I recently had the great pleasure of speaking to Janine Meadley on her new Teacher Healer podcast, which explores what education could and should look like to make school better for kids, teachers and society as a whole. Janine is starting conversations about solutions to heal the world and heal ourselves and is designed as a resource for educators, school leaders, parents and healers.

In our conversation, we invite listeners to ask themselves a crucial question: What is your call to courage? Where would you like to be braver? And we dig into the critical role vulnerability plays in courageous cultures, learning practices and safe spaces. And the essential skill all humans need to cultivate to create a healing world – self-compassion. We explore the invitation to treat yourself with the same warmth, care and compassion you might treat a close friend when in struggle.

I hope you enjoy our conversation. We’d love to hear your feedback, so please leave a comment and let us know what the ideas we spoke about mean to you.

 

Transcript

Janine Meadley:
Hi, beautiful listeners. Welcome to the Teacher Healer Podcast, where we get to geek out on all things education and heal the world at the same time.

Janine Meadley:
Today, I’m joined by Kylie Lewis, who is a leadership developer, climate reality leader, and founder of Of Kin a training organisation based in Melbourne. It specialises in building brave leaders and courage cultures. Kylie is a certified facilitator of Dr. Brené Brown’s work on courage, vulnerability, shame, and resilience, a conversational intelligence practitioner, and a systemic team coach. Her vision is to build capacity for brave conversations in boardrooms, classrooms, and lounge rooms across Australia. Welcome, Kylie. Thank you for joining us in Teacher Healer Today.

Kylie Lewis:
Thanks so much for having me.

Janine Meadley:
I’m actually very excited to have the privilege of speaking to you not only because you’re just a fantastic, special human being because we had a chat earlier, but also because you’re a certified practitioner in the Daring Way.

Kylie Lewis:
I sure am.

Janine Meadley:
I am a Brené Brown fan girl. So it’s super great. And I want to learn more. So I thought you might be able to kick this off by telling us a little bit about your work. And I know you’ve been in schools and especially early learning centres. So I’m going to hand it over.

Kylie Lewis:
Yeah, sure. So I have a company called Of Kin. And in my business, I work really with leaders and developing courageous, daring, brave leaders. I do that predominantly through public workshops and executive coaching and working inside organisations with their leadership teams. And I’ve been doing that. I’ve had my own business for eight years. But I’ve really, in the last three years, in particular, working exclusively with Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead curriculum.

Kylie Lewis:
So the Daring Way curriculum that you mentioned just before, that came out of her work in Daring Greatly and Rising Strong, which is fantastic work that sums up the research that Brené has done in the areas of courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy over the last, say, 15 years.

Kylie Lewis:
And then in 2018, she published a book which was really taking the same concepts, but studying them in an organisational context. And that really was the area that I wanted to dig into. Having had a career of the last 20 years working in organisations, I could see the real value of the stuff that she had talked about in Daring Greatly and Rising Strong, but really wanted it in a context of organisational development because I could just say that there was a massive need for that. So, yeah. So I’ve been working with that pretty much exclusively for the last three years.

Janine Meadley:
Brilliant. And has it been a good time?

Kylie Lewis:
It’s been amazing. It’s the most rewarding work I’ve probably ever done. And it can be a little bit selfish because every time I dig into the work and deliver the curriculum and work alongside people exploring it and letting that work sink into their bones, I learn something. It helps deepen my leadership practise as well.

Kylie Lewis:
So, the most common feedback that I get from people is that it’s either made them feel calmer as a leader because they have a greater awareness and an insight of how they operate and what their triggers are. And they have an appreciation for their emotional landscape as a leader and have some tools in their toolkit to help approach that and to rumble with the difficult parts of leadership, particularly around having hard conversations, giving and receiving feedback, setting boundaries, those kinds of things.

Kylie Lewis:
So people feel calmer because of that. And they also say that it hasn’t just impacted the way that they show up at work. It’s how they show up in their lives as a whole person. And so, they’re really talking about the self-awareness of who am I in the world, no matter which arena that I show up in and how do I want to be in the world? What choices do I have now that I’ve got sort of a bit more of awareness of how I tick?

Janine Meadley:
It sounds like much more than a leadership programme.

Kylie Lewis:
I sometimes sneakily that, I think as human beings, there is somewhat maybe of a tendency to give priority to professional development that we see that there’s a payoff in terms of our career or our work or our competency in that area. And perhaps, we don’t tend to that as much in our personal development. And so, I think sort of some of the magic of Dare to Lead is that it’s very much within an organisational context and how you show up in a leadership capacity. But it will change who you are as a human being, fundamentally, in all parts of your life.

Kylie Lewis:
So there’s a little bit of kind of justifying what I think I need, but then filling the gap of probably what you actually do need if you know what I mean.

Janine Meadley:
Oh, that old chestnut sell them what they want, give them what they need, isn’t it?

Kylie Lewis:
That’s exactly it.

Janine Meadley:
Yeah. So this is the bit that I’m really interested in because Teacher Healer, my vision is that education can be a force for positive change in the world and healing. And you’re working with educational leaders, so to heal themselves by the sounds of it, in some ways, tell me a little bit more. What kind of process does a person go through in one of your programmes?

Kylie Lewis:
The curriculum, the way that it’s sort of been set up is really having some self-awareness about what gets in the way of you showing up perhaps as a brave leader or with a little bit more courage in your career. So we start from the place of investigating the question of where would you like to be braver as a leader? What is your personal call to courage as a leader?

Kylie Lewis:
And I think we don’t very often stop and ask ourselves that question. So that sort of deliberate reflection sort of straight off the bat about what sort of getting in the way of how I would like to be. And for many people, it’s kind of like, “Well, actually, how would I like to be? Do I have a choice?” Is there a way through some of these things that I’m bumping up against or that I’m feeling deeply uncomfortable or unsure how to tackle?

Kylie Lewis:
So we start off there. We sort of say where would you like to be braver in your working life? Where are the places where you’re kind of holding yourself back? What would you like to change? And what are some of the things that you might identify that you might need? What are some of the skills that you think you’d like to develop in order to be able to answer that call?

Kylie Lewis:
So if anyone’s followed Brené’s work before, they would’ve heard her talk about the man in the arena quote and how it’s not the critic accounts. It’s actually the man who’s in the arena of their lives, striving to do their best, to make change in the greatest kind of outcome will be successful.

Kylie Lewis:
But for many of us, we will actually fail at doing that and will end up face down in the arena. But the most important thing is that while we were doing that, we were daring greatly. So I’ve really hacked that quote. But the idea is that we can often sit outside of the arena of our lives for fear of what the critics will think.

Kylie Lewis:
And, sometimes, those critics are very real tangible people in our world. Sometimes, it’s the imagined stories that we’ve made up about what might happen. And sometimes, we are our own critic as well, and can get in our own way of showing up more bravely.

Kylie Lewis:
So we take that idea of where would you like to be braver to be able to get into the arena and show up in those ways. And then, we start investigating, well, what is getting in the way, and what do we need to do that? And so, we start off really exploring vulnerability and the discomfort of vulnerability, which Brené defines as risk, uncertainty, and emotional exposure. And nobody likes to feel those things. Nobody likes to feel exposed, uncertain, or to really take on much risk.

Kylie Lewis:
We spend most of our lives trying to get comfortable, trying to get secure, trying to keep a lid on everything to stay safe. But what we don’t realise is that often in our hunt for sort of staying safe and staying out of vulnerability is… And, often, we do that because we fear things like… We do fear uncertainty. We have fears about what that might have for us. We might feel anxious. We might be worried about feeling shame or we might feel shame.

Kylie Lewis:
And so, we try and minimise all of those things. And when we shut down vulnerability, when we shut down risk uncertainty and emotional exposure, we shut down actually our opportunity to experience all of the other things that also happen in the birthplace of vulnerabilities. Love, belonging and joy also come out of vulnerability. Courage, empathy, inclusivity, getting and giving hard feedback, ethical decision-making, resilience, and resetting, those are also all born in vulnerability.

Kylie Lewis:
So we spend quite a lot of time upfront really investigating what are some of the myths around vulnerability, how they might be showing up in our leadership practise. We investigate what are the noisy things that we hear when we are going into the arena? Whose voices are we hearing? Who’s got power? And then, what do we need in order to be able to step forward into answering that call? Who is in our empathy seats in our arena?

Kylie Lewis:
What kind of self-compassion can we offer ourselves when we think about doing something brave? So we spend a lot of time really rumbling with vulnerability because it’s the foundational piece for a brave life. But we’ve often grown up either thinking that vulnerability is weakness, that vulnerability is not something that we do, or we think we can go it alone, or that vulnerability requires us to overshare everything in our lives. There’s lots of vulnerabilities as… Sorry. There’s lots of myths around vulnerability that we really spend some time investigating and then talking about, yeah, we need to be able to do to rumble with the discomfort of vulnerability. So we don’t shut down all of the opportunities that come in being able to sit in the discomfort of it.

Janine Meadley:
Gosh, the more I’m listening to you, the more I’m like, “Gosh, it’s so great, leaders are doing this.” But it could work at all layers. wouldn’t you just love teachers to do this? Wouldn’t you love for the students to be… That question about what’s your call to courage, for a teacher, that is an epic question because every day stepping in front of a class of unpredictable kids, it’s a call to courage, isn’t it?

Janine Meadley:
And so, why do you keep showing up? And I guess I’m going to throw that to the listeners to put on their list to think about this week. What’s your call to courage? Why do you keep showing up? The other thing I really loved was the idea of self-compassion. I wonder if you might unpack that one a little bit more.

Kylie Lewis:
Yeah. I just want to quickly go back. Yeah. I think teachers are absolutely amongst the bravest people and professions, because every time you step into a classroom, you’re stepping into an arena. And, yeah, it is uncertain what will happen. There’s no guarantees of how the class is going to go, how everyone else is showing up to that.

Kylie Lewis:
So, yeah, absolutely. And hats off to educators everywhere. In actually delivering the Dare to Lead curriculum, self-compassion I think is probably one of the most important takeaways that participants have. So one of the things that we often find ourselves when we are thinking about being brave, and we are thinking about going into the arena, and it’s those moments where we think about having that hard conversation or pushing back on idea or challenging the status quo, or pitching a new way of doing things. All of those arena moments that are full of discomfort anywhere where there’s the vulnerability, it’s in those moments that we have a choice to think, “Am I going to say this? Am I going to challenge this? Am I going to call this out? Am I going to put this into the mix of what’s happening?”

Kylie Lewis:
And it’s in that moment where we can hear the voice of shame. So Brené talks about shame driving two messages, never good enough or never enough, the never enoughness. So, well, I’m not experienced enough to contribute to this, or I’m not senior enough to be contributing to this. I’m not old and enough to be doing these things so whatever your not-enoughness is.

Kylie Lewis:
And even if you can get past that is, well, who am I? Who do I think I am to be contributing this anyway? And it’s in those spaces that we can find ourselves holding ourselves back. And she calls these the cheap seats or…. Sorry. She calls this the season ticket holders in the arena. So if there are different kind of sections in the arena of where we think we’re going to be brave, there’s the season ticket holders of comparison, shame, scarcity that always show up when we think about doing something brave.

Kylie Lewis:
There’s the cheap seats of people, hurling advice and criticism and judgement but who never actually be in the arena and doing the things that you are doing. There’s the box seats which are normally held by the people who built the arena, who hold power, who can potentially be operating from stereotypes.

Kylie Lewis:
And then, the two most important seats in the arena are empathy and self-compassion And the people in the empathy seats are the people who only want the best for you that can rumble with the discomfort of saying, “Yeah. That was really hard. And yeah, I can see that you did make a mistake, and I’m going to be here to help you clean it up and push you back in the arena.”

Kylie Lewis:
And, sometimes, we need professional empathy seat sitters in that area. One of the exercises that we ask in the curriculum is who is in your empathy seats? Who is going to show up without judgement, without a hidden agenda? And who’s only going to be there for the best of you. And there’s generally a very small number of people that do that. And, sometimes, you even need to have a professional empathy seats like a mentor or a coach or a therapist.

Kylie Lewis:
And the other most important seat is the seat of self-compassion. And when we hear the season ticket holders of shame, it can often be a very noisy section that’s saying not enoughness that I’m the only one experiencing this lack of confidence or this struggle, this hard moment that it’s me alone, kind of that’s not adequate in this situation or experiencing these emotions.

Kylie Lewis:
The voice of compassion recognises that those emotions feeling that way, being uncomfortable is part of common humanity. It’s not me alone that is going through these issues or having these doubts or worried about these things or concerned about these things.

Kylie Lewis:
So the voice of self-compassion, one is the same voice that you would offer to a loved one who maybe you saw going through something difficult, a difficult challenge. That same and concern that you have and warmth that you have for that other person, you offer to yourself.

Kylie Lewis:
And so, Brené draws on Kristen Neff’s work in self-compassion. And it’s basically talking to yourself the way that you would talk to someone you love. So for example, if you could see your best friend struggling with the thing that you are struggling with at the moment, what would you wish for them? What would you wish that they would do for themselves or what advice or support or encouragement would you give to them, and cultivating you giving that to yourself?

Kylie Lewis:
So it’s talking to ourselves, like someone we love. It’s recognising that the emotions, the difficulties that I’m facing and the emotions that go along with that aren’t just me having a hard time of this situation that as a human being alive on the planet today, I’m having a very human experience that is common to the constraints, to the concerns, to the situations that I find myself in.

Kylie Lewis:
So it’s not me alone. I’m not going to be the only one that has ever struggled with this in the past or to struggle with it in the future. It’s just what’s with me at this point in time. And that third piece then is the mindfulness piece. It’s the mindfulness piece of being able to recognise and identify those emotions. And this is where emotional literacy becomes really important being able to not recognise and name our emotions.

Kylie Lewis:
And instead of denying them or pushing them away or diminishing them or pretend that they’re not there, we can say to ourselves, “Gosh, I’m feeling in struggle right now. I’m feeling anxious. I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed and worried. I’m feeling frustrated. And I might be feeling a bit angry with how things are going at the moment.” And being able to sit with that rather than diminish it or push it away or pretend if it’s not there and just observe it, just going, “Well, what’s this telling me? What’s this telling me that’s important to my values, to my contribution, to my purpose, that I need to be paying attention to?”

Kylie Lewis:
And I can allow myself to acknowledge these emotions to maybe sit with them for a moment, to get curious about them and then have some strategies to move through it. I don’t have to set up camp in these emotions. I can experience them. I can visit them. I can be informed by the data that they’re trying communicate to me about what’s happening and what’s going important. What am I bumping up against that I need to get curious about? And I can move through them.

Kylie Lewis:
So self-compassion is really that talking to yourself, like, someone you love, recognising that it is part of a common humanity rather than only you’re going through this situation, and the mindfulness to just pay attention to your emotional life that it’s important, and that it has information and that whether or not we want to acknowledge it, emotions actually get the first crack at anything that happens in our life.

Kylie Lewis:
We rationalise thinking that we are thinking, doing beings who sometimes feel, but the fact is that we are feeling human beings. Emotions will get the first crack at it. And so we need to be able to get a bit better perhaps than what we have in the past. And maybe for any of your early childhood educators or primary educators, I know they spend a lot of time in social, emotional intelligence space now. A lot of us older folk have a bit of catching up to do on hopefully what’s happening with the younger generation and through those curriculums now.

Janine Meadley:
Yeah. Brilliant. And I can’t wait to see that sort of start to flow into secondary. And, hopefully, secondary teachers can take that award too. I know that sometimes things don’t translate between the earlier years and the upper years, but, yeah, wonderful work.

Janine Meadley:
I’m really thinking about you’re talking about mistakes and that sense of not being alone. And I know that in schools, there is more and more collaboration happening, but certainly the schools that I’ve been in, there’s still a very siloed environment in many subject areas where you might have your faculty, and you might have your meetings and everything.

Janine Meadley:
But when you walk in front of a class, you’re there on your own most of the time. And there’s this real great sense of autonomy that having freedom that happens with that. But I feel like I’ve seen a lot of schools try to implement observation programmes and feedback and things. And I know a lot of teachers are a bit frightened of that. And they don’t like looking like they make mistakes.

Janine Meadley:
And I think leaders are definitely in that category. Principals are, “Gosh, you wouldn’t want to be called out doing something wrong in some situations,” the sticky ones that they get. So I guess what’s the way to break that down? Is it just we need to talk about it more, like, do we just need to say, “Yeah, I’m human and I messed up. I did this thing,” rather than keep it all secret, or what’s your solution?”

Kylie Lewis:
So one of the pieces that goes sort of extends further with this art, with this metaphor of being in the arena is this idea of how we armour up ourselves when we go into those arenas. And so in the research Brené did, she was trying to understand from observing transformational leaders or the brave leaders that she had identified, what were some of the differences in how they approached hard conversations, giving feedback, receiving feedback, handling change.

Kylie Lewis:
And she talks about what she calls armoured leadership behaviours versus daring leadership behaviours. And so what she found out was through the research was that we can all feel afraid at work. We can all be fearful of being observed of getting feedback of things not going to plan, of making mistakes. But that’s not necessarily what keeps us from being a brave leader. So her research found that even the bravest leaders can feel fear. So it’s not necessarily the case of you can only be courageous if you don’t have any fear.

Kylie Lewis:
That’s actually a big myth as well. Courage is actually fear walking, is what Susan David out of Emotional Agility talks about. So, yeah. So courage isn’t the absence of fear. Courage is the ability to say, “I can feel afraid of actually what’s going on right now. ” But you have a choice. You have a choice of to say, “So I’m going to armour up and I’m going to be the knower. And I’m going to always put myself as someone who has the right answer. I’m going to potentially avoid hard conversations wherever I can. I’m going to hold a position where I strive for so much perfection that it’s not my issue. And it’s not my problem because I strive so much to have everything right all the time, that it’s probably going to be somebody else that stuffs something up.”

Kylie Lewis:
So she talks about this idea of we can armour up. And in armouring up, it really drives disconnection, right? It really pushes people away when I’m carrying around this armour. And the big one that we talk about, there’s 38 different behaviours that she has in the latest version of the curriculum that was released last year.

Kylie Lewis:
The biggest one is for many of us. And I think this is particularly true of teachers who are in the position of having to be the knower and having to be right because we’re imparting knowledge, and we’re holding space for learning. And we have some expertise. It’s this idea that if I always have to be the knower and be right, then, I’m less likely to take the space of I’m here to be a learner and to get it right.

Kylie Lewis:
And so, if we want to be daring leaders, holding that space of I’m an ongoing learner, I’m a curious person, I may not always get it right, so I’m here to learn how to get it right over time. I will ask lots of questions. I will be open to feedback. I will recognise that different experiences that other people have. Different education, different cultural backgrounds will have a whole range of things to offer that I couldn’t possibly know about.

Kylie Lewis:
So we spend a lot of time talking about being armoured up and what we need to do to be able to put our armour down in the arena so that we can have vulnerable kinds of conversations.

Kylie Lewis:
So if the situation that you described about say being observed in the classroom, that can be something that I imagine teachers could feel quite anxious about. They know that they’re being evaluated. They know that they might be going to get some hard feedback at the end of that. And they can be this whole idea of, okay, I’m going to put some armour up. I want this to go perfectly. I’m performing, perfecting, pleasing, trying to do all of that.

Kylie Lewis:
And when it doesn’t go to plan, because no plan survives its impact with reality, where do we go with that? What is our reaction when things don’t go well? How do we handle then the discomfort of failure or disappointment or setback?

Kylie Lewis:
And for many of us, we might even haven’t seen it role model very well. We haven’t necessarily seen other people be able to bounce back with grace and with compassion and empathy when things haven’t gone well.

Kylie Lewis:
So in that scenario that you talked about with the teacher, a conversation with perhaps the person that’s coming in to observe and the teacher beforehand, that is an assurance that we’re actually both on the same side here. This is actually a learning opportunity for both of us and that I’m here to help identify what’s going really well and where your strengths are. And then perhaps, what are some of the other areas that I can help fill some gaps in or help answer any questions you might have around the things that you are struggling with or you’d like to develop a stronger skill set in. It’s the intention that you set up beforehand.

Kylie Lewis:
What’s the purpose of this activity that we are doing together because if I have a sense that you are in this with me and you’re here to support my growth and development and help me deal with the discomfort of being the learner in this situation, then I’m much more likely to stay open to taking on feedback and growing rather than keeping the armour up and keeping defensive and shutting down opportunities to learn and grow.

Janine Meadley:
That’s so key, isn’t it?

Kylie Lewis:
Yeah. Yeah. I’m just thinking back on some of my experiences and some have been better than others. At one school, it was just a nightmare doing that observation. It was like a tick the box exercise. It was full of anxiety. And then another time, it was collaborative process. It was enjoyable. There was lots of planning involved. There was lots of chit chat about, “Hey, I’m going to experiment with this thing. Let’s see how it goes.” And there was a bit more risk taking. Yeah. It was about how it was set up by the leaders.

Kylie Lewis:
Yeah. And so what you are talking about there is psychological safety. And psychological safety I’ve seen defined by Timothy Clark is rewarded vulnerability. So how safe is it for me to be vulnerable here? How safe is it for me to say, “I need help. I have a question. I don’t know the answer. I made a mistake. And I don’t know.” Perhaps the kind of meta kind of view on this or maybe the ironic part of it is as teachers, this is hopefully what you are hoping to do with your kids, with children because kids can’t learn unless it’s a psychologically safe environment.

Kylie Lewis:
And often, what I found in working across professions, not just with teachers or educators, but we sometimes can get fixed in us in our professional roles is this is what we do with our clients or our customers or who we serve that we forget that some of those principles, in fact, probably most of them also are relevant in how we show up as a leader or a colleague or a team member with other people as well.

Janine Meadley:
Yeah. Gosh, I’m really taken by that idea of like, what did you say? Encourage vulnerability or what was the [crosstalk 00:32:49]?

Kylie Lewis:
So Timothy Clark calls it rewarded vulnerability.

Janine Meadley:
Rewarded.

Kylie Lewis:
Yes. So I actually get rewarded for asking questions. I get rewarded for contributing [crosstalk 00:33:05]. I get rewarded for challenging ideas. They’re not things that are pushed away or seen as negative, or think something to get resentful about. It’s actually great. I’m so glad that you did that. It shows you’re engaged. It shows that you care. It shows that you are thinking and curious. And that’s what we want. And it goes back to Brené’s definition of leadership, which is about a leader is anyone who has the courage to develop the potential in people and processes.

Kylie Lewis:
So a leader is anyone who has the courage to develop the potential in people and processes. So a leader isn’t somebody who just has the title of leader or the position or the power leader, the formal given authority, power of leader. I’ve seen school in, air quotes, leadership teams that I wouldn’t necessarily call leadership teams. Administration teams, yes. Management teams, yes. Leadership, not so much.

Kylie Lewis:
And then, you could probably walk around a school ground. And you could see people who don’t have formal leadership authority absolutely leading in their development of building other leaders.

Janine Meadley:
Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. I’m going to go back to that psychological safety thing you discussed, because that to me is a game changer what you said, because I’ve thought about psychological safety in the classroom as you do, because you want kids to feel safe. But I’ve never thought of it in that way before. So for me, it’s mean like how do you stop kids from picking on each other or how do you create a safe space for discussion where people aren’t going to say nasty things or rude jokes or whatever? But to think of it as this rewarded vulnerability, to be able to fail and make mistakes and to be a learner and to admit you don’t know, I mean, that’s key, isn’t it?

Kylie Lewis:
How brave is it?

Janine Meadley:
Ah, I’ll never forget. There’s this story I have of this young man who was a very talented musician. I know he would’ve been in a choir outside of school and everything. And he came to my class, and we were doing some recording on an iPad. And he just would not engage. And most of the kids were loving this. They were like, “Yeah, I’m going to make my own song. It’s going to be super great.” And he’s like, “No, not having a bar of it.”

Janine Meadley:
I’m like, “What’s the deal, man? Why aren’t you giving this a try?” He’s like, “Miss, I have this idea of my head of what I want it to look like. And I’m not going to be able to do it. It won’t come out perfect. So I’m not going to try.” And I’ve never forgotten that. And I wasn’t able to get him over the line in that instance, but he wasn’t willing to fail. And it wasn’t about what anyone else thought either. It was about what he thought of his own work. And I don’t think he’s willing to admit to himself that he has work to grow.

Janine Meadley:
And I suppose I said to him. I know with [inaudible 00:36:30] like you have to do an artwork a hundred times badly before you do something good. And he took that on. And I hope that stays with him, but it’s, yeah, you have to be willing to fail, don’t you?

Kylie Lewis:
You have to be willing to fail and you have to be ready to accept that perfectionism is a trap. Perfectionism just works against everything that’s good in our lives.

Janine Meadley:
I just wonder if you have a piece of advice here because I’ve met so many teachers, especially graduate teachers who will spend hour upon hour upon hour planning, planning, planning, planning every lesson to the minute. And I know that there’s we’ve got some political action happening at the moment with teachers who are overworked, and we need to try and save them some time. So what is your advice to those teachers who need to plan everything to a tee?

Kylie Lewis:
Yeah. There’s a big difference between perfectionism, which is defined… Perfectionism is a function of shame. Perfectionism is a feeling of not enoughness. And what I’m trying to do is I’m trying to put on so much armour that I can minimise judgement, shame, and criticism. And it’s all based about what will other people think.

Kylie Lewis:
Healthy striving comes from a place of saying, “What do I want to get out of this? What does success look like for me in this? What’s in this that is the learning opportunity for me that I’ll take on board?”

Kylie Lewis:
And so when perfectionism is driving, we’re really hustling very hard for our worth. And when we think about healthy striving, it’s really the acknowledgement is that I can be a learner, and I can keep growing. I can start here, and I can give it my best shot where I’m at now and recognise that I might not have all of the answers. I might not have it all figured out. But I’m going to get in the arena and give it a go. And I’m going to be compassionate towards myself as a learner in this space the same way that I would be compassionate and cheer on my best friend who might be going through the same situation.

Kylie Lewis:
And once I do this thing, I will have some learnings out of that. And that’s how I get better. Especially as a graduate, I can’t possibly be expected to know everything, to have this skill of what I hope to have as an educator 10 years down the road from now. So this is where I’m starting with what I know. So who can I lean into to have a discussion? Who can I ask some questions about what conversations might be helpful? What’s my list of questions that I could tap into a mentor or somebody else about.

Kylie Lewis:
Very often, we think we have to do this all on our own. And that’s another myth of vulnerability that I can go it alone, that somehow I don’t need other people. And that just pushes up against our biology of how we’re actually hardwired. We are actually hard wired to be in connection with other people. We are a social species. We’ve only ever survived by being in connection with other people.

Kylie Lewis:
And so sometimes, particularly when we’re trying to prove and perform and perfect, we can take a lot of that on ourselves rather than saying, “This is what I’m sort of feel I’m okay at. This is where I’m struggling with. Who can I reach out to, to have this conversation?” Is it a phone conversation with one of the other graduates and just asking, “Have they got any insight? Is it with a coordinator or a mentor that I’ve been assigned in the school,” and being okay with feeling emotionally exposed in that. And we are not normally practised, right?

Janine Meadley:
Yeah.

Kylie Lewis:
That’s why it’s brave. That’s why it’s brave to do that, is to admit, “I don’t feel I’ve got a handle on this. Can I walk this through with you and just get some feedback?”

Janine Meadley:
Yeah. Well, good advice. I wish I’d done that more in my first year. And I would definitely second what you just said. Yeah.

Kylie Lewis:
I think a lot of burnout in that perspective can come it’s the psychological burnout, a feeling like I should have this all together. Do you think that, that happens? Do you think-

Janine Meadley:
Yeah. It does. It absolutely does. And I’ve seen it in my friends as well and just seen them run themselves ragged. And I wasn’t one of those guys. But I didn’t reach out for help either. I just kind of drowned in my first couple of years, you know?

Kylie Lewis:
Yeah. And what was really surprising Brené talks about in the research, so when we look at the curriculum, rumbling with vulnerability is a big piece of the work. The other skill set, there’s four skill sets of daring leadership rumbling with vulnerability, living into values so getting clarity of values, braving trust. So really understanding what trust looks like. And then learning to rise, which is how you get back up after a failure or a disappointment or a setback.

Kylie Lewis:
But in the trust piece, when she was looking at trust and the research into that, one of the most surprising things was, one, a really big trust earning behaviour that she discovered was asking for help which seems really kind of intuitive, right?

Janine Meadley:
Yeah.

Kylie Lewis:
But leaders will say when somebody asks for help, I find that I trust them more because I know that they’re engaged in their thinking about what’s going on. And they’re willing to ask a question to make sure that they have got it right rather than kind of winging it or covering it up.

Janine Meadley:
Right. Yeah.

Kylie Lewis:
It’s kind of counterintuitive when you think about it, but asking for help is actually a big trust building behaviour. Think [crosstalk 00:43:20] think about it with kids in the classroom.

Janine Meadley:
Yeah. It’s a permission slip, isn’t it then to just go, “It’s okay to admit you don’t know. It’s good to ask for help. “You’ll actually be smiled upon for doing it. But I think that helps be a little bit more brave, doesn’t it?

Kylie Lewis:
Yeah. I could sit here for, like what you were saying, I could sit here all of my Saturday trying to figure out this lesson plan or trying to plan it to the Nth degree, or maybe I could sit down for half an hour with a friend and talk it through and get some feedback and kind of get some assurance that this is okay. So often, we think we have to work it all out on our own. And I think that’s where you can also see the silos happening in schools or on teams or in cultures where we’re also armoured up thinking that we have to be all be the knower and all have to be right rather than as a collective, that’s our responsibility to work together, to constantly be learning and checking in with each other and getting it right together.

Janine Meadley:
Yeah. I’ve worked in primary and secondary. And I feel like I see that collaborative behaviour happen much more often in primary schools. And it’s gold what happens, isn’t it?

Kylie Lewis:
Yeah.

Janine Meadley:
Yeah. Now I want to dig a bit deeper with you, Kylie. I have a question here that I guess what I want to know is what’s your biggest lesson that you’ve brought out of doing this work?

Kylie Lewis:
From having worked now with probably a few thousand people doing this curriculum, and you teach what you need to learn, right? That’s what is often said about-

Janine Meadley:
True.

Kylie Lewis:
… educators. I think the two big pieces from this work that I’ve realised by getting this work in my own bones, so I can show up with other people and talk about it is the self-compassion piece, absolutely 100% game-changing revolutionises how you show up in the world, and your capacity to keep showing up over time, the sustainability of your leadership.

Kylie Lewis:
But the other big piece is boundaries and really being able to get clear about boundaries of what’s okay and what’s not okay and being able to rumble with the discomfort of setting boundaries that might ruffle feathers with other people, that people might get annoyed about or push back on.

Kylie Lewis:
But in the absence of setting your own boundaries, other people will fill up your priorities, your space, your commitments, unless you are clear about your boundaries about what’s okay and what’s not okay, and what you are prepared to do and what you’re not prepared to do, and what’s driving those behaviours. I think we can find ourselves in a place of a burnout and a kind of a big way to look at boundaries and understand what boundaries are anywhere in your life, where you experience resentment.

Kylie Lewis:
So resentment is a really good indicator that there’s a boundary issue that needs to be addressed. So if I’m feeling resentful, because I’ve been asked to do this thing, I need to investigate what’s that bumping up against? Is it that it’s just been expected of me without anyone checking with me if I have capacity to do this? Have I said yes to doing this when actually I really wanted to say no? Is there an injustice or an inequity here that actually needs to be addressed that needs to be talked about rather than potentially just me sucking it up or just looking the other way?

Kylie Lewis:
So wherever there is resentment, there’s normally a boundary issue that needs to be discussed, explored, observed, and a boundary set and held. And when the context changes, boundaries change. And so, I saw with the arrival of COVID and just the complete turning inside out of everything for a sustained period of time, yeah, the mess, like the mess, that came with that, it was a recontracting of boundaries.

Kylie Lewis:
So in this situation, what’s okay and what’s not okay? And it’s really hard when there’s so much of what might be happening is out of our control? And so, we really need to focus what is in my control? What can I control in this situation? And what do I need to push back on? How do we renegotiate these boundaries together given the context of what’s happening both in my personal life of what’s happening with me and in the professional context? And that’s not easy work.

Kylie Lewis:
I think, yeah, when I talk with leaders and when they ask me some of the biggest things that they get out of this work, is self-compassion and boundaries, and being able to rumble with the discomfort of boundaries because often in those boundaries, conversations are hard feedback conversations.

Kylie Lewis:
And that’s the kind of other area. I was working with a bunch of primary school principals from New South Wales earlier this week. And so some of their calls to courage were things like these are principals saying, “I want to be braver to have more difficult conversations. I want to be braver implementing change especially when I meet resistance in staff, letting go of the things I’ve implemented, letting go of perfectionism. I want to be braver at sticking to my point when it’s not a popular one.”

Janine Meadley:
Tough one.

Kylie Lewis:
Yeah. I’d like develop skills in giving constructive feedback. So some of those skills come because having those conversations require some boundaries to be upheld or honoured.

Janine Meadley:
Yeah. We’re talking about education. We’ve talked a lot about Brené’s work. But for you personally, what is your wish for education?

Kylie Lewis:
Gosh, that’s such a big question. I think my biggest wish for education as a whole is actually honouring what it is to be a human being in the world and to really honour the role of vulnerability for us as learners and our capacity to learn, our capacity to show up and engage with each other and work together collaboratively to solve and address some of the biggest issues that we’ve ever had to face as a species.

Kylie Lewis:
So one of the things just a short story to maybe finish up on, but in 2019, I was part of a programme called Homeward Bound, which is a global leadership programme.

Janine Meadley:
[crosstalk 00:52:03] brilliant. I know of this programme.

Kylie Lewis:
Yeah. So I was invited to join the Visibility Stream faculty, and visibility is all about empowering… Well in the Homeward Bound context, empowering women in STEMM from women in STEMM backgrounds from around the world to have the will and the skill to increase the impact of their work on the world and to raise their leadership capacity. And in that experience, it’s a 12-month online programme that culminates in a three-week voyage around Antarctica.

Janine Meadley:
Brilliant.

Kylie Lewis:
80 women in STEMM from 26 different countries around the world all on this one ship floating around-

Janine Meadley:
It sounds like a recipe for a tea party.

Kylie Lewis:
Yeah. There’s lots of things that come to mind when I say that to people. And we spent a lot of time doing a lot of container building to build psychological safety before we went on the ship. So we actually did quite a bit of digging into some of the work that we do with Brené. But one of the women on the ship who was part of the faculty as part of, I guess, their Elder Programme, they called it at the time, kind of the older, wiser, more senior experience kind of women was Christiana Figueres. And she was the UN executive secretary who led the negotiation of the Paris Climate Agreement.

Janine Meadley:
Legend.

Kylie Lewis:
I still pinch myself that I got to meet her. This incredible woman from South America who wound up leading perhaps the most important negotiation of our times. And it involved 195 nation states having to unanimously agree on these climate targets and pathway forwards.

Kylie Lewis:
And I didn’t realise. But anything that’s kind of done in the UN, you have to get unanimous agreement for it to be enshrined.

Janine Meadley:
Boy.

Kylie Lewis:
And what was so interesting to me is learning about Christiana was that she wasn’t a politician. She wasn’t an economist. She wasn’t a scientist. She was actually a trained anthropologist.

Janine Meadley:
Okay. How interesting.

Kylie Lewis:
And what that meant was that she understood culture. She understood that to make change, we need to meet people where they’re at and seek to understand their stories and what’s going on for them.

Janine Meadley:
Brilliant. Yeah.

Kylie Lewis:
And so during her tenure in that role, and I don’t know if many people realise this, but Paris Climate Agreement which happened in 2015, 2016, they had tried to do it at Copenhagen in 2009 and failed. And so Christiana came in kind of after that.

Kylie Lewis:
And one of the things I realised was her being an anthropologist meant that instead of kind of sitting in UN headquarters and trying to negotiate everything from there is that she went and visited every single one of those countries. She went to seek to understand then-

Janine Meadley:
195 countries.

Kylie Lewis:
Yeah. And to seek to understand what’s going on for them-

Janine Meadley:
Gosh.

Kylie Lewis:
… and to show up and to show interest and to be curious, and to honour the reality of what was going on for those people and to listen genuinely with curiosity about their concerns and their limitations and what would need to happen in order for this agreement to take place. That takes an ex an extraordinary amount of self-awareness to be able to go to a country, say, for example, like Saudi Arabia, where as a female negotiator, she had to potentially put aside perhaps some of her own kind of beliefs about the role of women in the world to meet these people where they’re at for this higher purpose of this needing to come to an agreement about how we’re going to go forward and solve this massive problem which affects all of us.

Kylie Lewis:
You need to have a pretty good sense of self. You need to have a pretty good sense of your own emotional reactivity, and develop some skills in navigating your own emotional landscape in order to be able to kind of create the collaborations that we so desperately need going forward. We need to be able to drop our own egos and show up in service of the work and each other with a clarity of our own values, with a sense of purpose and impact.

Kylie Lewis:
And one of the other things was I learned from her boundaries. So even in her role, she never took meetings after seven o’clock at night. She had this massive, huge global role. But she was like, “No. I don’t do evening meetings. I don’t do dinner meetings. I finish my day at this time.” And that enables me the space and the resetting and the rejuvenation that I need to be able to come back to work tomorrow and go again.

Janine Meadley:
Brilliant.

Kylie Lewis:
So she helds space and she modelled that for the team that she worked with as well. So it became expected that this is when Christiana’s available. This is not when she’s available. This is what she can do. This is what she can’t do. So I guess on my wish for education is to really have a greater appreciation for what it is to be a human, to recognise the diversity that exists within us and to find a pathway to each other rather than seeing it as division.

Kylie Lewis:
And I think a lot of that does come from our own self-awareness of what it is to be a human today, the compassion that we can offer ourselves. I think when we show up to ourselves with more compassion where we’re more able to do that for others as well and that’s when we practise setting boundaries for ourselves, we can role model what that looks like for other people as well.

Janine Meadley:
Wow. I’m getting the sense that this is going to be one of those episodes that our teachers listen to over and over and over again. I can’t even draw the threads together for that, because there were so many learnings and ideas that are applicable to our own lives. So yeah, thank you. I feel very inspired.

Kylie Lewis:
That’s my pleasure. Thank you for the opportunity to do that. And I love working with educators because I know that not only is there the opportunity to help in the sustainability of their own practice of being educators. But educators influence generations. And it can just take one educator in your life to change the trajectory of someone’s life, hopefully for good.

Kylie Lewis:
And when I think about what has led me to doing the work that I do today and where some of my strengths come from and the things that I get most joy out of, I can track it back to some really wonderful educators that I’ve had in my life. And in fact, one thing that’s really interesting, the best leader I’ve ever had in the corporate world was a primary school teacher who then went out into business.

Kylie Lewis:
I probably don’t want to say this, but skills are very transferable. Great teachers have very transferable across a broad range of industries. So when I think about the role of education and educators doing some of the most important work that is to be done in the world and doing it in a way that really honours the whole humanity of a student or humanity of a teacher, that’s what gets me excited about working with teachers.

Janine Meadley:
Oh, brilliant. Brilliant. I’m excited too. Thank you so much.

Kylie Lewis:
Absolutely my pleasure. Thanks for the opportunity.