Becoming a Purpose-Driven and Transformational Leader with Joe Ehrmann and Jody Redmond, InSideOut Initiative

http://thehighperformancemindset.com/

 

Cindra Kamphoff: Thank you so much for joining us on the High-Performance Mindset Podcast, Joe, and Jodi. I’m so grateful that you’re here with us. So, thank you so much for joining us today.

Joe Ehrmann: Well, we’re thrilled to be with you. And uh really appreciate the work that you do in the impact you’re having across the country and in Minnesota. So uh, wonderful to be with you.

Cindra Kamphoff: Thank you, Joe. Um, I appreciate that. And um what? When I was thinking about this interview. I was really pumped because I’ve got to see you both live. Speak, and Jody, I think about uh the reputation that you have in the state of Minnesota and all throughout the Us. Um and I’m just thinking about all the things I’ve heard people say about you, and the impact that you’ve had in our high schools and other organizations. So, I’m like just excited to share your work.

Cindra Kamphoff: And um, Joe, I’m thinking about the time I got to hear you speak was at the Minnesota athletic uh directors, this Administration Conference and I couldn’t believe, like uh the vulnerability that you showed. And then also how you got mostly men to talk about and share their life story and their crucibles, and their difficult moments in these small groups and these small tables, and I was My mind was thinking that you could just have such an incredible impact. So, I’m grateful that you’re here um with both, with us today and all the all the thousands of people who are listening so like to get us started. Maybe what we should do is just tell us a little bit about inside out, and why you’re both passionate about what you’re doing right now.

Joe Ehrmann: Well Inside Out is at a systems level. It’s a catalytic organization organizing uh principles that the uh address large systemic issues which is the best way to address them. So, two thousand and fourteen uh I have been in around the NFL for uh gosh! Forty years, two thousand and fourteen. There was a spike of NFL. Players that were arrested for domestic violence or sexual assault.

Joe Ehrmann: Uh, I was called in as part of an ad hoc committee to help define what the appropriate penalties. And rules there should be, and also how to what is this corporate social responsibility? And addressing these issues? Uh, in the midst of that meeting or object, turn to me and ask me if I would speak to coaching character in the context of Can you coach character in a way that would not only address issues of mal violence toward women, but all the other social issues that we have in every community. And the NFL Is certainly a microcosm of that, and my immediate response to him was I don’t think so. There’s not enough space in high school sports today to really develop a character.

Joe Ehrmann: Uh, there’s a lot of character programs. A few of them have very little impact. So, I left that immediately, and I’ve been doing coaches training for probably thirty years at that point in time,

and it was really kind of devastated by the lack of infancy. I felt that the sports were having, and the moral social development. So, I left that meeting frustrated. I ended up calling Jodie, and I asked her if she would partner with me because I had heard her recently talk about.

Joe Ehrmann: You can’t address this through coaching along. It has to be a systemic approach. So, Jodi and I collaborated, and we started in two thousand and fifteen, with in the State of Colorado, with the uh Denver broncos, and with the uh State of Texas, which is Dallas Cowboys. Um, so, we’ve started on this long, deep process, and I’ll let Jody share the rest of that story.

Jody Redman: There we go. I’m sorry about that. So, we uh, as you know, as Joe mentioned. Uh, he, he! He left that meeting and called me and I actually if I went back three more years previous to that. Uh, I’d let a book discussion around Joe’s book inside out coaching, how sports can transform lives, and I that with about twenty athletic administrators. And then, as in my role at the State High School League of Minnesota, went out and started teaching and delivering that content to coaches and What we realized after a year is that we were really setting coaches up for failure There wasn’t anybody that was back in the school community who was talking about transformational purpose questions, and Joe’s big four questions of Why do you coach? Why do you coach the way you do? How does it feel to be coached by you. And how do you define success? So went back to the drawing board and started to look at our systems in Minnesota. So, School Board associations, principals, superintendents, and parent organizations. How could we take the philosophy that’s contained in Joe’s book, and really move it across all layers of an ecosystem to see if we align that ecosystem around a shared value or a shared purpose, that then we could really um garner the support necessary for coaches to be transformational.

Jody Redman: Um. Our culture today has really become an industry. The use for culture specifically, has become, I think, it’s now a twenty-five- or thirty-billion-dollar industry. And so, when we look at that, all of those individuals who participate in a youth, sport, experience, understand what sport is about. Right? You go out. You travel internationally. You win national championships. You have lots of coaches and uniforms, and then they get put into a middle school program that’s education based and purpose based. And so, you begin to see where the descent begins to occur With What is the reason for this? Why do sports exist? And so, as Joe mentioned, we went back to the to this uh collective. Um, he is looking at his best practices. Some of the practices that I put in place here and looked at the systems level, approach to try and transform lives through what we call purpose-based sports, which is connecting student athletes to transformational coaches in a culture of belonging for their human growth and development.

Cindra Kamphoff: Wonderful! Thanks for the back story, and just like learning more a little bit about how you both got partner together to do this work, and that was going to be. My next question is, give us a little sense of in your opinion what it means to be purpose-based purpose-driven, and what do you see the impact? You know what I’m hearing you say is that it’s not just a coach understanding uh, you know why they coach, and that was that’s a really powerful question to think about. Um. How does it feel to be coached by you, right? And I’m thinking about um. How does it feel to be led by you, you know, for those people who maybe aren’t coaches here, and that’s a really powerful question makes you really take a step back. I’m curious what does it mean to be purpose-driven and purpose based in your opinion. And what is the impact that you’re seeing in a school like level a system level when um they go through your training.

Joe Ehrmann: Well purpose-based is again connecting student athletes to transformational coaches. So, we believe that you can grow and develop transformational coaching that starts on the inside works its way out uh It’s about being about to be a better coach to be a better leader. You’ve got to be a better. You’ve got to have some of your own personal growth and development disciplines, and always be working on creating the best version of yourself. So, we do a lot of internal work with coaches, helping them to clarify what their purposes, their passions, what their values and virtues are creating. A community of belonging. Most coaches all talk about culture, but few know how to create one. Is there anything more important to a pre-adolescent or adolescent boy or girl than being part of belonging to something to be loved, to belong to you, participate of something that is a recipe for mental health, wellness, and an adult for much of what’s taking place in this society. So uh, and then the human growth and development which is really the social, emotional character development of student athletes and foundationally. What we do is teach you coaches that you want to talk about the power of high performance.

Joe Ehrmann: Well, the foundation of high performance is secure relationship between that coach and student athlete when that soon after we feel safe, seen, and supported by that coach, or that opens up the platform, not only for higher performances, for deeper personal relationships which is foundational to all transformation. All of our transformer’s work is based on science. We’ve got eight years, almost eight years of evaluation we published that. But our work is built on a thing called Attachment Research, which is the capacity to build and maintain relationships.

Joe Ehrmann: It turns out that the single biggest predictor of your ability to build reciprocal positive relationships is when you’ve made sense out of your own life when you have a coherent number, an autobiographical history, and data that’s incorrect, autographed by autographical order. It’s the integration of the good and bad and the ugly. The second thing is social neuroscience which shows us that because of neuroplasticity of our brains, relationships plus experiences can change the form and function of the human brain. It can do that at any age. Then the third thing is just an integrated spirituality that we use

to really understand self-understanding self-compassion, mindfulness, and meditation. Those are the transformative pieces that we use to help coaches. Ah really be able to maximize the platform, the power position that they have in the lives of young people.

Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, powerful.

Jody Redman: Yeah, I would add that as we look at that coach relationship, certainly, then our work also centers in preparing athletic administrators and or school principals to lead, meaning that you have to go on as Joe mentioned that inside journey and make sense out of your own life, your own narrative. Understand where your values came from. Why did you, if you’re choosing a moral value to really build your culture around well, that you chose that for a reason that came from somewhere in your own life experiences in your own narrative. And so, we spend a lot of time working with athletic administrators because they can help to what we call lead from the middle. They can lead both up that chain in the ecosystem to their principal superintendent and school board, and They also then have direct influence and leadership and responsibility for their coaches who are under them, and then student athletes, parents, and community members. And so, it’s really equipping that athletic administrator to sit in that middle of that space and do their own work to prepare their own voice around. What purpose based is how they can connect to that, and then how they can stand up and communicate that vision within their own school community.

Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, Excellent well. And I’m thinking about Joe when I heard you first speak, and you had us do this like lifetime exercise where we identified our highs and lows. And then the degree of impact. Right? Um! And really being able to understand yourself and your struggles, I think you wrote about on inside out. Coach means turning your struggles, errors, and misfortune into lessons that will make a coach who can instill a sense of community and be a better leader. Right? Um, and tell a little bit more about why that’s so important to understand yourself and your own struggles, and then how they impact your leadership or you’re coaching.

Joe Ehrmann: Well, I think it’s critically to understanding why you coach, why you put yourself in a position while you make the sacrifices. Well, you give up your own family opportunities in order to coach. So, I think it’s imperative. You understand What’s the deep seed uh notions? What is eccentric? And what is other centric? What are you trying to get out of this uh relationship as well.

Jody Redman: Yeah. So, the narrative work is so incredibly important in that journey, and to your question syndrome about uh, you know, doing that exercise of uh elevating and air highlighting. Who are those people that positively influenced you? We. We talk about our life as a tapestry

where there are people that actually have woven their values or their tendencies; how they respond in certain situations, how they’re triggered. All of that is woven from those individuals who had influence over us positively or negatively. And so, we respond in similar ways to how we were responded to. And so, it’s critically important to take a look, to go in, to look deeply at what those things are, what are those values? What are those tendencies that we have? Because the only way that we change them and intercept them is to address them, make sense out of them. Uh bring them into some kind of coherence.

Joe Ehrmann: So, as a high school coach, my purpose was, I coach that help boys become men of empathy and integrity or lead, be responsible and change the world for good. That’s why I showed up every day. That’s why I was willing to make the sacrifices. Now that was my purpose, and it was a passion for me that allowed me to be transformation on the wise of other people, because I had already done my inner work. I was a board that was always looking for the affirmation, the validation of other men. I was always trying to figure out what it meant to be a man. So, when I became a coach, I became a coach because I had men that built into me that spoke into me and did validate me. So, I understand what my purpose was, and what my purpose comes of passion, and the passion is what it allows you to, uh compensate for the sacrifices that you make in order to do what you love to do.

Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, Excellent. So, I’m thinking about maybe leaders and coaches who are listening that say, I already have so much to think about, right. I got the game plan, and I really wanted to get my team to win right. And so. And I think about this winning culture that we live. And you turn on ESPN. And it’s all about. You know who won last night, and who lost right? So, what rebuttal might you give to people who say, uh, you know, Is this really important? Or um? Gosh! I have so many other things to think about besides my own inner work, and why I coach and these relationships with what I’m really hearing you say is like foundational, which I agree with.

Joe Ehrmann: Yeah, I think relationships is a foundation for all transferring issues and personal transformation always precedes social.

So, at the core. You know, our system allows us to address hazing, bullying, racism, sexism uh gender violence. Our system allows that whole process to be taken in.

Jody Redman: Yeah, I always add that it’s not an either-or perspective, and many in our culture believe that it is either you’re about winning, or you’re about what they call a soft skill. And what our philosophy looks at is that the goal is to try to get a group of students to achieve a win. That’s the curriculum, right? That’s where all of the teachable moments that exist in sport, and vice versa is so valuable because of those teachable moments.

Jody Redman: But if I’m not aware of the purpose of why I’m showing up if I’m not aware that that’s that. That is the human growth and development that I should be focusing on. Then I will most often do anything. I It will be at the expense of the student athlete. Right, it will be. I will. I will center on that goal of winning, um, and for goal, capturing those teachable moments when I’m a coach who understands that the goal, I’m going to play plan and prepare to win every game that I’m in. But I also understand that I have a higher calling or a higher purpose. Now we’ve got kids that because of that secure relationship are going to perform better. They’re going to do better because they know it’s safe to move outside of their comfort zone. They know that it’s safe for them to take risks right if you’re not in an in a culture or an environment where you feel like, it’s safe for me to do that. I’m going to stay locked into what I know right now, because I’m fearful of the consequences. I’m not going to play. I’m going to get yelled at. I’m going to get benched, or whatever those consequences are.

Cindra Kamphoff: So again, the goal is to try to win the game, particularly my fifteen-year-old. He really needs to feel loved and belonged right like he belongs. And I think when he doesn’t have that, he holds himself back. He doesn’t really, you know, take the shot at the last minute that he could. He passes it right, and I see him thrive when he has really great coaches that care about him That doesn’t matter if he makes a mistake. Hey? I love you, anyway, Carter, right? Um. So, I’m seeing it even what you’re saying and seeing it in my boys, and how it plays out in them. And that’s what we want for parent as parents. Right? We want our kids to feel supported and like they belong on a team.

Jody Redman: If the minute a coach doesn’t win on the scoreboard but is the best person that we can put in front of our students if we’re going to fire that teacher coach, who is the best person that we can put in front of our students, because maybe they didn’t have a successful or season, or came up against teams that were just better than they were. That becomes like the I think, the demise of the of the culture that becomes the demise of those coaches who are transformational. So, I think we have to be very conscious about putting support systems around transformational coaches so that they can coach in that way they can coach from that place of wanting to grow and develop that student or child into a better human being, which is really the whole reason for it should exist in our culture.

Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, exactly so, Joe. I’m thinking about something you just said previous, and you said you know that um part of your purpose, and you’re talking about being a man and your understanding of that. How? Tell us a little bit about that?

Joe Ehrmann: Yeah. So, we’ve changed that phrase, you know, as things get politicized in this country. So, you know I’ll call that heroic masculinity uh masculinity really is a social construct. So, every socio-economic group cultural, ethnic has their own kind of fluid definition

of their own masculine. But we define masculine based on five criteria. One is self-understanding. You’ve got to understand who you are, what your own passions, what your gift strength, what you need to develop. The second thing is self-management. How do you control emotions? How do you make beck’s, decisions? The third thing is relationship development. You know the key to every uh, every transformational leadership is Grant is leadership. But how do we teach is meant not to be relationally connected to be open and honest with who and what you are. The force thing is social learning, understanding, group differences that we’re uh, we’re individual people, it would that come in different color shapes, orientations. What have you. We’ve got to be aware of our understanding, the inherent dignity and value of all human beings, and the last thing is the more character of empathy, integrity, and moral courage. Uh, we teach those of the three really to personal transformation that will lead to social transformation. Uh, because when you’re empathic with other human beings that drives kindness, that’s an engine for kindness. Kind of sun moves toward compassion that demands some kind of integrity between your actions and your belief, and more courage is the critical component we’ve got all these athletes that are being praised for having physical purge, but they can’t stand up to some basic peer pressure. We’ve got to raise up a generation of men and women that have the more voices speak truth into this culture. So, when we talk about healthy masculinity, it really

is those five competencies, but it comes in two buckets, and one is relationship relationships. Uh: at the end of the life. The only thing that really matters is relationships. What kind of mother, what kind of father, son, daughter, how that leader, what kind were you? And the second question is, what was your purpose in life? Uh, did you leave the world a little better place. So that’s not only a definition or a criterion for masculine, but feminine as are the five competencies, because at the end of the day it’s about our core humanity as men and women.

Cindra Kamphoff: Powerful and say a little bit more about why you chose heroic, and neither of you Yeah, I can speak on that versus another word. What does that mean to you?

Joe Ehrmann: So, an African elder was once asked, what makes a good man? And the elder’s response was one who can laugh, cry, and protect, and does each one need it. So, there’s a holistic development, or one that need to take place. So, we’re all agreed to. You have strength and capacity beyond for just yourself. Your other centered other focus and assume both responsibilities as well.

Jody Redman: So, we’ve just developed for learning modules for USA football. Um. We’ve trained one hundred thousand youth coaches in the first two of transformational coaching. So, looking at Joe’s four questions and a transformational purpose uh statement of I coach with empathy and integrity to create secure relationships where every student is seen safe and supported, what are the actionable steps that a coach would take to create that culture on their team. The third is around uh healthy and heroic masculinities and femininities. How do we instill that and give the adult the perspective of how socialization impacts our youth from the time they’re born, until they reach us as coaches, and what we need to be um aware of in our own journey, so that we don’t damage our students further. And then the fourth is on parents’, partners.

Jody Redman: How do we develop uh coaches who can create partnerships and collaborate with parents instead of seeing them as an adversary, but that we’re all on this journey to again grow our students, and the better for the best people that they can be. So again, really exciting to see these concepts from where we are to. You know now that we’re able to scale and be able to deliver to large populations to national governing bodies. Um. And really, I think, get into the systems that sport um is structured under and impact those systems across all of participants within the system.

Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, and what a unique way to talk about these ideas, you know, and in an impactful way, because I don’t think that

youth really talk about this much often, right? And so, I could see this, the power of your work. And I’m thinking, Joe, about when I heard you speak, you’re telling a little bit about your story, and maybe the messages you got about being a man and um, how does that? You know you’re you and Joe? You can ask the same answer, the same question about your own background. But how does your own background, Joe? Impact what you do today?

Joe Ehrmann: Well, I was as a boy I had two major wounds. One was a father wound experienced as a year-old boy that I never deal with for forty-seven years. So, my journey really was marked by my wounds and trying to heal those. So, it turns out there’s two kinds of wounds in this world two kinds of wounded people, one is wounded people that ignore and deny their own wound, and what they do is keep wounding other people, their wounded wounders. The second kind of person is a wounded healer, and they kind of take their own rooms, heal them, and in the process of learning how to heal them, they then can take their heeled ones and help heal others. So, when you think of young boys in America today for the greatest one of the greatest quests to this question, Man, but who gets to validate that? Uh, every boy is still with this insecurity about being a Mac. It’s part of our culture that’s spread into young boys. So be able to have a man outside of the home, whether boy has a dead or not, but to be able to stand up there, and just to look a young boy to Ai, and say, I believe in you. I see you and you have what it takes. You’re on the right path the right road, or that’s very validating near the essence of masculinity, and the beauty of sports is that a team is nothing but a set of relationships for common purpose. So, when you think of masculine or feminine, we as relationships for a purpose. It’s the ideal place to help develop that. The problem is, uh, we have to walk in, particularly whole young boys’ hands, as we help them, develop their own social, emotional uh language and capacity to express that, and teach them how to build authentic relationships. We live in a world of single community. But how do we, in the context of sport, build authentic community where everybody’s known and accepted? For whom and what they are and that’s where the power lays.

Cindra Kamphoff: Yes, thank you. Um. And I know if people want to pick up your book, you talk a little bit about um. Your experience and inside out coaching out sports can transform lives. Um, Jody, how would you? How would you answer that question? How does you know maybe um your experiences impact you today and impact your purpose.

Jody Redman: Well, I again my journey um, especially around Joe’s book, and that this idea of sport. It was the first time that when I sat down and did read his book, and then led that book study with those athletic administrators that I ever went inside and looked at the people who influenced me. I don’t. I think we’re so busy today. We’re. We never really stop and spend too much time reflecting on our journeys, and or even where we want to go, or how present we want to be today. And so, it really it forced me to look at as I was leading this my own experiences, and you know I, too, had an adverse childhood experience that really left me wounded, and I think that is kind of the nature of for all of us. It’s the same for all of us. I think we all have um things that we’re really challenging in our youth, and I think it’s when we’re um awake enough to look at it, and then look at who helped us along the way.

Jody Redman: Um, and how we recovered from that experience. Um, it takes time and reflection to do so and so out of my own wounds came this need to create community and to create a place where everybody belonged and where we could create community where there was this growth. And there was this energy, and people wanted to be a part of it, and I think that is really fueled. Not only my journey as a teacher, a coach, an athletic administrator, and certainly in my role in a purpose driven life right, it’s being awake and aware, and it’s understanding our journey, it’s understanding what we learn from it, and then it’s taking that and making something better for our world with it. So, my passion has always been about leading to change the arc of others’ lives to create this place of belonging where we’re awake and aware and conscious of the power of adults in students’ lives, and the impact of either making it better or making it. You know an experience that is damaging.

Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, excellent. Well, I’m feeling like you’re speaking to my soul today. So, I’m feeling like this is very impactful and meaningful, and I know um when you’re speaking in front of uh, you know, coaches and leaders, they feel the same. Um. So, I’m curious. How can people get involved and reach out to you? Uh, and just if they want to learn more about what you’re doing, and just inside out in general, and how um they could, you could, you know you and your team can come and work with their team.

Jody Redman: Well, I think the best way is reaching out to our info at inside out Initiative Org. We have an admin that will work with you to schedule and to bring and look at all the possibilities. I think the other part is that we have now a need platform, so inside out, community of practice. So, we have courses and resources and ways to really scale this within your school community. And then, you know again. I think it’s a matter of we’re not a cookie cutter. We’re not. We don’t live in a box at all. Um, whatever the needs of that group might be. Um, we really tailor Our message in our process, based on how you’re showing up um and what your needs are um from a from a community perspective.

Cindra Kamphoff: I was looking on your website. Um about the impact of this work, and I know that UNC Greensboro has been the center there of athlete wellbeing, I think, has been doing some research on um your program. That’s where I went. Well, that’s where I got my PhD. So really excited to see that you’re working with UNC Greensboro. I love Greensboro, I lived there for seven years. So, um one of my favorite places on earth um, and I’m just curious. You know um what. Tell us a bit about high level on that study, and what you found there?

Jody Redman: Well, we uh so we were fortunate enough that when we met with Uh. Alexia Gallagher, the director of the NFL Foundation, back in two thousand and fifteen. In April of that year we met up at the uh NFL office, and she said, here’s your evaluation team, and that’s literally followed us with clipboards and kept notes like every thirty seconds they were writing down engagement based on you know what we were teaching at the time, And so we’ve been on this incredible and blessed journey with them, not only to inform our work from a data perspective of impact, but also to help us to really focus on. And um now publish, we’re we’ve published into uh two educational journals that really will help to elevate the educational value of what sport can be. Uh, I think people see it, and I think there was a huge impact in sport when we started defining it as extracurricular. I know, back in the I think, late seventy s early eighties. That change in kind of how we talked about sport in our school communities, and so I think that there’s been a real push for us, and especially with the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and our evaluation team to look at sports as being as important as math and science and English. It is teaching and learning, and if it’s not, then it really does not belong in our school communities. Um! What are the educational? What is the educational value that comes from sport?

Jody Redman: You know we uh, as Joe mentioned, we’re going to be meeting with them next week. We’re going to spend a lot of time uh mapping out our de I work uh within section one of New York. Uh, we’re going to We’re working on a masculinity paper looking at uh masculine uh tendencies around uh some of what Jar Joe shared in our podcast today. So, we’re really spending uh an awful lot of time looking at and mapping out our growth um, and also trying to bring and elevate the value of what sports can and should be in the lives of our students.

Cindra Kamphoff: Yeah, excellent, excellent. Well, as we wrap up today. I’m grateful that you’re both here and just shared more about your passions and you and your work, and how this really think a lot about why we do what we do. Um and how we can. I think the biggest message I’m really hearing is just continuing to create lasting relationships and keeping that front and center. Um, Joe, what final thoughts are um advice Maybe we do have for those people who are listening, and everyone who’s listening is really working to be the best version of themselves. So, I’m curious what thoughts final thoughts do you have?

Joe Ehrmann: Well, I think my final thought is just. All of us have to assume responsibility for other human beings and in that responsibility, it demands that we be the best version of ourselves. We live in a world that’s still with pain. I mean sports. Coaches, leaders have a tremendous opportunity to make a difference. But unless we step out of our own legal centric mindsets. Uh, it’s not going to happen. So, I again want to just thank you for your work uh warm and friendly you are. And I’m really looking forward to listening to your podcast.

Jody Redman: The only thing I would add to that um one it’s been just. I’ve been blessed by this journey uh with Joe. It’s been so impactful in my own life. And you know again, we always try, as in these leadership roles, to um expand our territory, so to speak, and to ensure that we’re reaching and growing ourselves every day. So, it’s that, being intentional component of, you know we could be happy in status quo and just kind of continue down the course and the path that we’re on. But it really uh leadership, effective leadership. Um Impactful leadership requires us to continue to grow and elevate um every day and to be awake. So, I would leave it at that and again bless to be with you today. It’s always good to see you Cindra.

Cindra Kamphoff: Thank you, Jodi, and thank you, Joe. I’m really grateful for your time and your energy today and keep doing the incredible work that you’re doing in this world. It’s much needed.

Joe Ehrmann: Thank you very much.