You always have a choice – Listen as Misty Janks, OCL professor and Impact Director discusses personal power, OCL, and choice in life, parenting, and work. In any situation, you have a choice to move toward acceptance, adjustment, or ask for change. What will your move be?
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Speaker 1:
Welcome to the OCL podcast. Our vision is to create people-centered leaders at home, at work and in our communities, who lead through the powerful lens of empathetic listening. Our podcast will help refresh your skills and sharpen your tools as we do the important work of truly human leadership together.
Adam Salgat:
Hello and welcome to the Our Community Listens podcast. I’m Adam Salgat, and today we’re going to talk about three moves, finding your personal power through choice. In an earlier podcast, we discussed what to do when someone is bugged or has a problem, we reflectively listen. Today, we want to shift the focus back to us and discuss the options we have when we have a problem, and how does this show up in our lives? To discuss this, today I have Misty Janks here with me. She is the impact and outreach leader for Michigan and a professor for OCL. Hello and welcome, Misty.
Misty Janks:
Thank you, Adam. I’m very happy to be here today and discuss such an important topic with you.
Adam Salgat:
Awesome. Misty, in the past, you’ve mentioned to me that this was one of your favorite slides when you go through an OCL presentation, why is that? What is it that you connect with so much about this?
Misty Janks:
The reason I love this slide is I’ve seen it play out with the many, many people that I have come in contact in the nonprofit sector. So whether it’s helping women or helping individuals in poverty, a lot of the times it comes down to a victim mindset of, this is happening to me, I can’t do anything about it. This gives you a framework of yes, you can do something. You have choice, you have power and you can rise above your circumstances, no matter what they are. And that’s why I love this slide so much.
Adam Salgat:
That’s awesome. You guys can’t see it on the other side, but I can see it in her face when she’s talking about giving someone power, she means it.
Misty Janks:
In class, we learned a lot about power and its misuse. In one of our recent podcasts from alumni, Amy Phoenix, we even heard about the lasting impacts that misuse can have. But today we want to look at the other side of the power, the positive side called personal power. Personal power is based on strength, confidence, and competence, which individuals acquire in the course of development. It is us asserting our power through our decisions and choice.
Adam Salgat:
Okay.
Misty Janks:
And since we always have a choice, we have personal power, personal power is a positive attitude and mindset. We always have a choice and can control and drive our situations, situations are never just happening to us.
Adam Salgat:
When you mentioned about having a choice, there’s something very specific comes to mind for me. And that’s at my desk at work, above on the whiteboard I have written, “You have a choice. What are you going to choose?” And for me, that is dealing with my physical disability. So I have, in my mindset, the idea that I have a choice to stay in bed or to feel sad, or to not find a way to get over it, but I do think of it as a choice. I can choose to get up, I can go do the things I want to do. I might do them slower, it might be a little more difficult, but I still get them done and I push to get through them, and I push to go have fun. So hearing you talk about the choice and the personal power, I connect pretty directly with that.
Misty Janks:
Yes, that’s a wonderful example, that’s exactly what we’re talking about here. We always have a choice in how we react to situations.
Adam Salgat:
So tell me more about how we can react to situations that have to do with a confrontation.
Misty Janks:
If you remember from class, in the effective confrontation module, we have the three moves slide, and we go to these three moves whenever we have a problem or we’re experiencing a situation that we don’t like. And so in that we have the three moves, the first one is we can accept the behavior. So we change how we see that behavior and accept it. Always note that there is a false acceptance piece. Second, we can adjust the circumstances. We can change the situation by removing what originally upset us, or the third one is we asked for a change, and that’s where we confront the person with the facts and feelings of the problem and ask for them to change.
Adam Salgat:
I do remember this slide from class and in choice one and two, we are making the change or making a choice. And then in the third one, we’re asking for others to change.
Misty Janks:
Yes, that is right. That’s why I love this slide, it illustrates personal power so well, no matter what the situation is, we always have three moves, and that choice is always where we find personal power. There’s a lot of great research out there on personal power and the effects that it has on children. A high sense of personal power can lead to hope, resiliency and motivation in lives. Personal power helps you believe in yourself because you have control over what happens to you and you believe that you can do it, and you take the steps needed, and you have the personal power to achieve your dreams. With this tool, you can even help your children to understand how to develop belief in themselves and empower them to achieve their goals.
Adam Salgat:
Let me ask you a quick question about personal power, what I’m picking up on is a word that I use often, which is confidence. Is this along those lines or is there a differentiation of any type?
Misty Janks:
So, self-esteem, confidence and this personal power, I believe all blend together. And when you have all three of those aspects, you’ll also have a positive mindset. So yes, they’re very similar.
Adam Salgat:
You mentioned a moment ago about how this affects kids. I have a young daughter, she’s two and a half, and we have another one on the way, due in October. Tell me a little bit about how I could use this tool to help teach them to find their personal power. I know she might be a little young, but I might as well start preparing now, before I know it she’ll be six, then seven, and then off to college. I don’t know.
Misty Janks:
Absolutely. It’s never too early. I also have two daughters and use this with them whenever they have a problem. I believe this tool also helps them develop critical thinking skills. So say that your daughter comes home one day and she tells you that a kid in her class is picking on her. What is the first thing that you would do?
Adam Salgat:
I’d probably ask them what the kids said and maybe start to figure out what it is that’s going on, but I don’t know, to be honest, I could use some help.
Misty Janks:
Absolutely. So the first thing that we’re going to do when somebody else has a problem is we’re always going to go into that reflective listening mode. And what this helps with is, do you remember that out of your mind slide in class?
Adam Salgat:
Yes.
Misty Janks:
So it helps them release some of that emotion that is tied to it and bring that logic back up to that normal homeostasis. So the kids can start to logically process through the issues that they have. So after they’ve vented all of that out, and they’re in that logical space, this is where I start to walk through this model with them. And I’ll say to them, “Oh, it sounds like you have a problem, remember we always have three moves when we have an issue. So what’s the first one that we can think about?”
Adam Salgat:
The first one is whether or not we can accept what’s going on.
Misty Janks:
Yes. So, can we really accept this situation? And most of the time when kids start to vent to us, I have found, especially with mine, that they’ve already put up with it for long enough, so this one’s no longer an option because they’ve tried it for so long. So we’re going to move on to either two or three from there.
Adam Salgat:
Right. And so the second one being…
Misty Janks:
Yeah. So the second one is that we can adjust the circumstance. We can change the situation by removing what originally upset us from the scene.
Adam Salgat:
So we basically asked for a fourth grader to get expelled.
Misty Janks:
Sometimes that might be what comes up, but this is where I try to help brainstorm with them, always letting them lead and give their examples first, but then I might throw out some other ideas. So, looking at this situation, I always ask, “Oh, maybe we could move our chair, maybe we could stop hanging out with them at recess,” but just see what their ideas are, so the choice is still lying with them.
Adam Salgat:
That’s good.
Misty Janks:
So if they like one of those options, I always say, “Okay, let’s hold onto that. Let’s run through the third option that we have, and then from there we can choose the choice that you’d like the most.” So option number three is we can ask for change or do the effective confrontation. And that’s when we’re facing someone with effects and the feelings of the problem.
Adam Salgat:
All right. So we’re talking about creating an FBI statement, potentially anyway.
Misty Janks:
Yes, absolutely.
Adam Salgat:
Going through an FBI statement with a child, with a kid, I’m sure as they get a little older, they understand it a bit more, but at a younger age, how difficult can something like that be?
Misty Janks:
It’s all about role modeling. So the more they see it and the more you prompt them, the easier it comes. I know I have an 11 year old and a six year old, and my six year old definitely can pick up on the repetitiveness that we do things and it comes a lot easier for her now.
Adam Salgat:
Okay. So I can see how that can be very beneficial to help children develop critical thinking skills, belief in themselves and empower them to achieve their goals. Thanks so much for breaking that down with me, Misty. I appreciate it.
Misty Janks:
You’re very welcome.
Adam Salgat:
Outside of your family life, can you tell me how this could apply in the business world?
Misty Janks:
I think the biggest question that I see in the business sector, regarding this slide is when an employee is having an issue with their leader, they always say to me that they’ve already tried effective confrontation and it wasn’t successful, and now that they feel that they’re out of options. And that’s when I remind them of this slide and that they still have two options left. So option number one is accepting that behavior, and again, there’s always the option for the false acceptance. So we really want to make sure that we sit with it long enough to make sure that we’re not sitting in that space, that we truly can accept the behaviors that are affecting us. And then the second one would be to adjust the circumstances so we can change the situation, and this is the one that’s most often normally forgotten about.
Adam Salgat:
Can I put something out there as an example? In a nonprofit world, budgets are often very tight. So when you’re talking about budget of your department and you are looking at it going, “Okay, I want to do so much more, but I’ve only got X amount of dollars to do it with.” I have two options then that really are presenting in front of me, right? Is accept it, and then number two, adjust the circumstances. So if I truly can’t adjust the budget, maybe I can adjust everything within it. Right?
Misty Janks:
Absolutely.
Adam Salgat:
I’m sure you’ve had some experience along those lines.
Misty Janks:
Yes. Always looking how we can adjust the circumstances, what are those factors that are with in our control, that we can change to have the effect that we’re looking to have on this situation?
Adam Salgat:
And so hopefully getting to do what we want to do, make the impact that we want to make, but do it within the limitations that we have.
Misty Janks:
Exactly.
Adam Salgat:
Okay. Misty, thank you so much for sharing the three moves and finding your personal power with us today. What would you like our listeners to take away from today’s podcast?
Misty Janks:
I would like them to always remember that they have a choice in every situation and not just in confrontation, and in that choice is where we find our personal power.
Adam Salgat:
Awesome. Thanks so much for being with us again, if you’d like more information on Our Community Listens, visit our alumni page on Facebook and don’t forget, alumni, you are the message.
Speaker 1:
You’ve just listened to the OCL podcast. Thank you for joining us. For additional resources and engagement opportunities, find us on Facebook at OCL Michigan Alumni or ourcommunitylistens.org.
