WP106 | Leadership Development in Private Practice with Michael Diettrich-Chastain, CEO, LCMHC
In this inspiring episode of the Wise Practice Podcast, Michael Diettrich-Chastain shares how becoming a father has completely transformed his approach to work. Once a "road warrior" who spent 176 days traveling in 2023, Michael is now shifting his focus toward spending more time at home. He discusses the changes he's making by building a strong, seasoned team to handle client-facing tasks, allowing him to embrace a leadership and visionary role. Michael also dives into the critical competencies that define great leaders, such as emotional intelligence, communication, and the often-overlooked skill of asking better questions. He advocates for creating supportive, conscious business environments that inspire growth, connection, and positive change, not just within organizations, but rippling out into the world.
From Road Warrior to Dad
Michael shares that having a baby has significantly impacted how he approaches work. Prior to the baby’s arrival, he spent a large portion of the year traveling—176 days in 2023. Now, he's focusing on reducing travel to spend more time at home. To achieve this, he's been building a strong team over the past few years, allowing him to take on more of a leadership and visionary role, while the day-to-day, client-facing work is handled by his seasoned team. This shift allows him to transition from being a "road warrior" to prioritizing fatherhood, which he feels is more important.
Key Leadership Competencies
Michael suggests that to identify a good leader, it's important to first reflect on what competencies come to mind when thinking about the best leaders. In his experience, key areas for development in leaders, particularly in private practices, include emotional intelligence, communication, delegation, boundary setting, time management, accountability, and career pathing.
One less commonly discussed but crucial competency, according to Michael, is the ability to ask better questions—of oneself, team members, and the business environment. He believes that asking insightful questions fosters curiosity and self-awareness, which can significantly influence how leaders manage and inspire others in their practice. This competency often emerges as a critical outcome of leadership development work.
Building Emotional Intelligence
Michael notes that while emotional intelligence (EQ) is widely recognized today, many people view it more as an awareness rather than a deep competency. He emphasizes that EQ consists of four distinct variables that can vary in strength. To truly develop emotional intelligence, individuals need to focus on improving each of these variables. This requires continuous development, supported by accountability, training, or coaching. The goal is not just to understand emotions but to actively build and refine EQ as a core competency through ongoing effort.
Raising Standards and Shifting to Leadership
Michael emphasizes the importance of raising standards for both current employees and new hires as a key leadership decision-making framework. He advocates for clear performance expectations tied to opportunities like raises, noting that this clarity is a challenge across organizations of all sizes. Michael stresses the value of ongoing dialogue between leaders and employees to collaboratively set reasonable expectations and measures of success, allowing room for feedback and alignment.
He also highlights the relevance of hot topics such as remote work and work-life balance, which should be tied to performance metrics rather than strict policies. By reframing expectations as a choice for employees, their decisions either align with success or lead to consequences.
Michael recommends time audits for overwhelmed leaders as a tool to identify where time is spent and what tasks can be outsourced or eliminated. Lastly, he discusses the challenge many leaders face in transitioning from tactical roles to pure leadership, which involves more strategic tasks like performance evaluations, vision setting, and employee accountability. This shift often requires an identity change, as leaders move away from hands-on expertise to focus on leading and guiding their teams.
Conscious Leadership: Creating Positive Change Through Supportive Work Environments
Michael highlights his firm's alignment with the "conscious leadership" movement, which advocates for businesses—both small and large—as vehicles for positive change. This philosophy centers on creating supportive ecosystems within companies that nurture both professional and personal goals, fostering environments where employees feel connected, valued, and excited to work.
Michael believes that when leaders cultivate such workplaces, it not only enhances employee retention and talent attraction but also creates a ripple effect. This positive impact extends beyond the workplace, influencing how employees engage with their families, communities, and loved ones. He feels deeply that conscious leadership can help bring about the change the world needs right now.
Show Sponsor RevKey
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[00:00:00] Whitney Owens: Have you ever thought about digital advertising and how it can benefit your business? By now, I'm sure we've all realized that every business needs an online presence. Now more than ever, that online presence can make or break your growth and revenue potential. But being online is not the same as being found online.
If you want to boost your presence and get more of the right clients in your practice. and get them coming to your website, it might be time to invest in digital advertising. At RevKey, a trusted digital marketing agency that's used by myself and many other therapy practices, they leverage Google ads and digital advertising to get your business to the top of search results and to keep your business front of mind with potential clients.
Get started on your Google ad journey today and unlock your business's potential with RevKey. Hi, I'm Whitney Owens. I'm a group practice owner and faith based practice consultant, and I'm here to tell you that you can have it all. Want to grow your practice? Want to grow your faith? Want to enjoy your life outside of work?
You've come to the right place. Each week on the Wise Practice Podcast, I will give you the action steps to have a successful faith based practice while also having a good time. Now, let's get started
[00:01:19] Jingle: where she grows your practice. She don't play. She does business with a twist of faith. It's Whitney Owens and the wise practice podcast, Whitney Owens and wise practice podcast.
[00:01:38] Whitney Owens: All right, welcome to the wise practice podcast, excited that you're taking the time to listen with us today. And I have. Michael Dietrich has Stane here with me. And so we've got some good stuff coming up. We're going to talk about leadership and putting people in leadership within your practice. This is a question that I have.
So look, I'm just going to be selfish and ask all the questions, but they're probably the same ones you have. So that's going to be really great. So I'm kind of glowing right now because I just got my email from the American Counseling Association that I have been accepted to speak at their annual conference.
Wow.
[00:02:12] Whitney Owens: Yeah. So for 2025, and I have applied for years. I mean, this is like the nationwide counseling conference. So, and now here's my little trick that I do when I apply. I always put in multiple applications, hoping that 1 will get accepted. The problem is sometimes to get accepted. I have 2 presentations accepted, so I'll be in Orlando at the end of March.
So, if you're listening to this, and you want to meet me, or you want to go to the ACA conference, I will be there. I'm going to be talking about how to build a profit pay practice and an insurance based world and how to use faith as a resource in therapy with your clients. So I'm excited. This has been on my professional bucket list.
Forever.
[00:02:53] Michael Diettrich-Chastain: Yeah. Wow. Congratulations, Whitney. That's a big deal.
[00:02:56] Whitney Owens: Thank you. Yes. The
[00:02:57] Michael Diettrich-Chastain: premier association for counseling. That's great.
[00:03:00] Whitney Owens: I know. I know. I've been a member of it since I became a therapist for 15 years. Yeah.
Very
[00:03:08] Whitney Owens: cool. Yeah. So that's my big news. It's going on in my life. So listeners don't give up on your dreams.
Keep applying to speak at events because one day you'll get accepted every year. I'm like, Oh, you know, but now I'm like, yeah. So, all right, so I want to get into the episode, though. So we're going to talk about leadership. So Michael has been my personal coach in the past is my coach. Now, as I work through my own stuff going on with leadership in our practice, and as I'm growing and maturing, I'm just realizing that leadership is one of the most important parts that you can invest in within yourself because it's the crux of your whole practice.
If you can't lead well, you're really going to struggle. So I think leadership is so important. So we're going to be talking about that today, but before we jump into that, Michael, you want to share a little bit, share personally and professionally about yourself because you've had some exciting things.
[00:03:56] Michael Diettrich-Chastain: Yeah, yeah, sure, sure. Well, the real short professional background is over the last 20 years or so. I've spent my career in human development in some capacity. About a decade of that was in the mental health world as a clinician and did everything from private practice to community mental health. Crisis work, hospital work, lead teams of therapists, and then in the latter part of my career, or the last 10 years or so, has been spent in the corporate space doing leadership development, change management, team performance work.
And yeah, and interestingly, there's a lot of truths that exist across those two areas, how to. Groups function really well, whether you're dealing with a family or a group in the mental health space and how do groups perform at their very best in a business setting. And so, yeah, there's some, there's some interesting parallels across those two worlds.
So that's a very, very short description of almost 20 years and which is, which is pretty wild to say on the personal front. The most exciting thing in my world is we just had our first baby about six months ago. She'll be six months in a couple of weeks here. And yeah, it's been a total game changer, as you know, and, and just a beautiful ride so far.
[00:05:09] Whitney Owens: Oh, I love it. So before we jump into all the good leadership stuff, how has had having a baby changed the way you work or think about work? Has it?
[00:05:17] Michael Diettrich-Chastain: Oh, gosh. Yeah, it sure has. I, you know, when we found out the baby was coming, I, I really began to ask this question of how do I travel less? And so to give you some insight into that last year, I did an audit on how many days I was on the road.
And in 2023, it was 176 days. And so it's, it's a lot. I mean, thankfully, you know, our business is doing great and we do a lot of really fun and interesting work with companies all over North America. Um, and now with the baby here, I'm trying to figure out how do I be home more? And so one of the strategies with that is we've, we've been building a team in the last couple of years, and my vision is to continue to.
really be in the leadership position within our business and a visionary and do business development and that the client facing work will be given to our team, which is awesome. Like our team is great. There's a lot of seasoned folks in with all sorts of experience across organizational development, change management, leadership, psychology, and executive coaching.
And so, yeah, that's, that's kind of the vision as far as how to. How to shift from being a road warrior to more of a dad, which feels so much more important.
[00:06:30] Whitney Owens: That's awesome. Yeah. All right. So leadership, let's chat about how do we, I guess my first question is, how do we know who a good leader is? Like, what are the characteristics I should be looking for?
And maybe we could specifically talk about private practice since most of the listeners are private practice owners.
[00:06:49] Michael Diettrich-Chastain: Yeah, yeah, I would invite people to maybe maybe first ask the question themselves of, you know, when they think about the best leaders in the world, what are the competencies that come to mind as most important?
And, and, and I say that as an invitation as a starting point, because. I think that can, that can often lead us to what are the things that need to be developed in the people that are within our practice. The competencies that we see, myself and our team, in the work that we do with leaders that are maybe the most common areas for development are things like emotional intelligence, communication, delegation, boundary setting, time management.
Um, accountability and career pathing would include us very, very common competencies. There's one that I've been thinking about a lot lately that I think is less common in the literature, although I think it's maybe one of the most important things we can do as leaders is to continually work on developing our ability to ask questions.
Hmm.
[00:08:03] Michael Diettrich-Chastain: Both of ourselves. Of the folks that we're leading and of our ecosystems, meaning the businesses that we're in, and I say that Whitney as a competency, because one of the things I've I've come to believe over the years when, when, when working with, you know, many, many leaders is that I often hear that at the, at the, you know, either tail end of our work or many months into our work together, they'll, they'll say something to the effect of gosh, you know, I, I realized that in order to You really influence the behavior and people that are in my business really requires me to ask better questions of myself or better questions of them or to be more curious about them or to be more curious about how i'm showing up in a situation.
And so so i think that that's i say it as a competency because it's often where i see leaders land as an outcome of the work that we do together. So i'll pause there and just see if that you want to ask any follow up or if that resonates.
[00:09:04] Whitney Owens: Lots of things are resonating. Yeah. End of the day on Friday.
I'm like, my words aren't coming out.
[00:09:09] Michael Diettrich-Chastain: But
[00:09:11] Whitney Owens: yes, I mean, the first, the first things you said. We're spot on. I mean, when you ask the question, what competencies 1st, when I felt was emotional intelligence, like, have these people done their own work? You know, again, that's something that's really hard to assess for until you start working with them.
[00:09:28] Michael Diettrich-Chastain: Yeah,
[00:09:29] Whitney Owens: you know, like, I can't assess that in an interview very well.
[00:09:32] Michael Diettrich-Chastain: Yeah. You know, I think 1 of the 1 of the things that we see in the, in the marketplace is that when you. When you say emotional intelligence nowadays, people usually understand what it is. you know, generally, you know, they'll, they'll say, yeah, you know, I can understand my emotions.
I can understand others emotions. But, but if we were to frame it differently as like a competency versus an awareness, I think the level of depth of understanding of what EQ is needs to go up quite a bit. Right. So, so first of all, you know, the, the idea that emotional intelligence is really four independent variables that can either be really high or not so great.
And so, That's kind of like first first pass and and then second would be what are the ways in which the the person if they're working on it are continually developing across any of those four quadrants and I think that's where things like accountability come into place or and or training and or coaching right there has to be some mechanism to drive to drive that competency up.
[00:10:38] Whitney Owens: Definitely. Yeah, so this is so this idea of me questioning that curiosity, you know, I'm thinking, yes, I love this. I think it's hard to find space. Like, I'm so flooded with leading and I feel like I constantly have decision fatigue as a leader. I get. Oh, coming at you all the time. Right. It's a finding that movement instead of solving a problem or completing a task to say, what is this doing for me?
You know, like, not for me, but like, within me, you know, how, how does this decision impact my team? You know, how did they experience? This decision or experience me like,
it's
[00:11:19] Whitney Owens: hard to slow down enough to have those moments. But those are the very moments that are going to make your leadership better.
[00:11:27] Michael Diettrich-Chastain: Yeah, I love that.
I love that. Yeah. And it makes me wonder about when, when we're in the face of. Decision fatigue or overwhelmed like, can we can we reorient that to tell us that? Oh, this might be an opportunity to pursue feedback, right? So when we're in that overwhelm, maybe, maybe that's the time to like, go out into the employee group.
Or the employees that I have and say, Hey, you know, here's something I'm wrestling with. What are the diverse perspectives that exist in my business? And how might I leverage those so that I don't have to feel like I need to have all the answers, right? Because the answers very well may be in the employees that we have.
[00:12:07] Whitney Owens: I think it's hard to find those right to find the employees. I mean, obviously everyone has something to contribute, but figuring out which are the ones that I want to really speak into me and into the business and which ones I'm like, I don't know.
[00:12:21] Michael Diettrich-Chastain: Sure. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Are you. What rephrase that into into a question, because I think I know what you're saying, but let me just make sure
[00:12:30] Whitney Owens: I think I think for me, I want to select people that I trust and know that have done good work that aren't going to speak selfishly, you know, that can really care for the mission and vision of the business and not about themselves.
And like figuring out who those people are, we'd like to think everyone's that, but let's just be real. Like everyone's not that not everyone is out for the best interest of business. It's not even their business really. It's mine. Yeah. Let's make that challenging because maybe they're really like, I mean, a simple example would be, should I give raises?
Well, of course they're all going to say yes. Well, if I did that, the business might not be able to pay its bills and it sinks and then I can't invest in my building or whatever the case may be. And that's a simplified example of something of, okay, what, what are people really looking out for and how do we do what's best for the practice?
[00:13:18] Michael Diettrich-Chastain: Yeah. Yeah. That's good. Good. And my mind goes in a few directions. One is, is there, is there an opportunity, and this goes out to anyone listening, right? Is there an opportunity to uplevel the standards that we have for both the folks that are already there? And those that are entering in as potential new hires.
So is there a, is there a standard that we need to say, you know what? We need to, we need to increase this. And as, as a decision making framework, right? Both to, for who to bring in and who to, who to decide to continue to stay. So that's, so that's a curiosity. And then, and then secondly, you know, related to the raises question, which is great and obviously super common, it makes me wonder about the notion of like clear performance expectations and that being the metric that gets tied to opportunity in this case, opportunity being raised and it's, it's, it's fascinating.
Like we. You know, we do work with a pretty wide ranging size of companies. And that's, it's a challenge across scale. You know, this, this notion of this notion of like being really clear about what is the level of performance we expect. And how is that tied to a continued growth opportunity for that person in a, in a position and in a company?
Yeah. It seems like there's always opportunity to kind of tweak and improve that.
[00:14:53] Whitney Owens: Yes. I'm so glad you're bringing this up because I think specifically for therapists, this is a really forward thing.
[00:15:00] Michael Diettrich-Chastain: I
[00:15:00] Whitney Owens: agree. Yeah. Even as we're kind of starting to talk about this topic, I just feel my heart going out to my people like, Oh, I just,
I
[00:15:08] Whitney Owens: want the best for them.
And you know, yeah. But truly, like, I think therapists have a very hard time letting people go because They want to be kind and giving and loving and they think that's not loving.
Yeah.
[00:15:22] Whitney Owens: And so for me, like, I have, that's something that I've been really challenged on as a leader is, hey, we're going to do performance improvement, or we're going to do an annual review and like really getting not statistics, but like rules that we're going to follow when we know this so that my, I'm not like, oh, I feel sad for you or, oh, I just want to have you around.
Look, if you don't do this thing, you're the one who chose not to do this thing, and you got yourself out of a job, not me.
[00:15:49] Michael Diettrich-Chastain: That's right. That's
[00:15:49] Whitney Owens: what I hired you for.
[00:15:51] Michael Diettrich-Chastain: That's exactly it. Yeah. Yeah. It reminds me of, you know, Brene Brown quote, you know, clarity is kindness. Unclear is unkind. You know, and that's, and that's what we're talking about, right?
It's like, how can we get crystal crystal clear so that it becomes the employee's decision and, and opportunity and self management, right? I, you know, I also, what comes to mind too, as we're talking about it is, you know, I think sometimes. We can, we can get into this headspace of if we set expectations that we're being unrealistic, you know, and, and I think, I think that actually is a caution to take for leaders is to be, to be balanced with, are the expectations that I'm setting, are they, are they fair and reasonable to the employees?
Right, if they are great, then all we're doing is creating clarity, which is kind, right? If they go far beyond what is reasonable, then maybe, then maybe we need to readjust. But I think that, I think that variables is worth some, some thinking on.
[00:17:01] Whitney Owens: Yes. And at least for me, I have a hard time figuring out what that is.
Because I am so perfectionistic and high standard in general, like that's something I had to really work on. No one wants a boss that's over their shoulder, crossing their T's, dotting their I's, saying you have to be perfect. And no one wants a boss that doesn't give them some freedom.
Yeah,
[00:17:24] Whitney Owens: you know, so it's like, figuring out where is the leeway between I let you get away with this and I should even say, like, the fact that I even just said it like that says something about the way I think about it, but, you know, allowing some freedom for certain things.
But then at the same time saying, no, like. I can't allow that. So an example of that could be something like, maybe you want your employee to come to work every day. Well, they decide, hey, I want to work from home or, hey, I have this thing going on during the day. I'm going to be gone for this 2 hour period.
Well, I might be thinking, you know, what, like, I really need you here.
But
[00:17:57] Whitney Owens: I feel so bad saying, you know what, you really can't go to that haircut or that lunch you want to go to, because you're actually supposed to be in the office. I'm paying you to be here. So get yourself here.
I
[00:18:08] Whitney Owens: usually let them do whatever they ask, because I worry about there's that fear.
They're going to leave or whatever the case may be, or I think I'm too much of a, you know, artist. Yeah, and I get worried about that. So anything about that.
[00:18:23] Michael Diettrich-Chastain: Yeah, I guess what comes up for me and not that this is a, you know, a silver bullet solution, but just the, the opportunity for ongoing dialogue as a way to decide what those measures are so that it becomes not, you know, the leader saying like in a dictatorial fashion, here's the expectations that we have, but saying like, Hey, here's the expectations.
We think this, this role has, here's the measure of success. Is this reasonable and and or not right so so they so that you can leave room for them to give feedback around it
and
[00:18:59] Michael Diettrich-Chastain: as far as you know that the notion of time away or like, you know, amount of time taking a lunch or the amount of time working from home versus working in an office.
These are like really, really hot topics right now. Certainly all over. I come, I come back to like, what's the measure of performance? And, and, and if there's a, if there's a question, how do we reframe the agreement so that it, it again becomes the employees choice around the decisions that they make and that those decisions can either lead them toward the success path that they want, or it could lead them toward, you know, consequences.
Yeah, yeah, you know, I get that's a hard part as well.
[00:19:43] Whitney Owens: Yeah, I do think with therapists, it's a hard line of what our expectations because our work is so based on clients, you know, so. And what their needs are, it's just hard to like, measure that. I recently started using the practice vital software. So, if someone's listening, it's interesting.
You can go to my website under practice resources and grab a link for that, but it's all it kind of tracks retention and churn ratio in your practice. And so I rolled this out to my team and I love it because it gives me a standard.
Yeah. You know,
[00:20:21] Whitney Owens: I also hope they use it not to stress out, which a lot of them did, but to challenge themselves to give better treatment outcomes to clients.
Because if your churn ratio, which is clients that make it to session four, if they're making it to session four, they're having a good treatment experience and clients that'll make it to four sessions probably actually don't do well in therapy and might not go back, you know? So we want to find out what can we do to improve all this to say is I've been so happy because now I've got numbers and data.
For when annual raises come up, because I would not continue to give money to a therapist. It's not retaining their clients. The business is actually losing money.
Yeah. Yeah.
[00:20:59] Michael Diettrich-Chastain: Yeah. Well,
[00:21:00] Whitney Owens: What are those that do see a bunch of clients and work really hard?
[00:21:04] Michael Diettrich-Chastain: Yeah. And I, and I really appreciate how you frame it too.
Cause I think The way that you're framing it both meets the need of the business and perhaps the motivation of the therapist, right? Because if you can frame it in the context of, Hey, we want to use these metrics as a way to build clinical efficacy,
then,
[00:21:21] Michael Diettrich-Chastain: then I imagine a lot of folks will, will be interested in that.
You know, I mean, if we're, if we're a clinician, hopefully we're always asking the question, how do I get better as a clinician?
[00:21:32] Whitney Owens: Yeah, definitely.
[00:21:33] Michael Diettrich-Chastain: Yeah. That's cool. Good for you.
[00:21:35] Whitney Owens: Thank you. Yeah, I've enjoyed it. Um, so, okay, so let's go to thinking about a therapist. Let's say a therapist has 8 or 10 clinicians.
They're feeling pretty overwhelmed because they're really leading this whole thing. What kind of advice would you have for them about delegation, putting people in place and leadership? Like, is it time for them to think about someone else's leadership? And what does that look like?
[00:21:58] Michael Diettrich-Chastain: Yeah. Yeah. One of the, one of the first things we'll often do if someone is having, you know, real serious overwhelm as a leader would be to do what's called a time audit.
And many, many folks may have heard of this that are listening. And it's, it's not a complicated exercise, although, you know, every time I've done it personally, and every time I've done it with a client there, there has never been a time when When there aren't surprises, which is kind of a double negative, but meaning that whenever it's done, our clients usually say, oh, I didn't realize I was spending my time so much here or there or here and so as a, as a first step for a leader, I think that can be a beneficial exercise and then from there we can decide, okay, what, what of all these behaviors do I need to, you know, improve?
I need to outsource. What do I need to get rid of completely? Like just eliminate, you know, what, what might exist in a new position that I'm creating. Right. So I think having, having like a, you know, a, a, a giant map of all the things that the leader is doing is a great, is a great first place to start. The other, the other thing that comes to mind, and I don't, I don't know if this is the case for listeners, but I think with a lot of leaders, there can be a challenge.
In the transition between I am a like what I would call like a tactician, meaning I'm I'm doing the various tasks for, you know, my particular expertise or profession or role versus just leading. And oftentimes these are inverted as you continue to move into roles of leadership, meaning that as someone continues to wear that hat of leadership, they're likely doing less tactical moves.
Right, they're likely doing, doing less of their area of expertise, and they're doing more things around having meetings with their employees, doing performance evaluations, creating missions and visions and values, visioning about what is the plan for the for the business, what's the direction, right, holding, holding people accountable, hosting conversations and dialogue with employees to solve problems, right?
These are all, these are all like leadership roles. And so that that shift, I think, in my experience is, it can be a hard, a hard one because it's really like it's an identity change.
[00:24:25] Whitney Owens: I mean, we definitely see that with someone hires their first therapist and they kind of continue to practice from, you know, seeing the clients themselves to more of a manager CEO role.
And so what about the practice owner who is doing all the tasks? Within their business and they can't seem to get out of that, but they're also managing old therapists.
[00:24:45] Michael Diettrich-Chastain: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I would, I would, I would kind of think about challenging them with this idea of what is, what is my time worth? And, and so one of the exercises that can be kind of fun and interesting is to say, Like, almost put an hourly rate to the, the, the task at hand.
So for instance, if I'm, if I'm creating like a QR code for a marketing piece, or if I'm even writing a marketing piece, you know, that might be something that could be outsourced to a VA and we'll call it 15 an hour, right? If I'm seeing a client, right, that's whatever rate that is. If I'm doing some other admin work, maybe that's the rate I'm at so that the idea is we, we evaluate all the tasks we're doing to, to say which of these are the rate that is worth my time and which need to be outsourced or delegated.
I think that that can be another exercise again, just to create clarity and transparency around how we're spending our time.
[00:25:53] Whitney Owens: Yeah, you got my wheels turn in there.
[00:25:55] Michael Diettrich-Chastain: There's a great, there's a great book about this idea by a guy named Dan Martel, and it's called Buy Back Your Time. And so if, yeah, if folks resonate with this, that would be a book I'd recommend.
[00:26:08] Whitney Owens: Yeah. You always have good books to recommend. I love
[00:26:10] Michael Diettrich-Chastain: that.
[00:26:11] Whitney Owens: Okay. I'm going to go totally backwards to the beginning of our conversation. Yeah. Great. Qualities in a leader. And as you know, I'm speaking on leadership at the summit. It's kind of leadership kind of became the theme without me realizing it. So I love it.
Yeah, so I'm talking about 10 lessons I've learned as a Christian leader, and 1 of them that I kept coming up when I was researching was humility.
[00:26:34] Michael Diettrich-Chastain: Mm. Yeah.
[00:26:36] Whitney Owens: And how that is a hard one. I mean, leaders and they grow, their ego grows, but finding a humble leader is so important. That's what you're kind of, kind of seeing.
I mean, I've seen narcissism as so strong lately. Yeah. I love
[00:26:53] Michael Diettrich-Chastain: leaders. Yeah. I love that, Whitney. I think it's a beautiful lesson. And I'll give you another book actually that comes to mind about that. It's, it's called the leadership killer. And it's written by a good friend of mine, Bill treasurer. And he talks about the idea that what is the leadership killer is hubris.
You know, this, this overinflated, you know, ego or that I have to have all the answers. And so I think to your point, you know, humility is super important when, when I think about that. I think about other kind of aspects that are connected to it, like, you know, being transparent that I don't have. The answer is being willing to communicate to the group that, you know, not all the answers are in my head, right?
And in addition to that, being able to crowdsource with the group for answers and direction so that people feel bought in to the practice and excited and motivated that their voice and contributions matter. So I think, yeah, Yeah, I think humility has a lot, a lot to it. That's, that's a great lesson. Makes me curious.
Uh, I know you'll, uh, we'll talk and soon here and I'll hear all 10 of them, but you want to share one more that, that is important to you?
[00:28:04] Whitney Owens: Oh gosh. What is it? I think I can pull my slides and see what's on there. Um, yeah. The only one that's coming to mind is the last one, which is the most fun, which is joy.
[00:28:16] Michael Diettrich-Chastain: Oh, that's great.
[00:28:18] Whitney Owens: I just, man, when you can have a team that you love and you see them work together and you're doing your mission in the world. Yeah. And I'm just so community oriented. Like, I, I don't ever want to do anything by myself. I mean, I do actually, but like, when I'm doing my work, I want to do it with people.
We're better when we're together. We're helping each other. We're bringing out the best. We're also bringing out the worst, but that is where we do our inner work.
Yeah. Totally. I need
[00:28:44] Whitney Owens: these people to show me where I'm messing up so I can improve, but yeah, like, I think that being a leader is one of the most joy experiences ever.
I mean, just the other day, my admin was like, by the way, so and so and so and so, two of my therapists, they went and got coffee together, like outside the office on their own time. I was like, Oh, they wouldn't even know each other if it weren't for me. Like what a joy that they're now friends, you know?
[00:29:06] Michael Diettrich-Chastain: Yeah. Yeah. I love it. I love it. That's so cool. That's so cool. You know, it reminds me of, it's unrelated, but it's a, it's a cute story. So I'll, I'll mention it. That we were in Northern Wisconsin once with, with some family and the, my aunt and uncle have this beautiful cabin and they had hired this, this custom woodworker to do various things for the cabin, build these giant, you know, nine foot long tables and other accents to the house.
And so they, they took us to his shop and we, we go into his shop and he is very much an artist. And so not only, you know, tables and stools and such, but he also has these giant art pieces, giant meaning, you know, 15, 20 feet tall. And he's touring us around. His name is Ken. And, and Ken, it's big warehouse and Ken's point at this point of that telling us, and he keeps using the word we, he says, well, we do this, we do that.
And then finally, someone in our group, I forget who it was, but someone's like, Ken, you know, you keep referring to we, but there's no one else that we're seeing in the warehouse. You know, do you have a team or what, what's going on? And he looks at us and he kind of just smirks a little bit. And he says, darling, no one does anything alone in this world.
And I just thought, man, it's so such a beautiful sentiment. And I, and I think it kind of speaks to what you're saying. It's like, if we want to produce the best outcomes, it's about creating an environment of collaboration and connection.
[00:30:31] Whitney Owens: Totally. And, and even as a leader, like we have got to find other leaders to connect with.
Leadership is so lonely. That's another one
of them.
[00:30:43] Whitney Owens: Lonely. Yeah, it's so lonely. And the more that we grow as leaders, there's an element of less connection. I feel,
yeah, on
[00:30:53] Whitney Owens: a deep level. Like, do I connect with people all day long?
But
[00:30:57] Whitney Owens: how many people can I really pour my soul out to?
Not
[00:31:01] Whitney Owens: very many.
Yeah.
Because
[00:31:03] Whitney Owens: of, you know, Who I am and people knowing me, like, if you want to walk around town, like, I feel like I'm a group practice owner. People know who I am. So I just feel like, and I think a lot of people can resonate with that. That loneliness, I think it's so important that we're finding other people at our and I hate to say at our level, because that sounds egos and trick, but, you know, it's, it's to help 1 another.
[00:31:23] Michael Diettrich-Chastain: That's right. That's right. Yeah. And the reality is that, you know, leading is a unique position, just like any position in the world of, you know, professional roles out there. So finding people that, you know, share the same struggles and strengths and challenges and questions. Yeah, it's super important. And I mean, thankfully, I give you a plug here.
I think that's part of the huge benefit of what you're doing with your conference is to create an atmosphere and in a place, you know, For those together and do just that connect and learn from each other and share stories and questions, right?
[00:31:59] Whitney Owens: Definitely. And yeah, brings me joy.
[00:32:02] Michael Diettrich-Chastain: Yeah, as it should. You're doing great things.
Thank you.
[00:32:07] Whitney Owens: Yeah. Awesome. Well, I think we've covered a lot of really important topics within leadership. Is there anything that we didn't mention that you wanted to make sure to chat about?
[00:32:15] Michael Diettrich-Chastain: Oh, gosh, let's see. Well, I'll, I'll, I'll leave maybe this last thing, which comes to mind when you talk about joy and leadership, there's a, there's a whole movement that our, our firm's called arc integrated.
And there's, there's a movement in the leadership space called conscious leadership or conscious business. And this philosophically is something that we are very, very much connected to and believe to be true. And, and the short of that movement is the idea that. Businesses, small and large, can be vehicles for positive change in the world, and they can create that change through building their ecosystems in a way that is life giving and supportive of employees, you know, connection to one another, supportive of, you know, not just professional goals, but personal goals, you know, creating environments that, you know, people are excited and to show up at every day and feel nurtured.
And I think that. My belief is that when we as leaders create environments like this, like, not only does it create an awesome workplace experience, and not only does it improve things like retention and traction of talent, but hopefully it has this ripple effect that people are leaving and the relationships they're having with their community and their children and their loved ones is, in fact, you'll almost get a little emotional talking about it, because I really believe that it can be a path to create change in the world.
And that's what we need right now.
[00:33:42] Whitney Owens: Thank you for saying that. Yeah. I had one of my employees years ago. He left, I call him my white whale. Cause he was just like, he was the best. Um, he was a pastor and a male and a therapist. But when he left, he said Watersedge counseling was a lighthouse in a dark world for him.
[00:34:02] Michael Diettrich-Chastain: Oh man. What a beautiful, what a beautiful sentiment. That's awesome.
[00:34:07] Whitney Owens: Yeah, yeah. He had had some really awful things happen at his church because he didn't part on the boat.
[00:34:13] Michael Diettrich-Chastain: Yeah. And
[00:34:14] Whitney Owens: so he like couldn't go anywhere and feel good except at water's edge.
[00:34:17] Michael Diettrich-Chastain: That's so awesome. What a, what a great testament to what you're doing.
[00:34:21] Whitney Owens: Yeah.
[00:34:22] Michael Diettrich-Chastain: Yeah.
[00:34:22] Whitney Owens: I'm going to reach out to him once a year and keep telling him to come back.
[00:34:25] Michael Diettrich-Chastain: Yeah. There you go.
[00:34:27] Whitney Owens: Well, Michael, this has been wonderful. If someone's listening, they're interested in some leadership coaching, tell them about next steps.
[00:34:33] Michael Diettrich-Chastain: Yeah. Yeah. They can go to arc integrated. com. That's ARC integrated.
com. And one fun thing that people might like if they're listening is arc integrated. com slash quiz is a leadership quiz that you can take, which will tell you, you know, how you're doing as a leader in some areas that are strengths and opportunities. And that might be a fun place to start.
[00:34:55] Whitney Owens: Oh, love it.
Love it. And then I know they can go on there and grab do some coaching with you as well.
[00:35:01] Michael Diettrich-Chastain: Yeah, absolutely. If you go to arcintegrated. com slash coaching, you'll see all sorts of info about what we do and testimonials and programs and all that. Yeah. And always happy to connect. If anybody wants to have a conversation, you can find the contact info there as well.
[00:35:15] Whitney Owens: Awesome. Thank you so much for your time. Always love having you on the show and our conversations and looking forward to more in the future.
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[00:35:39] Whitney Owens: Wise Practice Podcast. Special thanks to Marty Altman for the music in this podcast. The wise practice podcast is part of the site craft podcast network, a collaboration of independent podcasters focused on helping people live more meaningful and productive lives to learn more about the other amazing podcasts in the network head on over to site craft network.
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