Kathleen Ratcliff on Multiplying the Intelligence of Your Team

Aaron Garner 0:00
Many years ago, I was sitting in a boardroom. And the CEO threw a question out there about what was going on within the hospital, one of the directors said what was happening, and the CEO stood up and put her hands on the table, and really confrontational like, address this particular director. And, and there was nothing was really done wrong, it was just a challenge that the organization is dealing with. And I just remember sitting there in the room. And I was very young, I was very new to being in boardrooms in general and interacting with executives. But I just remember thinking to myself, how, how is anyone else going to put a problem forward, if you're humiliated by putting problems forward, and I just looked around the room, and there are so many intelligent people in that room. In the end, nobody was speaking, nobody was putting problems forward. And therefore, we weren't leveraging the collective virtual horsepower, the collective intelligence of that room. And I just remember sitting back and think there's something not right about this, that this is, this is a shame that there's this many intelligent people in this room, and problems aren't being solved. Now, the executive was extremely intelligent herself, while she was not nearly as intelligent as the the collective, some of that entire group. So fast forward to today, I carried that experience with me. And I tried to combat that type of thing. I tried to facilitate open communication and collective knowledge in any work environment that I had ever been in. And then we started doing work with Kathleen, and the organizations that she's a part of, and Catherine recommended a book to me. And I will, for one, I was very interested in the way that Kathleen was managing it was, it struck me as a little bit different than the way that most people manage and the sense that she kind of was a little bit more removed. But she still had a personality that was very strong and very direct. And so I could tell that there was a mix of skills. And it just really interesting. So I kind of asked her about a few different things like that. And she recommended this book to me called multipliers. I did a reading this book. And it was it, it was what I had been looking for, for the past, I don't know, maybe maybe seven years. So I was trying to deal with a lot of these challenges with organizations that were a part of, but I didn't really have a good framework with which to operate from I didn't really have good actionable strategies and stuff like that. So I read that book. And it really, it changed things for me a bit. I was really intending on reading it to understand Kathleen, I was wanting to understand her mindset and how she I was looking for a common vocabulary, but I got so much more. So Kathleen, I really respect your your management ability. I respect the way that you engage with people. And I respect the work that you do with upstream. Welcome.

Maria Esterline 3:18
Nice to meet you, Kathleen.

Aaron Garner 3:21
I guess I'll just start us off with why. How did you get introduced to multipliers and why is the topic important to you?

Kathleen Ratcliff 3:33
So I actually, I heard this book would have been 2018. I just quit my safe, full time job to actually run the nonprofit that I founded full time. And I say full time because I wasn't paid full time. But it was actually not having a full time commitment elsewhere. And then realize how scary it is to not have an income, even though I have a partner who has a nice income. But it's scary for me. And then got offered with a very short turnaround to teach a class at Franklin College, which is in Johnson County. The class was called by I don't even remember, but it was something about innovation and creativity and leadership and how do they all intertwine? And how do we do all of the things all at the same time? And I saw I was going through orientation. It was a class I had never taught before. So I had experienced teaching at IU in terms of public health classes and consumer health and research and evaluation. The things that I actually know about, but got presented with this one. I was like, Sure why not like it's a challenge. It's a paycheck, like let's do it. So I was going through the faculty orientation. And one of the guest speakers like brought out this book and was like, this is the best leadership book I've ever read. He gave us a quote from it. And I was like, I need books for this class on leadership. Let's do it. Like why not? It looks interesting. And so I picked it And actually read it more on a vacation because I read quickly and I read frequently and was reading it on vacation was like, yeah, this is a really good book. And then I use it in my class. And when you use it with a bunch of college students who are asking questions and who are interested in leadership and creativity, I got a lot more out of it. Because I was kind of like a book club like we we read a chapter or a couple chapters. And then we talked about, what does this look like in your life? And what you know, giving me the chance of what does this look like in my life? And how can we apply this you know, with them in the various clubs or jobs that they're in, but then also when they're looking at graduating? Because it was a lot of juniors and seniors. And then you know, me challenging myself and then challenging me, how can you use this in your job. And so we just kind of picked it up and applied it as we read it, which I feel like is how you should best digest leadership books is not just read it and be passive about it. But actually think about what can I do from this? And that's, that was my introduction. And then yeah, I, anybody who's looking for a leadership book ever, because I agree, it's one of the better ones that I've read. And then I sold it to leadership, Johnson County, as Hey, there's this really excellent book, and you all should, should use it. And so they pulled me in to do a workshop on it last fall, and one of the attendees liked it so much that they then brought it to leadership, Shelby County. And so I did one in Shelby County, in January, also through ljc. And so it's just one of those books that, again, I feel like I keep telling people, it's this great thing. And then they say, hey, come talk about it. I'm like, Okay, I'll talk about, I'm not the expert, by any means. I still have a lot of diminisher tendencies, but I at least recognize them, and sometimes can do something about it. So

Maria Esterline 6:47
picking up on that topic, how do you begin to take that and put it into the practice of building a culture of the multipliers and any organization?

Kathleen Ratcliff 7:02
I think there's a couple of different ways, the way I focus on it, you know, thinking about the behavioral science that says you can't take a massive leap and expect it to stick, you've got to take those small, little steps. So for me, it was taking the online quiz to see what are like, officially my diminisher tendencies, as opposed to just reading the book and saying, Oh, I do that. Oh, and that, and like picking all of them. So I took the quiz, found the ones that, you know, come through, like, very clear example of this. And I looked at them and then said, Okay, well, what have these experience experiments, you know, that are in the back that they suggest to kind of tackle them, which of these are easy to implement, that I can just tackle. And then let's pick one, and let's focus on it. One thing that I think is important, though, is that as you start to do some of the, the experiments with the team, is to tell them what's going on. So you know, explaining, hey, I read this really great book, you should read it too. But one of the things that pointed out that I likely do is this. So to combat that, and to try to improve on that I'm going to start doing this more so and giving them that permission to either call me out if I'm not doing those practices, or at least so that they understand. So one of the diminishing tendencies I have this I'm a rapid responder, I am getting much better at that. But one of the things that that a rapid responder does is just takes care of things like emails come in asking me a question, I just take care of it and continue on. And we move semi quickly, because I just can take care of stuff. But that ends up leading people to just lean on me for answers, as opposed to using the resources and using their knowledge and using their autonomy to make their own decisions. So back at my old job, I then put a 24 hour like, like, I'm not just gonna sit here and respond to you when I know that you know the answer or that you have it at your fingertips. And that I got more emails, because I'd have somebody who emailed me and said, Hey, where do I find this. And then like, 20 minutes later, when I didn't immediately respond, nevermind, I found it like, I know you found it like it's in your inbox, or it's in this spot that you know where it is, but you're now not leaning on me. And so for those types of things, where I just slowed myself down, that's less, I feel like needing to give people the heads up. But one of the other experiments you can do with a rapid responder is this extreme question game, where instead of answering things, you just turn it around to a question where the other person has to answer it, which is great and fine until somebody feels like you're, you know, attacking them because you're not answering anything. You're just asking them lots of questions. And so taking that pause and saying, Hey, you know, I realize I make decisions, I do these things. You have that autonomy. Let me give that back to you. So I'm going to ask you leading questions to get you to where you, you know, need to go or I'm going to ask more questions versus answering them and giving them that heads up is usually a little bit nicer than just throwing 100 questions, gentlemen. With them being confused, while you're not just solving their problems.

Aaron Garner 10:13
Me personally, I, I found that I would often see my eye was kind of starting to define my role as solving problems or having it coming up with the answers to problems. And that had largely worked out for me, mostly, most of my life like it, you know, I found that the more that I solve problems, the better things went. So, one, why is it? I'm just curious to ask you like, the things that serve us pretty well in certain phases of our life. Why is it that they stop serving as well? And how hard is it to make that shift when you realize, like being a quick responder or defining yourself as the problem solver, it like works really well until it doesn't. And then you find out that you're the bottleneck, and you've created a scenario, you've created the bottleneck for yourself? I don't know if you have that experience? Or is that what it felt like to you?

Kathleen Ratcliff 11:20
I think there's, I think that, you know, there's this idea that we can go all the way over and be a complete multiplier and not have any of those issues. But I also subscribe to in fact that sometimes you do have to make those decisions, right? Like, sometimes it just has to happen. And somebody like a problem solver or crisis is there, like somebody has to take steps. And if you're the boss, then that tends to be you, or whoever is in the best situation to make those steps or make those decisions. But I also think that you free yourself up a lot if you can give that decision making authority and that autonomy back to your team. And so this is one of those where the you know, there's lots of the ones that I'm in is an excellent example for the the experiment is to give somebody else 51% of the vote. And so I used to talk about having hard opinions and soft opinions. And so when Kathleen has a hard opinion, that means this is what we're doing. But when Kathleen has a soft opinion, that just means I'm tossing out ideas, like you pick what what makes sense and what works for you and for my team, for your grant and for your effort and for your you know, quote unquote, goals and mission. Understanding that I have lots of thoughts and lots of visions and lots of ideas. But most of the time, it's just that they're just ideas. And so trying to give my team the autonomy to decide what they do with their grant understanding and their efforts. Understanding that I am going to have to step in sometime and say, Nope, we got to do this, or we don't have any more time, you have a lot of opportunity, here's what needs to happen. just recognizing when you have that ability to give the leeway versus when it it just has to happen. I also tried to whenever possible, and I noticed it more recently, because we ended a fiscal year in June. And so there was a lot of spin down that had to happen. Like we have to spend money because it was spend it or lose it. We didn't get to keep it and roll it over. And so like we had multiple conversations of well, what else can we buy to further our goals? What else can we buy for, you know for Prevention's as a prevention grant. And then we got to the point where my team was, like, I just don't know, I was like, that's fine. Just tell me that you are done spending your money and I'll go spend it like, I can do that I can make that happen. And so we just upped ordering a lot of different things that we'll use, you know, this fiscal year, but we were able to purchase them last year, but giving them that opportunity to make their own decisions. So here's how I want to spend my money. But then also recognizing when they were just done, that, that's fine, you're done on the boss, I'll go spend it, it's fine. We have a lot of bags coming for that reason. So you're beautiful, they're gonna have great messaging, we're gonna shove some micro intervention books and content in them, and we're gonna take them to, you know, lunch handouts and great you know, thing as a result. But instead of ordering 1000 bags, we ordered 4000 because need to spend money. But again, coming back to that giving autonomy where we can but then at least recognizing some of your diminishing tendencies so that you can avoid them. But also recognizing that sometimes you can cause more harm by not stepping in and being the boss and doing what needs to be done. Because then your team just struggles because they they need that guidance, and they need somebody else to make the decisions. When when necessary.

Aaron Garner 14:45
That's very interesting. It's, I'm seeing the contrast now between the two books that you've recommended me so far. Hopefully you'll recommend that but the other one was Strength Finders, 2.0 and Strength Finders. Definitely it Identify as people's, their, their strong abilities. So then after you read that book, it's easy to come to define yourself as the decision maker or the whatever that that thing is. And then, and then I was reading multipliers on like, there's some conflicts in my mind here. About what what exactly my, my role should be. So it's interesting to hear you say that,

Kathleen Ratcliff 15:26
I say, yeah, I'm pretty sure one of my top five strengths is, is the strategize or whatever, I don't remember the exact phrasing. But it's this idea that you have good ideas, you have good vision, and you plan 18 million steps ahead, which is totally me. But then it comes back in my diminishing tendencies that to a moderate extent, I have both the strength, strategist diminisher tendency, as well as the idea guy, where I have all of these thoughts, and here's how things should work and the vision and all of that. And so again, to me, it is both a strength and being able to plan out, you know, 15 steps ahead and have plan B's for each of those 15 steps when they don't go well. But then it can also be super diminishing to my team to be like, Oh, no, here's the direction we're going, what I don't need you all to brainstorm or plan with me, because I've already gotten it all worked out. And so again, to me, it's recognizing when it can be a strength and when it can be a diminishing tendency, and then trying to land more on the strength and multiplying side versus that the diminishing side.

Aaron Garner 16:35
Have you ever applied any of that information that you've learned and multipliers to the marketing sphere? Nope.

Kathleen Ratcliff 16:46
Other than to the extent of applying the decision making abilities, and that, that recognition of these are things that I want, and here's how I see it, but also, I am not always the expert, and what I want. And so sometimes it's, you know, I think of that kind of that perfectionism, and here's how I want it. And this is how it should be, versus Well, you all understand this better. And so here's, you know, it's all yours. So I think about those ad sets that we did, once upon a time and I'm like, this is silly, like, this doesn't, doesn't work. And Mark and Aaron are like, nope, this is how it goes. And like, Okay, why I still think it's silly. But if you're telling me that this is how it's supposed to be, then that's fine.

Aaron Garner 17:32
That's a good point. And, as specifically, Mark had a number of questions that were, you know, they were kind of looking at the information and seeing some similarities between what we see a lot in the marketing world, and what the what the book was providing.

Mark Wilhelm 17:54
I think that there's an interesting conversation about sometimes there are, there is a place for what we call diminishers, in terms of like, sometimes it is the right time to be the person that makes the decision, basically. So that's one conversation, which is kind of interesting. There's also conversation about how a lot of people might act as a diminisher. Accidentally, which you've sort of talked about some of your tendencies, what or if you don't mind sharing, you mentioned, the responder is something that you might sometimes do not completely consciously, I was wondering if there might be another trait that you may sometimes exhibit in which you're accidentally maybe diminishing somebody on the team.

Kathleen Ratcliff 18:42
I'm a lot better at that rapid responder, just because I'm overwhelmed. And I don't have time. So that makes it a lot easier to not respond to email so fast. But I think if I can back up just a little bit, I think that in terms of Is there a place for diminishers? I think in an ideal world, for a pure diminisher. No, we would boot them out, like get rid of them, because they're not helping anybody. And they're actually causing, you know, to me, that's some of the the impacts of working with a diminisher is it increases your burnout, and it kills your interest. And it kills all of that joy that you can get from working and doing something that you're passionate about. And if if you're surrounded by diminishers, that tends to get eaten up very quickly. So in an ideal world, I think we would get rid of the pure diminishers. But I think definitely that that accidental diminisher exists in all of us. I don't think that there are many people who are that kind of pure multiplier, I think we all just can have those tendencies, and it's how do we increase them? But I also think that, you know, there's that difference between, you know, I said, you know, sometimes you just have to make the decision. And I've realized that that's one of those diminishing tendencies. But I also think that when you just make those decisions, you can take steps to have the multiplying at least explanation. So I made this decision because we had 20 minutes to decide something And I just called it like, this is what we're doing, which is different than just doing it and then letting your team like, Oh, I didn't realize we made that decision like two weeks ago, like, Oh, yeah, I took care of it. I'm not saying that I'm great at that at that communication piece, because sometimes it's putting out fires and continuing on to the next fire. But I think that when we have those, those pieces that are kind of that accidental, diminishing quality or, or action, the more that we can then communicate around it, like, here's what happened, here's why it happened. I, you know, in an ideal situation, this is what we would have done, you know, we would have had a team meeting to discuss it, I think that can go a long way of, you know, maybe not putting you in that multiplier column, but at least reducing some of the diminishing that happens. I know, at least I prefer if somebody's just making calling audibles and making decisions, by know why or what's going on that that helps with some of it. And I think that, you know, that probably has been my bigger diminishing tendency right now, at least, is is those immediate decisions, or just making the decisions as opposed to debating stuff. Because, like, like, joke, I'm not a rapid responder anymore, because I'm so overwhelmed. And so therefore, when you're so overwhelmed, and you get presented with a fire or a problem, it's a lot easier to just do it, especially right now. You know, we're still in a pandemic, but kind of out of it pandemic, but we're not at all in the office at the same time, at least for upstream. So it is very common that I'm the only one in Wherever I am, whether it's at home or in the office in the suite. And it's a lot harder to then either email somebody and ask for, you know, their opinion, text them, do some sort of zoom, whatever it may be, to try to pull multiple people together, who we're all super busy, to then have those debates and conversations. And a lot of times, it's just easier to you know, make the decision based off of the content and the knowledge I have. Where I need to follow up and be better about is then explaining why and this is what happened. And, you know, in an ideal world, we would have had an, excuse me an extra couple of weeks where we could have talked about it going to had a team meeting, we could have done those types of things. And so I think that that's my, my bigger piece. I think also, you know, just that, that perfectionism has also been let go a little bit, because, again, I don't have I don't have the time to do things. And so sometimes it's the, you know, question of, is it not right? Or is it not how I would do it. And I really try to use that a lot, especially with being busy and being you know, like said, you know, tapped out, if it's not wrong, I don't have the time to do it differently. So we'll just go with it, that's fine. And being okay with that is is challenging sometimes.

Aaron Garner 22:56
One of the areas that I noticed that the content in the book resonated, created a little bit of conflict, at least in terms of when you try to view it through a marketing lens. But one of the things that they teach you in marketing is that you have to pick an audience, and you have to resonate with your audience. I think that that's the reason the book multiplier resonated with me, because, you know, we, we tend to like things that are in alignment with our worldview. Well, the challenge with that is sometimes if you if you pick a worldview, and you resonate with people that have a particular worldview, there are other people that don't share that view. And they don't particularly like the way that you operate. So is there if you become a really great multiplier, will everyone love you? Or will some people not appreciate it?

Kathleen Ratcliff 23:52
I mean, I think I would push back on whether or not people love me or love and multiplier and more of do they respect you and respect the way you operate? Because I think if you were doing, you're never gonna make everybody happy, no matter what you do, well, 100% multiplier or I mean, 100% of the ministry, you're probably not making many people happy. But I think I'm pushing back on that in terms of Do they understand and respect the the approach you're taking, even if they don't disagree with it, but if it is a consistent approach, I would hope that they would respect that they can know what to expect. So if if somebody is moving in a direction or handle something in a way that I don't agree with, but they're consistently handling it in that way, and I can understand why they're handling it and that way. I at least to me that that earned some respect because nobody is 100%. Right? depending on what's popping up. But I think the the ability to to be consistent and to be consistent and be able to explain here's why I'm doing it. I would think that People should respect that whether they love you for it or not, would be my approach

Aaron Garner 25:05
to the upper low view for it. Oh, probably. Yeah, it's I mean, I think, from my perspective, I think it's because I share a similar worldview with you. To me, it's just hard to understand, like, why would you not like somebody that operates this way. But nonetheless, there are people out there that dislike, your name, the category, there's somebody that really doesn't like people that operate that way. So I was just curious if you ran across anyone that just just does not like when people operate like that.

Kathleen Ratcliff 25:37
I mean, I think that the challenges, you know, there's, there's going to be a group of people who no matter what you do, they're going to be obstinate, just to be obstinate. And so you know, if you're not those people, not those people out and not necessarily concerned with how what you do impacts them, because they're not going to be happy anyway, I think that you have the ability to build up really strong respect for that consistency, and that clarity and the communication that can go with here's why I'm doing what I'm doing. I also am not enough of a multiplier on a regular enough basis to be in the position to know whether people loathe me for the way I behave on things. I'd like to pretend that the things that they loathe about me are the diminishing pieces that happen. Or, like I said, when I'm asking lots of questions in order to try to make them make a decision and realize that they have the knowledge, and they get really confused. And they just didn't like just tell me what you want. They could load that.

Mark Wilhelm 26:38
Yeah, that that question sort of came from something that was actually kind of in this like discussion guide for the book that I don't know where I found that, but it was talking about, you know, there's different categories of, or I forget what they call them, sort of different facets of being a multiplier, and one of them was what they called the Liberator and sort of some of the the key tenants of that we're sort of having to a certain, like, kind of demanding, what one of the things was that in there, it was sort of like hard on issues easy on people. So it's a certain amount of light, being insistent on pulling the best work out of someone. And then the flip side of that was it was talking about admitting mistakes, and so. So it's almost sort of like you are insistent on other people that they do their best work, but also own their mistakes, and work on that. So I can see how there would be a certain type of person that doesn't want anything to do with that. And so they might not like your leadership style, if that's what you're focusing on.

Kathleen Ratcliff 27:58
And to me, you have to own your mistakes so that they don't happen again. And that's, that, to me is where it where it comes from, like, you can screw up really badly. And if you recognize it, and then talk through, here's why it happened. And here's, you know, let's do a post mortem. And here's the steps that let me get here. And then let's not ever make that mistake again. To me that it gives that, that freedom to then recognize, okay, well I can do my best work or my not so best work, but I know that they're gonna support me and kind of follow up. We talked about in the, you know, in the mental health field, and this is a way big diversion, but I promise I'll get there. So we talked about in question, persuade, refer and QPR about asking somebody if they're suicidal, if they're thinking of killing themselves? And how you have to ask it directly. You can't say, are you hurting yourself? or any of that you have to ask directly, are you thinking of killing yourself, because when they when you ask them that directly, and you do it in that non judgmental way, if they are, then they have this, this kind of weight that's lifted off when they're able to tell you yes. And they know that you're going to help help them and support them. And so this, you know, kind of lifting of this anxiety and this burden that can happen when you're direct and when you're open and non judgmental. It is very different. But it's also the same when you've experienced this huge mistake or a big mistake, and you're just kind of hiding it from everyone to be able to be in a space where you can say oh my gosh, I screwed up. Here's what happened. Here's how we got here. Here's the the impact it's gonna have, here's how I can fix it. And here's how I won't ever do it again, like being able to express those mistakes and then having somebody say, Okay, well, let's not do that ever again. Let's put these steps in place to communicate, you know, our next steps or, you know, how do we fix this and then go fix it. Being as someone who has been in that position where I made a huge mistake, and that was the response I got, it's just that like, huge burden lifting And that's the same type of thing we talked about in terms of training and talking to people with that non judgmental space and asking directly and giving them that space, that anxiety is just so much lighter.

Aaron Garner 30:13
The conversation is so interesting, and that I've been holding back a lot, especially in the spirit of having read the book. But I'm also looking at the time, and we usually guides us through the outro. And it's probably a good time to transition to that. But Kathleen, some time, I want to hear the story about you stumbling across this text, using it while you're teaching a course that you haven't taught before, and what kind of things were going on in your mind as you're realizing because one thing he warned me about was, don't let it become overwhelming, you may see. So I'm just imagining you teaching a course that you've never taught before and becoming aware of things in real time and implementing and teaching. What that what that must have done. But we'll save that for,

Kathleen Ratcliff 31:09
I'll tell you very quickly, it's coming back to that understanding that behavior wise, if I want to change, I can only change a small thing at a time. And so getting through the book and saying, Okay, wow, I do a lot of these things. Let's see which ones I'm most bad at. Okay, this is what I can easily fix. Let's do that. And you do that for a little bit until you don't do it anymore. And then you're like, Okay, what's what's the next one on the list, I believe also, I gave you the warning. And if I didn't, I should have. So I'm gonna give the warning to everybody else that if you read this book, and then you feel like a really horrible person, you shouldn't, because everybody has these diminishing qualities. That was the biggest complaint from my students was that they felt like horrible people afterwards, because they saw all of these things that they did that negatively, or could negatively impact those around them. And so again, my comment to them was, well pick one and fix it, like pick one and work on it. And then pick another one. And once you get them kind of working, working through it, you know, recognizing that now you can now you can recognize your problems or the things that you're doing that aren't supporting other people. And so then you have to fix them slowly, so that you're not overwhelmed. And now you can transition just

Maria Esterline 32:25
so capital, you and I were talking a little ahead of our little meeting. It's just like, love that you have the rapid fire questions, and you listed out to give them our guests a little bit of a heads notice to kind of prepare for our response as well. Right. So with work Come, I'll

Kathleen Ratcliff 32:45
also say I didn't prepare for those. So I just saw them and I was like Oh, that's nice.

Maria Esterline 32:52
We type. So what comes to mind when I say the following say these words one at a time. Feel curious. George? Oh, creative. Creative. That's where I got stuck. I think rocks will go with that. I don't have to explain these right. You don't have to. resourceful I think a knowledge broker. Brave, empowering. And then beautiful. Think of sunsets.

Kathleen Ratcliff 33:45
None of those I had prepped for, although I did see them ahead of time. So they're not to say they're not super insightful, impactful things.

Maria Esterline 33:57
Can you share with us how people can get ahold of you, Kathleen?

Kathleen Ratcliff 34:01
Yeah, so I'm on just about all of the like professional outlets with the same, I think, username tag of Katie, Kathleen, AR, for amberson Ratcliffe. So LinkedIn, Twitter, I'm not I don't use Twitter as much anymore because I'm, like said overwhelmed and behind. But when I'm not, I love it. It's nice little snippets. But LinkedIn and Twitter are probably easier ways to get there. Because I think the other ones I have locked down, but you should also follow upstream, which is the nonprofit that I started and founded in Johnson County. And we have this the similar thing, but it's different because some accounts or some platforms will allow you to use periods and others don't. But just about everywhere. You can find us with upstream dot under score prev PR EV for prevention. So we're on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Link Then all the places

Mark Wilhelm 35:05
that I asked about the rocks? Because Yeah, I think I, I know, I've seen that on the Facebook banner. And so and I feel like I've seen a photo come through somewhere, somewhere that the decorating rocks is something that you do. So I know about that briefly.

Kathleen Ratcliff 35:21
Yeah, so we, it was one of the ideas from one of my board members. And I honestly, I think of it because we just did two events in the last like three weeks. But we go out places and takes solid rocks, on painted rocks, and then also kind of pre painted so that they're brighter. With the they have stickers on them that have our hashtag, that's just hashtag upstream prevention. So if you looked for that, you would be able to find them. And we just asked people to decorate them, however, make sense to them. That's uplifting and gonna make somebody smile. So we ask them to decorate them, and then either give them back to me and I take them around the community and put them places, or they can decorate them and take them with them with the understanding that they have to put them out in the world, not just hold them on their dresser, which is an important distinction for small kids, because my niece who's nine would just have a nice collection of rocks in her room, which would make her smile, but doesn't make the rest of the world smile. So we use it. It's one of our non evidence based kind of feel good things of people need to smile more and feel connected. And so if I'm out walking or feeling upset and sitting on a bench, and I happen to look down and see a rock that tells me I'm enough, then maybe that makes my day a little bit better. So the joke is that I'm not creative. And so therefore, I am the worst person to be doing these rock events. But I'm the one who ends up doing them. So I show up at wherever we are. And I'm like, here's all the things you have. My ability is to put a sticker on it and call it good. Hopefully, you can create something better. And inevitably, people do because a lot of people are super creative. And that's just not a skill I've developed. I could I just don't have time to develop it. So I think I'm like running around. Yeah.

Maria Esterline 37:07
Thanks. That's awesome. Thank you so much. It's so nice to meet you, Kathleen. Now, thanks for having me. Absolutely. Very fun and enlightening conversation. Yeah.