, but it did give you an action step and got you moving.

And so if you're discouraged, look for that. Look for something where you can kind of put some energy in that's positive in your ministry. I highly recommend the BCWI Surveys. You guys are great partners. The ones that debrief us make all the difference. It gives us some knowledge and some action steps to take with it. And I know that our people, they see it. The score goes up and down, but they see it as we're a responsible leader because we're actually caring about what our people think. And so they're going to share that with us.

So those are some things that I would do. Find a neighbor pastor or another ministry leader that's something similar to you. Talk to them about it. Start an email chain with BCWI about what’s it going to take to have them do a Survey for your ministry. How would that help? You guys can explain it better than me. But I just know it’s made a big difference here.

Al: Yeah. Oh, thanks so much. Yes, feedback is positive. That is true. We oftentimes will say also, “Feedback is a gift.” And while it might sting a little bit—

Ron: Right.

Al: —sometimes it's just what we need to move forward.

Well, Ron, we've learned so much from our conversation, so thanks so much.

Ron: You bet.

Al: We go back, just starting with life-giving work. And your comment there, really expressing to your employees, every one of them, “Here is how your part matters in what we do in our organization.” I just love that. And then, also, from inspirational leadership, the way you really focus on working with others. You're side by side, managing by wandering around, and then some. Training leaders to be coaches, because when you're coaching, you're actually encouraging people to come up with their own solutions. You're not telling them what the solutions are.

Ron: That’s right.

Al: And really helping to encourage work-life balance so that people's well-being is healthy and positive. I love the training that you're providing really to people across the organization. You mentioned RightNow Media. That's one of our flourishing ministry partners as well. They do a great job with providing content and resources for people to develop in a Christian setting. And then your hiring and retention strategies, keeping the culture true to the mission and really focusing on culture. And in your case, passion, strong faith, and servant hearts are critical to the success of Cookson Hills. And spiritual development, we all need to really focus on that and our staffs’. And then, finally, again, feedback is positive. Feedback is a gift.

So, Ron, how about one more thing? Is there anything that you'd like to add that we haven't talked about yet?

Ron: I guess just a final thought. For me in leadership, it's really about seeing people for who they are, helping them become who God created them to be. I see it in our kids we work with, and I see it in our staff. And I love that God has given each of us that ability to be an encourager in the life of others.

Al: Yeah.

Ron, well, thank you for your contributions today. And most of all, I appreciate your commitment to leading your staff well, to really focusing on that, and to creating a flourishing workplace. And I particularly appreciate how you provide high-quality care for the kids you serve and really helping them rewrite their future and to empower them for a positive impact on the world. So thanks for taking your time today and speaking into the lives of so many listeners.

Ron: It's been my pleasure, Al.

Al: Yeah. Thanks, Ron.

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