How Nonprofit Leaders Can Thrive in High-Stress Situations

[0:00]  I funded a lot of nonprofits and when I came to this agency there was an opportunity to step in as um a temporary um CEO and I said yeah I'll do that why not and um that's kind of where the hardcore deep leadership skills and the need and the desire for real in in change needed to take place and why was that intense change needing to take place what was the current landscape well the landscape was really really amazing because you know there it was very there was a lot of public information that got out into the community about the organization and

[0:49]  there were many articles written and it went on for a long period of time and so there was a lot of Shame there was a lot of embarrassment there's a lot of um you need to fix your reputation in your community and so the the agency was very wounded and they were living in a Draconian kind of environment and that is um that's kind of what I walked into all right guys welcome back to a brand

[1:36]  new episode of the heart and hustle podcast now I'm incredibly excited to sit across this digital table from an amazing leader now I've got Gino who is the CEO and is the leader of an amazing organization called Sound Community Services Inc now Gino's going to be taking us through what it's like to be navigating an organization like his in the turbulent I would say society and Comm unities of having to show up for people in need we're going to talk about leadership philosophy we're going to come talk about overcoming organizational challenges employee empowerment and engagement company culture and so much more Gino welcome to the show man wow thanks for having me appreciate it Gino I think it's important for me to start off I've been asking my guests this important question aside from work and anything related to

[2:25]  it who is the man who is sitting across the table from me today wow so I think he's a guy that has a clear passion in life for creating opportunity for other people so you know being a servant leader both personally and professionally I'm always trying to look for ways to grow people and um help them to overcome their obstacles I'm probably someone that um you know even though I don't work 24 hours a day my head doesn't turn off 24 hours a day um you know I'm very passionate about um you know life in general you know I'm very fortunate to you know be blessed with

[3:13]  wonderful things and I feel like I've just got to give it away and you know a lot of people talk about like retirement but what does that look like you know because I'm up there in age and um I don't think there's any such thing as like retirement I will always be looking to do something that fills my bucket and that's when I see other people grow and develop what are some of the core values that you hold personally that have helped you navigate your professional career and the last 13 years of running the organization that we're a part of now so I got to say Integrity is one of them it's not one of our core values because everybody has Integrity in their core values right I think for me um I hold people to a very high standard

[4:04]  and what that means for me is you know making sure that everybody is on board with the same vision the same Mission the alignment we all have to be in alignment with each other and to do that you got to have integrity and um you know I I'm okay being challenged because I do love a good challenge but for me my number one core value is integrity especially as you're trying to develop new leaders if they don't have an Integrity with themselves you know they're not going to be able to give it away to other people so that is really I think the big one for me I have a philosophy and one of our core values that we hold at our company is called ultimate accountability now

[4:52]  ultimate accountability comes through this lens first of all you have to be ultimately accountable to yourself and when we're talking about that as a guiding value you know what you can and should be doing to show up as the best version of yourself now when you do that you take care of the people around you and when we recognize that we can drive an organization forward with core values I feel like there's not a need for all the checklists of the rules but that's the Northstar can you expand a little bit on why you agree with that so much oh God yeah so accountability is one of our core values right so we have cares compassion um accountability respect and excellence and um why accountability is so important is because we take an oath many of us have you know uh

[5:42]  credentials with um we take an oath to provide services to clients and accountability is extremely important because if you cannot be accountable to your profession accountable to yourself then you don't have anything real solid to give away to the patients that we serve um the other thing is that you know I love what you just said about being accountable you have to be accountable for yourself right so I do a lot of work with my staff in coaching about accountability and um you know we work on this quite a bit you know how do you have a hard conversation with somebody you can't avoid that because that's not being accountable to

[6:29]  yourself I just had a conversation with someone today who's an upand cominging leader and um I I said you know if you don't have this hard conversation then you can't hold them accountable and you can't hold yourself accountable and I look at that as being the lowest level of compassion right to hold someone accountable and to be accountable is the highest level of compassion and so people don't really see it that way but when I explain it to them they get it very quickly sounds a lot like true love to me yeah you know what I mean love in itself is willingness to have those tough conversations to deal with healthy conflict while you were talking there I was thinking about Ray Delio's book called principles where he talks about

[7:17]  within his organization healthy confrontation and conflict is something that you lean into yes because it creates opportunities for enhancement excellence and everything else that comes along with that you know it's easy for me to it's easy for me to sit here across from somebody who is as polished as you and recognize that you didn't exactly start here maybe you did maybe you're an anomaly I would love to give everybody a little bit of an understanding of the multiple paint brushes and experiences that make the Masterpiece that kind of sits away across from me as a leader so let's take it back like way back Gino where did you come from and how did you become this leader that focuses on these things well so um I worked in a different field well actually no the same field but I was in state government so I worked for

[8:04]  a state agency after college and um we had a pro it was a department of mental retardation now they call it developmental disabilities but I'm still stuck in the past right so there was an opportunity and somebody said we need to figure out what happens to our agency when somebody that we serve with developmental disabilities enters the criminal justice system what happens what are the fiscal implications of um our budget um because in Connecticut with the Department of mental retardation you have a massive weight list for people to get services but if somebody had a criminal Behavior they

[8:51]  would just jump to the Head of the Class but a lot of people were coming to us and um they weren't really supposed to so somebody said would you like to do some research what are the implications clinically financially and organizationally when the court orders us to take responsibility so I I said yeah absolutely because I love to create things I love to build things I love to fix broken things and I kind of forecasted my vision out there and said well what would it be like for us to to stop allowing people with disabilities to end up in prison and so I kind of went backwards in time and I was given

[9:39]  this wonderful ability to um with with an open an open idea and a vision to develop protocols inter agency collaboratives to deal with these issues when they happen and what I found was there was a another agency that was doing these competency assessments and they were making Court recommendations that we should take responsibility for them and they were not even legally defined as developmentally disabled so I had to do collaborations with multiple agencies court systems um had to have some really hard conversations with judges and say Hey you really can't commit that person to

[10:27]  me and you know that's not a great place to be in and um it was a lot of fun so I got to play clinical hat legal hat but then there was a leadership aspect because I was then given these five psychologists to manage and they were much older than me and you know I remember my commissioner saying to me I can't make these people follow you you're going to have to figure that out for yourself and um so that's kind of where the leadership Journey started for me I have always been a visual I I've always believe in manifesting what it is that I want in life so I always knew leadership

[11:17]  was my thing right and what does leadership mean it didn't mean sitting in a beautiful office like I have here today um it's about being able to create getting people to get on board with a really great idea I believe in horizontal leadership not vertical right actually see things in a circle more so um but I had to get these guys who were so much more qualified than I in some things to actually get on board with me so I had to use a lot of different techniques and um styles to get them on board with me and I would say 20 20 years later we finally became really good friends

[12:06]  peers equals because I always said you know if you're so smart you could have come up with this idea yourself but you know I did so let's roll with it and I think at the end we were able to change laws probate commitment laws we were able to reduce uh recidivism reduce unnecessary uh incarcerations and I will say that that piece of my leadership Journey you know I carry with me uh everywhere I go and um it was kind of like you I had people that I needed to lead but I needed to get them on board but it was really leadership through collaboration and I

[12:54]  had to ultimately resp have a l high level respect for them and eventually be patient enough to gain that respect from them and so I had the opportunity to take an early out I was 20 I'm 20 I was 48 years old and um you know I could uh when I was 55 years old I could get a retirement and all my health insurance and I lived very close to this agency so I would commute for 25 years I would commute hours a day and really all I wanted to do was work at close to home and actually work in my community I had never gotten to do anything in my own Community because I was doing it in

[13:43]  everybody else's Community instead of my own so I really wanted to do something that I could be impactful um be able to teach and I came to this agency in a director position and then there was some issues with leadership and um in my state position I would fund agencies so in that position I started with a $34,000 research Grant and it end up to be 25 million annualized and every year there was 2.5 million of new dollars because we knew X number of people were going to come out of prison and we needed to be ready for that so um I funded a lot lot of

[14:30]  nonprofits and when I came to this agency there was an opportunity to step in as um a temporary um CEO and I said yeah I'll do that why not and um that's kind of where the hardcore deep leadership skills and the need and the desire for real intense change needed to take place and why was that intense change needing to take place what was the current landscape well the landscape was really really amazing because you know there it was very there was a lot of public information that got out into the community about the organization and there were many articles written and it

[15:19]  went on for a long period of time and so there was a lot of Shame there was a lot of embarrassment there's a lot of um you need to fix your reputation in your community and so the the agency was very wounded and they were living in a Draconian kind of environment and that is um that's kind of what I walked into why did you dis why did you choose to be intentional about saying there was an opportunity here because that speaks to a lot to your mindset and how you come into challenges why did you choose that word well because it wasn't opportunity because one we served a lot of people thousands of people in outpatient clinics and um I had a

[16:07]  responsibility to the community we had a responsibility to our funding source but the opportunity was turning it around it was getting the gratification of knowing that I could be impactful enough to help a group of people to understand who they are what they have to offer and how they can turn it around you know it wasn't about me it was just that was my playing field was you know this community of Southeastern Connecticut so I saw it as an opportunity yeah I knew it was going to be a challenge and um you know it's been 13 years now and probably two years into that I was named a permanent CEO so

[16:57]  I've been at it for 10 12 years now I have a a framework that I like to interweave and kind of bounce off my guess here in these opportunities now this framework is something that's come out of manifestation of my personal brand so one thing that I'm really really in like adamant about is being optimistic but over the last years many people have said in social media and other things that people can be toxically positive it's an interesting perspective to me and so what I want to kind of talk about here is a framework called practical optimism practical optimism is looking at the situation how Bleak or great it could be and choosing to react with an optimistic attitude and turning things from a challenge into an opportunity what do you think about that practical optimism framework oh yeah just you know I love it I believe it and

[17:45]  I every conversation I have is about optimism with people you know I do this thing called um leading while walking around so we had a food truck today to celebrate being a top workplace right so I'm looking at that is this a great opportunity for me to connect with people and everywhere I went today everybody commented about I have heard about this agency I probably wouldn't have come years ago um but yet the vibe and the culture is what I love and so I do a lot of um emotional intelligence work and optim ism is a is a part of one of the composits right so you have 15

[18:34]  subscales optimism so I score very high in optimism a lot of people score low in optimism and so there's always work that can be done I think optimism gives you hope right it gives you the ability to see life based on your vision and not everybody else his vision it's like you got to turn the static off and the noise off right so optimism would be you know uh fully facing vision and you just really can't let other things get in the way and I think I think I think that yeah people can be very over optimistic but there's nothing wrong with that why

[19:23]  there's just nothing wrong with that I mean if somebody is is over compensating for something else by acting optimistic in a phony kind of way you can find that out very very easily but I do feel that um I lead with optimism in all my communications and because people expect that from me and I do believe and I have proven that we can go from where we were to where we are today I love that what got us here is not going to get us there and it talk about our continuous need to innovate and change and adapt to the current landscape I heard an analogy yesterday that I thought was really profound or profound and it was about leadership there was a CEO who was uh the leader of

[20:11]  a small family office and he was talking to one of his company CEOs and this sky was going through a really stressful time and I imagine in the transition and the opportunity that you were handed with the organization that had to be incredibly stressful yeah one of the things that this leader of this family office said to him was you know you need to think about yourself like a Yeti now Yeti is a famous type of insulated thermos if you will outside layer vacuum inside layer one of the things that he said is you have to be able to take the difference and the stress from your outside layer not let it penetrate that vacuum so you can stay cool inside I thought that was amazing to hear because I've never heard an analogy like that how do you maintain your Yeti like composure in times of stress I love that analogy so I practice something called

[21:00]  intentional energetic presence and so what happens is I kind of I will look at my day and I'll say I have these three or four engagements and I need to be a different person for each one of these encounters right and so I know I'm going to get a lot of um push back around accountability or accepting responsibility or maybe victim type of behavior because sometimes I believe that lack of accountability and taking responsibility equals a lot of victims right so I do what's called I must bubble up right so I visualize a bubble around me and I I write actually who do I need to be what is it that I'm I need to do to have this encounter be

[21:51]  successful I think it through I write it down I look at my own energy I'll say where I'm I on a scale of one today 1 to 10 and I might be at a seven what do I need to do well I might need to turn the lights off put a sign up on my door and say I'm in a zoom call and I might do 15 minutes of mindfulness and then I will set the intention for how I want that encounter to go that is what protects me from the stress coming in to me to where I can protect my own self because you have to think about longevity and you do have to think about um yeah I don't turn it off in my head that's because I'm always

[22:39]  thinking about good things and things that I can do and trainings that I can do but I do have to have my own tools to figure out how I'm going to make it through the day I do a lot of time blocking I I probably do two hours worth of work to prep myself before I even come into work so that I can be showing up fully with a whole heart and um not allowing that stuff in I was listening to a conversation between two very influential individuals and one of them was talking about the misconception that the public has for leaders and people of influence and the amount of personal and internal work that is necessary to show up as this

[23:27]  cool calm polished version of Gino today now people always say you know like yeah you know I'm so I wish I could be as calm as Gino he always has everything put together but what they don't recognize is in the shadows when nobody else is watching we're putting in the work consistently so I can show up as the best leader for the people around me why do you think people have a misconception that maybe you're born this way instead of putting in the amount of work that it takes to become this version of yourself I think that um you know people want want to be leaders but what I find is they don't want to do the work that it takes to become a really good leader and you know there are I might look really calm and everything but there are times when I'm dying a slow death inside and um I have to do what I have to do to

[24:16]  kind of rightsize myself so I look at it a lot of people say I need U balance right I don't believe in Balance I believe in equinity because leadership is like a tight RPP you're walking on a tight RPP right and the you got you holding the pole and the wind's going to blow you this way and really the idea is like how do I right siize myself right and always knowing that I'm going to get blown in another Direction and I got to right size myself and I think that you know that's how I'm able to survive still give people what it is they need still be the leader that they look to for inspir ation Communications collaboration um you know I think that's

[25:05]  that's really my method for making that work I have we're a unionized organization and people will ask me you know you get to do this or you get to do that and I always tell them I actually had a reporter one time really hassling me about um we were in a negotiations and we hadn't even gotten funding yet from the state and they're already picketing and um and so she was really getting on my case about my life right making all these assumptions and I said to this reporter so like how old are you and she said I'm 32 and I said so what do you want to be when you grow up and she said well I'd like to be um an editor of a newspaper I said so what is it you need to do I probably need to

[25:53]  get a graduate degree some leadership and I said so when you reach that point the benefits that come along with that kind of um strategy and um you know the pleasure and the sheer awe of having this responsibility are you not going to take that are you going to say no I'm not going to you know take that influence I'm not going to be influential or I'm not going to take the salary that might come along with that and she just kind of thought well you got a really good point you know but then went right back to being um a journalist and I and I think that it comes down I tell my leaders all the time I'm 64 years old I still spend four hours a day

[26:43]  learning improving uh that usually happens at 5 o'clock in the morning till about 8 o'clock in the morning and you know I'm sending out assignments to my staff who I coach you know do this exercise you know I met with someone today and they were talking about impostor syndrome and you know and I'm and I'm and I'm thinking like wow you've already proven yourself to be a worthy leader but let me give you something that will help you reflect on how ridiculous that statement is and so you know I do a lot of that kind of stuff I heard an interesting maybe a contrarian take on impostor syndrome and I'd love to lean into your expertise here you're not feeling like an impostor but often you are underprepared for the

[27:33]  moment one of the things that I've recognized is when I am prepared beyond all reasonable doubt I do not feel like an impostor but often when I try and justify to myself that I know more than I do and I try and stand in ego a little bit that's when that feeling of impostor syndrome pops up what do you think about that yeah I do I I will often say um so what is it that you what is it specifically happens to you to come up with this conclusion that I suffer from impostor syndrome did somebody tell you that was that a something that you learned because it's really something it's a mindset right and really what you're talking is about confidence and ability and

[28:23]  self-regard you know it's a lot of the stuff that's in the emotional intelligence and I do recognize um you know I just read a great book ego is the enemy right so I love to study the stoics and Ryan holiday and I gave that book to someone and I said so read this because it's really influential it'll let you know when you're in the ego world and when you are really true being true to yourself and I can get like that I know when I get in that space and I know when might bleed out a little bit and then that comes down to my core value of Integrity right I'm not being my true self if I'm in that space so I have to go back and do a reboot I call

[29:12]  it and a reboot might be all right who do I need to be for these people right now and so I I agree with you it's potentially when opportunity presents itself to someone who may not be totally ready but you see the value in what they bring to the table had a conversation with my a senior uh director today and she is someone that is just had a child and really is struggling to um hold it together there's a long commute that comes in there's I need to leave early and we've been really working on what is it that she needs to do in life so I'm taking a life coaching approach to this

[30:00]  person and ultimately she came up with this amazing Revelation I guess a revelation about I can't do it I can't be there for my family and I can't be 100% here so I have to make a decision so I helped her to figure out a way to move into a private practice doing her own practice having the skills to that she's already learned here but helping her to walk through the darkness because she doesn't know what to expect right so I'm actually coaching someone that I adore um not sure if she's like a child one of my children um you know twice of

[30:50]  twice her age but had help her to move on and when we we just kind of got to that last communications today you know it was good it it was really good and so I don't even know how I got on that subject but it was just something that was really burning in my mind today I think it speaks to the underlying importance of presence in being a true leader yeah right because when we need the most support is when we are unsure and sometimes we don't have all the answers but we can help people navigate through that Darkness with a sense of Pres that grounds us and it gives us confidence to be able to cross that threshold of fear right and that's where the growth comes from yeah and um I think she left with um I I have

[31:40]  accomplish accomplished a lot I do feel good about what I've done yes there is the fear of the unknown then we went into some work about what is really fear right it's a it's a story inside your head and um you've got this this tapes playing and you know so for the next um eight weeks let's really work on that let's work on your succession plan but I needed for her to know that she can go into this with full blessing no no no drama no you know you're leaving me or anything like that because she's a human being she's a mom she's a brilliant clinician uh she has an LCSW but she has a business mind and a quality process improve movement brain and so she is

[32:30]  kind of like the left side of my my brain because you know I don't like the process I like to I like to create and I like to be a Visionary and so I feel really accomplished to know that I was one influential I met her when she was an intern and um she would come to me with all these ideas and I would say well go ahead do that idea she would write this paper and it and you know she doesn't is an IOP director and then she becomes a director of Clinical Services and now she's a senior director um a chief of quality right so I've watched her grow over 10 years and um you know that's where that leadership while walking

[33:18]  around comes in handy because I can see leadership I can hear the language of it and I can see the intentions of where somebody wants to go and I think it's perfectly fine you know um I was just read reading a really great book uh yesterday and it was called dream manager have you ever read the dream manager I've never so really it was um it was about a guy so the dream manager is a coach within an organization but his job is to find out what everybody's dreams are and they might not be anything related to work it might be I want to build I want to buy my first house all right how do I help you to buy your first house let's let's use uh go

[34:09]  strategies around goals and let's help you break it down into like 15 different pieces right and so this lady buys her first house and the next thing you know she's inviting everybody over her house on Tuesdays and she said well my dream manager got helped me to do this and then and everybody was trying to get an appointment with the dream manager and ultimately they ended up needing eight dream managers because Revenue you know went up 600% and engagement went up that amount with it because people were not just talking about well just give me more money it was help me make my dreams come true and so I do say to people I do say if you can be anything or gain anything

[34:58]  as a result of coming here what is that and how many times have we been asked that question Gina I want to I want to go on a riff here because I know that we're going to be able to take this somewhere fun so in 2022 the Surgeon General came onto a national broadcast and said to the American people the biggest threat to our society today is not another viral pandemic but an epidemic of isolation and loneliness yeah now I grew up in a really interesting community of Detroit Michigan and I saw how my community had expectations and looked forward to working for large organizations like Ford and GM if you graduated from high school you could work on the power on the assembly line make $40 plus dollars an hour great benefits amazing pension you were lucky to be a part of that

[35:45]  Community since 2008 I feel like our younger generations and all generations in total have been exposed to many events that have been so psychologically unsafe to how we kind of represent present and identify work in our lives with the compounding factor of all the social isolation I feel like today where we sit in history there is such an opportunity for amazing leaders like yourself I might add to ask those type of questions how can I make your dreams come true by working here because we are never given the sense of fulfillment and social connection from our personal lives today because of distraction and social media and everything else but I feel like deep down we are yearning for that sense of connection and why shouldn't the places that we work for

[36:32]  step up and fulfill on that need that we all have deep down yeah so I used to work for a gentleman who used to always tell me Gino don't psychologize your staff and I said I would say but they're people we don't build we don't build cars we don't put nuts and bolts together we work with human beings who are supposed to be at their very best when they come in to work with another human being so I tell people right up front your personal and professional development is my business when you're here on the job so uh we have a new orientation week when new employees start and I'll take the whole first day we rent a boss or a van or something you know and we drive around to all of our programs and I have conversations with

[37:21]  people and it's all about it's all about those four phases of psychological saf safy right if you have inclusion I can just ask people what do you think help me out what's your opinion you've got an opinion I know you do I see it on your face I see it in your body language I asked the this young lady the other day about our social media platform and she's like well I gotta be honest with you it kind of stinks and she pulls up her phone and she's like I wouldn't have I'm like great idea let's let's expand on that um they're looking for learning opportunities right they want to learn more they want to be they want a path

[38:10]  they want it relatively quickly and they want that instant gratification and so I find that you know giving them the ability to contribute so if I have an I I met with three people today and I said we had a lead AP RN a Clinical Director and a nursing person and they've got some challenges I'm like why don't you invite these four people into this development because one they're ready for a new idea they're ready for an opportunity they've got really good ideas and I like their attitude in life so get them on board because they're going to show you something that they have to offer and you need to be willing to say

[38:58]  let them challenge you because between um you know collaboration and Challenger safety is where Innovation really happens and the younger generation like I was younger like that at one point in my life but you know they want to contribute in their own way so we have the we do a lot of Team meetings we have Norms about team meetings no judgment people are who they are there are no wrong answers um you know be kind be respectful you know I have this other lady that she said came up to me recently and said I just want to thank you for letting me be me and I said what do you mean she's

[39:46]  like have you seen the color of my hair and I said well yeah it's really quite cool but what I know is this person has dual master's degrees in organiz ational leadership specifically with nonprofits and administration and I'm thinking we're going to take that hair we're going to move you up the line and this is you know she falls in that 27 year old ra age range and I'm like you know so you have to know what drives them and I do feel that um you know isolation is a huge problem yeah it is people um we went into covid and we had to quickly move to T meds te theapy um all of our residential programs had to stay

[40:36]  up and running I have a ton of case management programs and I think it was very hard coming out of that because people got into the isolation um but we really wanted most people to come back because they needed that interaction now you'll get a young group of people that will say well people that work in insurance companies and other creative places they all work remotely right I have a daughter who's in her 30s she's never worked in an office she's always been a remote worker yeah you know and I might say all so I got to do your EQ evaluation because I'm hearing the way that you're talking to your boss and I would never like talk like that right so there is so you want to make

[41:25]  sure that you don't judge people for having a different opinion you got to accept them for who they are you know our our our vision statement is to um accept all people without judgment right to be a premier Behavioral Health Organization and to accept people without judgment so why if we're not going to judge our clients why would we judge our staff and I have probably 38 to 40% that fall into that age group I love the lens of what we're talking about here is which is a healthy sense of curiosity yeah right when you think about how we are going to be able to be nimble and flexible enough to stand up the organizations of the future it's so important for our leaders to have a keen

[42:13]  sense of curiosity and one of the things that I feel like a lot of I will call them Legacy leaders fall trapped to is I don't have to continue to evolve grow learn and expand my Horizon because I've already earned my seat here and it's interesting to think about the compounding factor of things like Innovation and Technology how are you being curious about how technology is going to impact the way you guys do what you do every single day yeah so I think to that first point there so you can never stop learning and you can never stop improving and if you get to the point where um I can just Coast you might as well just step off because it's not going to work and people will look

[43:01]  at you as an impostor right we talked about impostor syndrome but um you know there's always something to do there's always a new idea to cultivate there are other things that are happening that you need to motivate your staff with and um and so you know technology all right so you can learn anything that you want to learn right at your fingertips right so we give out a lot of online learning opportunities to people we have a whole popar of uh training programs for people you know they're all accredited and they're credentialed and so somebody can say I just got a certification that is credentialed in firstline leadership right and so I think the technology

[43:51]  helps in that perspective technology though in my arena is geared mostly around robust um electronic medical records right so we have we get Medicaid Medicare private insurance and you know at any moment you can get an audit and if your notes are not perfectly aligned with the goals and the objectives and the interventions you could not get you you could be get fined for that particular session and they could um you know extrapolate that particular engagement come up with a go back six months and give you a figure that you owe them so we use technology to make sure that's not happening so we we use Ai and we have people going through notes we are

[44:42]  making sure there's no cutting and pasting and moving clinical notes forward and so that's just like a safeguard for me so that I know you know my compliance department does this we do no audits but the technology makes it faster you can do it faster and it gives you the information to help whenever you get an audit because I've been auditive before and it's not pretty and um you know they looked at something they thought was a mistake they extrapolated back and I think we owed them $900,000 and um and we got the team together and said let's run let's run data on all of these um these issues and we actually found out

[45:31]  that they owed us $1,950 and we all went through hell for two months thinking we owed this money and I'm like no this is this I know this is not the case because the inspector did not want us to help him navigate the electronic medical record all I wanted was an apology right that's all I wanted but but just the mere fact that um I didn't have to do that and I know the safeguards that were put in place are there watching all the time and so that was the part of building the structure of my team I think there's so much opportunity right for how technology like artificial intelligence is going to

[46:17]  be able to serve organizations like yours you know there's so much Innovation that happens every day and I get really worried specifically honestly when we think about people who have been working in spaces that have not always been incredibly Innovative when I got into Healthcare in 2014 that was the evolution of ehrs and EMR starting to be rolled out I would go into Hospital systems and I'd try and Pitch them and sell them tella health and they were going through the transition of saying we have these gigantic file systems here that we need to turn into digital records and I was like maybe we're a little bit early for this technological Evolution yeah but now there are things like AI agents and AI experts that can play wayfinder to people in the community that say reach out to us text us as an example we'll point you towards appropriate resources get your questions answered quickly so when you do talk to

[47:05]  a human they're having the humanistic front and center conversation that is so necessary and it takes leaders to lean into maybe what we don't know because this technology is so new and evolutionary that we have to take a perspective of curiosity and that's where I want to kind of tie it back together yeah so you got to surround yourself with people that really this is what they as one of my employees This Is My Jam this is what I do right so he's a young guy and um so my theory is let's look at the data let's mine the data we've got this massive amounts of data let's look at people that are 25 to 35 years old that have um suicidal ideations that are living in isolation and um different kind of categories and

[47:56]  let's pull that group of people together let's create a group that and they you know young young adults don't like to engage so I serve a lot of 18 to 25 year olds um lots of them and what you have to what we've did was we identif what do you mean by they don't like to engage what does that mean well so they don't think that they have a mental illness they don't really think that they are homeless so they go from couch to couch apartment to apartment their profile is all the same multiple um State um DCF um homes that they were living in and so I I like to meet with clients right so I

[48:45]  met with this guy today on my way in and him and I he had some challenges in a program and I I want to talk to the CEO so I went over to talk to him and he's very smart but he's on the Spectrum right and he doesn't people don't understand that if I don't he doesn't respond to you it's not because he doesn't like you it's because he he has a social anxiety right so I saw him we had a two-hour conversation about two weeks ago I saw him this morning he's like listen that recommendation that you gave me I got a job I got a job I'm gonna be in the back room so nobody can see me I'm like there you go right and I think so that population you've got to get them to come in but not you got to meet them where they are

[49:34]  and you have to you're not going to be able to get them to engage with you clinically or do an intake they have to develop trust because they have been lied to and abused their entire life and so I try to teach our staff quite often is don't inflict your own value system on this particular person because you don't know where they have been and you're here to serve them and um because they can be very very challenging we'll also take that data mining and look at um so comorbidities so most of the time when a death occurs I get an incident report that I need to read read and sign off on and we have to report that to the

[50:21]  authorities so I always look at the age right so the average is about 58 years old they have been on a slew of medications which has slowed down the quality of their life their activity has slowed down and the comorbidities have kicked in and so we have this program called behavioral health homes it's not a home it's integration of primary care and behavioral care and we look at the data and we mine the data to look at all the people that fit into that category and we bring them in and we bring some people in to talk to them about diabetes and heart disease and you know at the same time we're able to engage with them yeah it might take some food promise of

[51:10]  food to get them in but they're coming in and they're making the connection and then we formulate groups out of this data mining and um so it's like all that information just lives there I don't like to collect data but I can look at data and tell you the story really really easily and say this group right here is how we're going to one generate more Revenue but this is the group that we need you know 38% of my population in the town where the city where my main building is is uh African-American and uh Hispanic and so it's a different population to engage with it's hard to make inroads with them so you've got to

[51:58]  go to their churches you got to go to where they are and you've got to be meet them where they are and there's a lot of um stigma around reaching out for help um but we have some wonderful bilingual clinicians and that is their purpose right my goal my vision in life is to be able to serve my population because I know what it is they need and so again the we're getting inclusion they're doing learner safety right and then there's a contributor and I'm like we'll go go do it make it happen so the technology is going to give us the ability to figure out how well people are doing and are they actually really

[52:46]  improving it's like the the are re RBA framework right results based accountability we don't use that but I use use it here to determine my own kpis and how well we're doing and are people actually getting better well Gino at the end of the day the more ways that you measure the more ways you can win now that framework came from an Olympic lifting coach who literally had his Olympians pring hitting personal records every single time they lifted because they measured everything and they found that that level of encouragement Based on data allowed for them to create momentum through winds which was really beautiful yeah so you you know I'm try I try to be very very careful because for instance we have kpis in all of our

[53:36]  programs and the kpis are not because I want you to do all this stuff it's because you should be really really thrilled about your kpi um and engagement the percentage of direct engagement because that's telling me that you're going to them they're not seeking you out and they're going to be better for that so you have to sell the end result because then people get a little bit freaked out about their kpis right I have a group of clinicians they're all the most wonderful clinicians these are wonderful people and you know they need to see 62.5% face tace time so that's five hours a day of billable time and um they

[54:26]  are almost all there by maybe five to 6% and they're stressing out about it right when I came here productivity was around 20% and so I met with them and I'm like listen you got to just focus on the outcomes don't you're you're doing it you're doing the work you're being too hard on yourself and you know it's really the first time since I've been here that I had a group that actually is driven to hit their kpis as they'll say some of sometimes it's unre realistic and I'm not gonna well that's you know that happens we're only human for anybody who's in sales I want to use this as an opportunity to say you

[55:15]  have to sell the vacation not the way in which you get to Maui right not going through TSA putting your bag up top sitting in the chair for 5 hours but talk about the end result which Gino just put so perfectly that's beautiful G I want to I want to use kind of our last segment here on the podcast to talk about some of the challenges and we can use that Yeti um I would say analogy that we used earlier when we're in the nonprofit space there are challenges when it comes to funding how we're going to be able to fulfill on the mission and sometimes we have to make tough decisions in order to fulfill on the mission long term because we're not fighting for today we're fighting for 10 years from now in the community that we serve so how do you navigate making difficult decisions while maintaining on the future with all the stress that comes along with making those tough

[56:01]  choices yeah tough decisions so I have a whiteboard over there and the second bullet on my whiteboard is um um make tough decisions so I have five areas that I own the vision provide the resources build the culture provide Direction and make tough decisions and so um in the nonprofit space it's very difficult because even though I live in a state that has a $4 billion dollar Surplus right now and 80% of the work in the state is done by the nonprofits we're still not funded to where we need to be and so teaching people with intense transparency on the numbers and the

[56:52]  finances is absolutely key for them to know that I can't give you more money if I don't get more money from the state look this is how much they gave me right here I'm just going to pass that along to you guys but um they Now understand this and they they actually have become using the eight stages of change management I created about a hundred ambassadors who came to the legislative building with me and did the picketing and did testimony on why they deserve to make a decent wage um with that there's always going to be this is a hard job these are hard jobs

[57:40]  people get burnt out they love the work but there are like for instance there are primarily females right that work here we have a lot of men but some of them have to make more they have to support their family I have a gentleman that's leaving who's a wonderful man and I'm not going to see him because I'm going on vacation soon and um I wanted him to know that I absolutely understand why you're doing what you're doing you're taking care of business right you've got to provide for your family and if that's the choice that you have to make then you got to do what you got to do and so but when it comes to making hard choices I have to think of so my my spere of influence my sphere of

[58:28]  influence is you know I've got the agency in the middle and I've got my managers and then I have the employees but then I have my stakeholders I have to make sure that I'm in alignment with the expectations and so I'm always looking for ways to put some positions together merge positions together where I can save a little bit of money but yet tap into other people's strengths so I do a lot of SWAT analysis on people I do some other assessments on you know what their skills are where I think they could go what would it take to get this person to be where they are which then means I've got to make some tough choices about letting eliminating a position and I try

[59:17]  to do that with the utmost Clarity it's still very very hard um there's a part of me that dies a slow death when this happens but I have a respon I have a fiduciary responsibility and I have a responsibility to the clients that we serve so you know I got to Bubble Up I I can go home and die a slow death inside if I want to and say wow that really stunk that I had that had to happen but you know with the way that things are going now people are making choices about moving on and looking at other things and is this industry really where I want to be and so the turnover rate can be a little bit High sometimes and I

[1:00:05]  think you have to be okay with that because people are trying to find their way it's not a reflection of the agency when we do we do stay interviews and we do exit interviews and and that sort of thing and you know it's always it's always a personal reason why they decided to move on and I I think that you know gives me comfort in knowing but I will tell you the number one thing that works for me is before there's a change I communicate it often All the Time video messaging emails newsletters I go out and I see people and I say to them this is the reason why I had to make this hard choice and they usually say I get that I

[1:00:56]  would I don't wouldn't want to be in your shoes so you know it's just a part of doing business and because my brain is always thinking about what is the next opportunity right like what do I like what do I need like oper operations and Synergy and initiatives are heavy on my mind right now and I have a lot of ideas but I need um a structure to move it forward to fruition and so that means I might need to make a change and so it's for the betterment of the organization and it always ties right back to the Mission Vision Values and what our key priorities are right and so I have a strategic plan but I have my own

[1:01:44]  strategic plan that captures all the changes I need to make and I come to terms with this is what I have to do and um I noticed over the past last month you know I've had a couple of leaders move on and um some of my my chief Executives really struggling a little bit with having to say no to our funer or meaning you can't say no we are here to serve right and well the staff won't like this so I am like well they're here to serve so you know it's a tough decision every single day but again it comes back to B ling up figuring out having a clear message and delivering that with authenticity people I will go

[1:02:35]  really close to the edge if let's say there was an underperformer that needed to exit out I will go as close to the edge so that people know somewhere deep inside why that activity took place I won't I won't disclose any information that that will hurt people but people want to know and you can't you can't just go through it and say oh so and so is just not here anymore that doesn't work that will that will screw your culture up immediately that has nothing to do with psychological safety where are we going where are we taking this organization over let's say the next two years what are we focusing

[1:03:23]  so we're focusing on um being able to get the entire organization in alignment behaviorally operationally and programmatically with the with the key priorities for the agency that's one of them we're looking at needs um so we have a opioid epidemic right so we're we're doing a lot of medical uh medically assisted treatment right now we're looking to develop uh a van uh a matte van where we actually go out and we we do the injections and we do they come to our building for the therapy but we're working with a local hospital to do the induction right so if you co to go on Suboxone you really need a eight

[1:04:12]  hour window where you can be observed and so that is a direction that we're going in I think the other thing is um making sure that we hire people that are doing it for for the right reason right so you know we have challenging behaviors we have there are no easy ones left out there and so um you know hiring really well the other thing is leadership training um leadership training for people that want to be leaders but have no opportunity right so we've we're creating a curriculum that's validated and uh accredited and we will have people that will write an essay on why

[1:05:02]  they want to be a leader and they'll go through this maybe six month period of time and we'll work on the very Basics what's it like to go from being an individual contributor to managing a group of individual contributors and you know those sorts of things how do you do a supervision how do you hold people accountable and then additionally to create a really good Workforce that's coming in um there are people out there that want to get into this field but they have no experience now if I can do a training program I'm looking to secure a grant that then gives a person an opportunity to go through this training program and then we can actually bring people on they can shadow in all of our

[1:05:50]  programs and we develop basically our own Workforce and so it's really a three tiered approach and I think for me personally um you know I'm in the last four to five years you know my board will have me for another five years and I it's succession planning for me and um what does that look like and embracing it and knowing that it's okay my time will come I don't own this it's not mine I'm just a steward of this awesome organization and so those you know again accountability um growth and creativity and then breaking down silos and um

[1:06:39]  getting more Synergy across the organization is really where I'm at and um you know I think that's what you're going to see in the next two years yeah it's an amazing it's an amazing journey you know learning about where the individual sitting across this digital table with me started the challenges that you've overcome the people you've influenced how you continue to coach how you continue to lean into and develop the Future Leaders of your organization plus everything else that we talked about in this short but incredibly valuable conversation Gino has been absolutely amazing one of the things that we do here on the podcast is we have a previous guest ask you a blind question I can't wait for your answer so over for your career what is one thing that you would change one

[1:07:30]  thing that you would keep the way it is and one thing that you would take away ignore those balloons the one thing I would change um many years ago um I was leading a group of people and I called somebody out in the middle of a meeting and I wounded them and they let me know that I wounded them and if I could change anything I would go back in time I I couldn't fix it I couldn't be forgiven for it they just would not so that was a lesson learned for me I wish that I could go back and change that um one of the things that will stay the same will be I will continue doing exactly what I'm doing and um doing more trainings and taking all this not I've

[1:08:21]  got 18 certifications right I can't give the information away fast enough and so that's what you'll see more of what was the third question one thing that you would take away will I take away I believe I will take away the um not leading at level for instance I sometimes have a tendency to step down right and um and try to fix it and I'm I'm learning to stop doing that because it's taking away an opport I think it's a very low level of compassion and you know I have people that you know we we practice a serious psychological safety

[1:09:11]  and they'll say to me what you don't think I can do my job and I'll say no I'm you're right you're absolutely right thank you for that reminder so I think I will I will I will let that go because I need for people to you know experience the face plant and what is the joy of what do you learn when you pick yourself back up right I gave this lady who told me she was leaving today we had a very long emotional conversation and I said listen let me give you this book and it was written by a Buddhist uh pemma choin her name was and it was like moving to the places that scare you I need you to read this book because right now you're looking at the darkness and I'm looking at the

[1:09:58]  light right I see I know what you can do so I had to give her that book and I want her to read that but um that's you know I think I'm just gonna continue to be the coach I like being a coach I like leading through coaching last question best coach in history who you got there's a gentleman his name is Andrew nyac Andrew nyac is the owner of the center for Executive coaching and so I've received many certifications I've gotten you know my Executive coaching certification my Advanced team coaching certification I believe Andrew is probably one of the finest coaches I

[1:10:47]  have ever met he's got a very short fuse and meaning like you know there's not a lot of time to waste but this guy is absolutely brilliant and I will occasionally um send him an email and I'll ask him a question he's like that's a dumb question you already know the answer what do you what is holding you back from making the decision so this Andrew nyac was um one of the finest coaches and I've been doing his programs for probably three years now yeah Andrew nyac Center for for Executive coaching well my friend this has been an absolute blessing the time that we spent together has been incredibly valuable and I just want to spend say in front of

[1:11:34]  everybody looking up to the man who you are the leader that you've embodied and the change that you've been able to implement through your time is something that we're all blessed to be able to tune in and get this fresh perspective met so thanks so much for the time we really I love I love what you do too I was looking at your website and you know looking at the app and I just thought how what a what a what a creative idea and then it just made it just kind of reinforced you know God there are other people that are living out their passion and their dreams right and the the motivation is to help others right so I really get jazzed when I see something like that and um it's that's what you know what at the end of the day when you know you've done what you're supposed to do it's kind of like I walk in my house

[1:12:23]  and I hit the top of the doorway like you know when you go you've won a great game or something I'll hit the I hit the top of the door and when I'm leaving my office and I'm like I did my job today I did what I'm supposed to do I showed up and that's a win for me well that's a great place for us to close once again Gino thank you brother appreciate the time that's a WRA