OneOp

Military Consumer Protection in Action: Tools and Tactics for Service Providers
2026-07-07 11:00 - 12:00 (America/New_York)
This webinar educates financial service providers on the Federal Trade Commission’s role in military consumer protection. For over ten years, the FTC’s Military Consumer initiative has fought to stop fraud against military consumers through enforcement and consumer education. Learn about free print, digital, and media resources to add to your financial counseling toolbox to help service members, veterans, and military families spot and avoid scams and protect against identity theft.
Learning Objectives:

Understand the role of the FTC in military consumer fraud prevention, including consumer data reports, civil law enforcement actions to stop scammers who target veterans, and free consumer education resources to teach consumers how to spot, avoid, and report fraud.
Identify the most common tactics scammers use to target service members, veterans, and military families to steal money or personal information.
Develop a list of federal fraud prevention resources to incorporate into financial literacy conversations, including fraud data, print materials, articles, blogs, and shareable graphics and videos.
Identify ways to get the latest trends in scams and identity theft and collaborate with the FTC’s Military Consumer initiative.

Terri Miller is a consumer education specialist in the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. In her role, within the Division of Consumer and Business Education, Terri crafts, implements, and evaluates high-impact public education campaigns.
As a former Marine Corps spouse, Terri leads the agency’s Military Consumer outreach initiative, which helps military servicemembers, veterans, and their families detect and avoid fraud and scams that can impact everyday life in the military. Through partnerships at the federal, state, and local level, Terri disseminates timely and targeted plain-language practical advice through blogs, webinars, television and radio interviews, social media, and in-person events.

In addition to military consumer outreach, Terri works on a range of other consumer protection topics including identity theft, student loan debt relief scams, and youth digital and financial literacy.

Accredited Financial Counselors (AFC): This webinar is approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) units by the Association for Financial Counseling & Planning Education (AFCPE). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close July 7, 2029.
Certified in Family and Consumer Sciences (CFCS): This webinar is approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credits from the American Association for Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close July 7, 2028.
Certified Personal and Family Finance Educator (CPFFE): This webinar is approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credits from the American Association for Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close July 7, 2028.
Certified Personal Finance Counselors (CPFC): This webinar is approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credits from The Center for Financial Certifications (FinCert.org). **Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close July 7, 2029.
Certified Family Life Educators (CFLE): This webinar is approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credits from the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close July 7, 2029.
OneOp Certificates of Attendance are available for those interested in additional documentation of professional development activities.

If the button above does not appear, please access the continuing education survey through this link: https://auburn.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9BrsWPbFK27UBYq. If you have any questions, please email CE@oneop.org. Webinar Slides
Webinar Resources Photo Credit: Zofia / Adobe Stock

Leveraging the Community Assets to Support Military Families
2026-07-02 06:00 - 17:00
Subscribe to the “Practicing Connection” monthly email to keep up to date on our latest podcasts, blog posts and workshops.
Join the “Practicing Connection Community” on LinkedIn. The community is designed for people who support military families in a variety of settings both on installations and in our communities. JTNDZGl2JTIwaWQlM0QlMjJidXp6c3Byb3V0LXBsYXllci0xOTQxODE5NSUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRmRpdiUzRSUzQ3NjcmlwdCUyMHNyYyUzRCUyMmh0dHBzJTNBJTJGJTJGd3d3LmJ1enpzcHJvdXQuY29tJTJGMjA5OTk4MyUyRmVwaXNvZGVzJTJGMTk0MTgxOTUtbGV2ZXJhZ2luZy10aGUtY29tbXVuaXR5LWFzc2V0cy10by1zdXBwb3J0LW1pbGl0YXJ5LWZhbWlsaWVzLmpzJTNGY29udGFpbmVyX2lkJTNEYnV6enNwcm91dC1wbGF5ZXItMTk0MTgxOTUlMjZwbGF5ZXIlM0RzbWFsbCUyMiUyMHR5cGUlM0QlMjJ0ZXh0JTJGamF2YXNjcmlwdCUyMiUyMGNoYXJzZXQlM0QlMjJ1dGYtOCUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRnNjcmlwdCUzRQ== (Season 7, Episode 27)
We talk a lot on this podcast about the importance of collaborating with others in your community.
But if you are finding yourself overwhelmed or with limited capacity, this framework and practice are a great way to get started. You don’t have to make everything happen yourself!
This episode is specifically about the Community Capitals Framework and how to get connected with the assets that already exist in your community. Jessica and Bob discuss how this framework identifies seven types of capital and how these capitals can be leveraged to build resilient and supportive communities for military families.
Links and resources from this episode:

Strategic Doing
Holding Change
Community Capitals Framework
Spiraling-Up: Mapping Community Transformation with Community Capitals Framework
Military Family Readiness Academy: oneop.org/mfra

Related episodes:

Feeding Military Families with Stronghold Food Pantry CEO Monica Bassett
An Ecosystem of Military Family Support with Nicola Winkel
Partnering on Early Education for Military Kids
Reconnecting with Nature: Health and Well-Being for Military Communities (webinar)

Links and resources from this episode:

Sign up for our monthly newsletter: https://oneop.aweb.page/practicing-connection-newsletter
Join our LinkedIn group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/12879756/
Send us a message: practicingconnection@oneop.org

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: [00:00:00] Welcome to Practicing Connection. I’m Erin, and today we’re diving into an episode about leveraging community assets as part of our From the Archive series. In this series, we’re updating and re-releasing retired content that we feel is still relevant today. This episode is specifically about the Community Capital’s framework or how to get connected with the assets that already exist in your community.
We talk a lot on this podcast about the importance of collaborating with others in your community, but if you’re finding yourself overwhelmed or with limited capacity, this framework and practice are a great way to get started. You don’t have to make everything happen all by yourself.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Today, we’ll be talking about using a tool from Community Development, the Community Capitals Framework, to inform your work with military families. Later on, we’ll share a practice to help you utilize the community capitals.
Hi, Bob. How are you? [00:01:00]
BOB BERTSCH: I’m doing well. Thanks, Jessica. It’s good to be with you. I’m excited to talk about Community Capital’s framework. It’s been something that has been part of community development for a long time. It’s a great framework for taking that asset-based approach, which we often talk about strengths-based or asset-based approaches to development.
I recently read a book that actually draws a lot from asset-based community development and applies that to the concept of agile leadership. The book is called Strategic Doing, and the authors take concepts like identifying assets and linking and leveraging assets along with ideas from the agile method of project management, if you’re familiar with that.
And then they frame those as leadership skills that can help us navigate complex challenges by strengthening our shared skills for collaboration. It’s really interesting. There’s a lot of crossover with our work on the Practice and Connection Initiative, so it’s been validating a little bit. [00:02:00]
And it also surfaced, some different skills and strategies that we might wanna bring to our work. And when I say that, our work as the Practice and Connection producers and team, but also our work as military family service providers, really great book and really enjoyed it.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: I did dig back into that.
I read that book a while ago and enjoyed learning about the concepts, but, hearing you describe it the way you’re describing it, makes me think I should take another look and maybe, feature some of the practices here and there, on the podcast maybe. I’ve actually been digging into a book myself.
I, lately, I think I’ve been talking a lot about a lot of yard work on this podcast and television shows. I’ve been digging into Adrian Marie Brown’s book, Holding Change. Right now, I’m reading a part about fractal facilitation. I’m a facilitator and love facilitating. She talks about [00:03:00] how most group changes happen in small ways.
So we’ve talked about this before about change happening in fractals. And what she says is that every practice, ritual, and action a group takes is, as she puts it, a small-scale way to grow or shrink its own realization of its espoused mission and values. An interesting part of this for me is that what you might think of as a baby step or a small scale change might actually feel like it’s a huge change to someone else.
So if I think something’s really small, you might be like, “What are you talking about, Jessica?” That’s way too scary. That’s way too huge of a change. And it doesn’t surprise me and I feel like it’s something that some of us maybe intuitively know and yet we gloss by that a lot. And so it was a really good reminder to remember to do some perspective taking when it comes to group work.
BOB BERTSCH: That sounds awesome. I haven’t read Holding Change yet. I’m [00:04:00] looking forward to doing that. I’m a big Adrian Marie Brown fan. Thank you for this great recommendation and insight into holding change.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: All right, Bob, let’s dig into this. The Community Capital’s framework is what we’re here to discuss today. It was developed by Jan and Cornelia Flora, two well-known names in our world, the community development and organizing world. It’s a systems approach to understanding and fostering community development.
The framework identifies seven key types of capital that contribute to the health and resilience of communities. These capitals include natural, cultural, human, social, political, financial, and built capital. You could think of it this way. Families face different challenges, and of course, military families face some [00:05:00] unique challenges, which can be difficult to tackle alone, but what if we could tap into the strengths of the entire community to address those challenges?
That’s what the community capitals framework can help us do. So today, we’re gonna explore each capital and how you can use this framework to think strategically about collaboration and resource utilization.
BOB BERTSCH: So let’s start with social capital and that is the connections and relationships within a community.
That’s what social capital is. For military families, building a support network is essential, as you guys know. And as a service provider, you can understand and assess the existing social capital in the community to inform that. Are there strong neighborhood associations, local support groups, nonprofits serving military families, social clubs, or strong online groups that you know of?
By connecting families to these networks, you’re not just providing immediate support potentially, but you’re embedding them into a [00:06:00] broader community that can offer ongoing assistance. And one great example of this is the stronghold food pantry that was started by Monica Bassett at Fort Leavenworth.
We discussed this in an interview with Monica in a previous episode. The pantry not only provides essential food sources to military families, but also fosters a sense of community and belonging. Through the stronghold food pantry, Monica leveraged social capital, by creating a space where military families could connect, support each other, and build stronger community ties.
The pantry’s success wasn’t just about the food, although that was very important, but also came from strengthening the social fabric of the community and building that social capital.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. I love that example. This also makes me think of our episode with Nicola Winkle, called an ecosystem of military family support.
In this episode, Nicola emphasized how social capital was central to building an [00:07:00] interconnected ecosystem of support for military families. By fostering relationships across various organizations, military and civilian alike, this network created a web of support that addressed the diverse needs of military families, ensuring that they had access to the resources and connections they needed at every stage of their journey.
I’ll roll right into financial capital and political capital. Many families face financial challenges, but resources can be scattered across different organizations. Who else in your community cares about providing access to financial resources? For example, are there any existing coalitions working to influence policy and streamline access to financial support for families?
Which leaders can you connect with? In our episode about establishing a transitional early education programme for families at Malmstrom Air Force Base, we saw how financial and political capital played a role. The base worked closely with the local education providers at the Great Falls [00:08:00] Public School District and community leaders to improve access to quality early childhood education for military families.
This collaboration didn’t just provide immediate educational benefits, it also strengthened the overall wellbeing of the community by investing in the future of its youngest members.
BOB BERTSCH: So the next two capitals are human and cultural and they’re closely linked. Human capital refers to the skills, knowledge, and health of individuals and cultural capital encompasses the shared values, traditions, and practices within a community.
When you collaborate with educational institutions, healthcare providers, and cultural organizations, you’re tapping into both human and cultural capital. Again, in the example of the Momstrom Air Force Base, it illustrates this by partnering with local schools and early childhood programmes. The base not only enhanced human capital by providing essential educational services, but also respected and integrated the unique [00:09:00] cultural aspects of military life, ensuring that these services were relevant and supportive of military families.
Actually, going back to the episode with Nicola Winkle, the culture of military families, their shared experiences, values, and resilience was central to that collaboration’s success in Arizona. The network of organizations that were involved recognized that military families bring unique cultural strengths such as adaptability, a strong sense of duty and deep understanding of service.
And by acknowledging and integrating those cultural aspects, the organizations were able to create services that truly resonated with military families, making the support they offered more effective and meaningful. For instance, programmes were tailored to address the frequent relocations and deployments that military families experience, ensuring that support systems were flexible and responsive to their specific needs.
So this focus on cultural capital not only made the services more [00:10:00] effective, but also strengthened the trust and engagement between military families and the service providers leading to more meaningful and lasting support.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Next, let’s talk about built capital, the infrastructure that supports daily life such as roads, houses, schools, hospitals, the fun stuff like sewer and water, and of course, internet access.
What are the needs and what are the assets in your community around the built capital? By collaborating with local governments and other community leaders, you can advocate for the creation or improvement of infrastructure that meets the needs of the families you serve, including your own. In Tampa Bay, the Chamber of Commerce brought together leaders from the military, business, government, and nonprofit sectors to address a number of quality of life issues affecting military families, including working on a project to create ferry service to MacDill Air Force Base, which would reduce [00:11:00] commute time for service members.
It’s a great example of working together to enhance the built capital of a community.
BOB BERTSCH: So finally, let’s talk about natural capital. Everyone can benefit from access to natural spaces, parks, trails, and other outdoor recreational areas.
These spaces can have big impacts on physical and mental wellbeing. Working with environmental organizations and local governments can help protect and enhance these natural assets, making them more accessible for all families. And I know that military installations have been part of that, protecting these natural assets and fostering environments and habitats for all kinds of different animals on land that is owned by the military.
There are therapeutic benefits of connecting with nature. Some healthcare providers are issuing nature prescriptions, a recommendation to spend time in nature to improve a patient’s health and wellbeing. The One Op webinar, Reconnecting With Nature, [00:12:00] Health and Wellbeing for Military Communities talks about these nature prescriptions and how military family practitioners can help their clients in accessing and experiencing the personal and community resilience enhancing attributes of the natural capital in our communities.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: All right. I think we’re ready to share the practice or just about ready, actually. I have a few notes. Before we share the practice, I think it’s important to note that one of the most powerful aspects of the community capital’s framework is its emphasis on interaction. No form of capital exists in isolation.
So for example, improving the built capital, the infrastructure of a community like better access to public transportation or broadband can directly enhance the financial and human capital by providing better access to jobs and educational resources. So I really wanna emphasize the interactivity between the different capitals and with that, [00:13:00] Bob, I’m gonna turn it over to you to walk us through the activity.
BOB BERTSCH: Yeah, I would love to do that, but as is my nature, I have to interject, And just build on what you were saying, because that’s a, it’s a great point and there is a seminal paper called Spiralling Up, that talks about the Community Capital’s framework, by Mary Emery and Cornelia Flora, who is one of the creators of the Community Capital’s framework.
And really what it shows is that just like Jessica said, investing in any capital can lead to this spiraling up. And what Mary and Neil found was that one of the capitals that has the biggest impact is social capital. And I wanna bring that up because as you’re mapping these capitals, in the practice we’re gonna talk about in a second, it stresses how important connecting with others is to build that social capital because it can help you spiral up [00:14:00] all those other capitals.
So I’m gonna leave a space here for just in case, since I just stole her thunder and took over that whole point – Just so I could mention spiraling up, which is one of my favorite research papers out there.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: I think that was perfect.
BOB BERTSCH: All right. Let’s get to practice then. So the practice is mapping the capitals.
We’ve provided a downloadable worksheet on the show notes page and it goes along with this activity. So your first step is to go out and download that worksheet. You can just go to oneop.org/podcast to find the webpage for this episode and the worksheet will be there. Then begin by conducting a simple assessment.
Keeping the families you serve in mind as you reflect on each of the capitals identify the existing capitals in the community. What resources are abundant and where are their gaps? Are there strong social networks? Is there a supportive political environment? [00:15:00] What financial resources are available? Go through each of the seven capitals and think about this.
And when you’re thinking about your community, it is your community and if you are in a community that has a military installation, for this exercise, that installation is part of the community, and might bring its own capitals and assets to the table. Once you’ve mapped these capitals, work collaboratively with other service providers, community organizations and the families themselves to develop a plan that leverages these assets.
The goal is to create that upward spiral of positive change where investments in one type of capital lead to improvements in others, ultimately creating a more resilient and supportive environment for military families. So get out there, map your capitals. It’s a great first step to really starting any project and addressing any issue you wanna address collaboratively with your community.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. I just wanna add also, as you get into activities like this, I think they [00:16:00] can feel overwhelming, but you don’t have to do all the things. Really just use this as a tool to help you think about all the different capitals that kind of contribute to community resilience and how they might impact the families you work with.
So don’t worry about having to have a hand in all of the capital improvements in the different capitals. really just use it to think, help you think through and c- make connections and, and impact, a small area.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Thanks for joining us for this episode. If you enjoyed it, you may also enjoy the 2026 Military Family Readiness Academy. Every year, our host organization One Up puts on the Academy, a series of free interconnected professional development webinars and podcast episodes all focused on essential themes.
This year’s theme is building community capacity to support military family wellbeing, a central topic to practicing [00:17:00] connection.
The series opens with a session on collective competence or the idea that communities best support military families when infrastructure and resources are intentionally designed with those families in mind. Too often, as service providers, we work in silos. This series helps us understand our role in building the kind of partnerships and shared systems that actually move the needle for the families we serve.
On-demand recordings are available after each session so there’s flexibility even if you can’t join us live. If you’d like to check out the academy, you can visit
oneop.org/mfRA or click the link in our show notes.
We’ll see you next week. Until then, keep practicing.
[00:18:00]

CREDITS: The Practicing Connection Podcast is a production of One-Op and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, US Department of Defense under award number 2 0 2 3 4 8 7 74 3 3.

Dietary Approaches to Support Brain Health in Aging
2026-06-25 11:00 - 12:00
Caregivers of individuals living with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD) often ask: What can we do to protect brain health—or slow decline? While there is no cure for Alzheimer’s disease, growing evidence suggests that dietary patterns and lifestyle behaviors play a meaningful role in supporting cognitive health and reducing risk factors associated with decline.

This 60-minute webinar equips providers with evidence-informed guidance on nutrition strategies that may support brain health across the lifespan. Participants will explore the role of antioxidants, phytochemicals, omega-3 fatty acids, B-vitamins, and the gut microbiome in cognitive function. The session will compare the DASH, Mediterranean, and MIND dietary patterns and examine emerging research linking these approaches to reduced cognitive decline.

Providers will also learn how to address common caregiver questions about supplements, “brain foods,” and realistic behavior change strategies—emphasizing progress over perfection. Practical talking points and client-friendly recommendations will help providers translate research into actionable guidance for caregivers and families navigating ADRD.

Learning Objectives:

Describe the relationship between diet, chronic disease risk factors, and cognitive decline in aging populations.
Identify key nutrients and food components associated with brain health.
Differentiate among the DASH, Mediterranean, and MIND dietary patterns.
Discuss the current evidence and limitations regarding dietary supplements for preventing or slowing cognitive decline.
Provide practical, caregiver-centered guidance that promotes sustainable behavior change and supports overall brain and cardiovascular health.

Professor & Extension Specialist
Senior editor – Journal of Extension
Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service
Department of Nutrition
Jenna Anding, PhD, RDN, LD is currently a Professor and Extension Specialist in the Department of Nutrition. A registered and licensed dietitian, Jenna has more than 25 years of experience in developing and evaluating Extension education programs on topics that include food preservation, food safety, and nutrition. More recently Jenna has worked collaboratively with faculty in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences to expand her work into community development to address healthy food access and opportunities for increasing physical activity. She currently serves as the senior editor for the Journal of Extension.

Board Certified Patient Advocates (BCPA): This webinar is approved l for 1.0 continuing education (CE) contact hours by The Patient Advocate Certification Board. Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 6/25/2028.
Certified in Family and Consumer Sciences (CFCS): This webinar is approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credits from the American Association for Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 6/25/2028.
Certified Nutrition and Wellness Educator (CNWE): This webinar is approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credits from the American Association for Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 6/25/2028.
Board Certified Case Managers: This webinar is approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) clock hours from the Commission for Case Manager Certification (CCMC). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 6/25/2027.
Board Certified Disability Management Specialists: This webinar is approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) clock hour from The Commission for Case Manager Certification. Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 6/25/2027.
Registered Dietitian Nutritionists (RD/RDN) and Nutrition and Dietetics Technicians, Registered (NDTR): This webinar awards 1.0 CPEU in accordance with the Commission on Dietetic Registration’s CPEU Prior Approval Program. Note: Eligibility for CPEUs expires on 4/14/2029.
Certified Family Life Educators (CFLE): This webinar is approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credits from the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 6/25/2028.
Certified Health Education Specialist (CHES) and Master Certified Health Education Specialist (MCHES): This webinar is approved for 1.0 continuing education credit from the National Commission for Health Education Credentialing (NCHEC). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 6/25/2028.
Social Workers, Licensed Professional Counselors, and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists: This webinar is approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credits from the University of Texas at Austin School of Social Work. Check with your state licensing agency for reciprocity and/or credit approval if licensed for other professions or in one of the following states: CO, FL, HI, IA, KS, KY, MI, NY, ND, OH, OK. Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 6/25/2029.
OneOp Certificates of Attendance are available for those interested in additional documentation of professional development activities.

If the button above does not appear for you, please access the continuing education survey through this link: https://auburn.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6Kz4p6wQj78Joua. If you have any questions, email ce@oneop.org.

Presentation Slides (PDF)

Photo Credit: iStockphoto ID 1299079243; thesomegirl

Putting Your Icebreakers to Work
2026-06-25 06:00 - 17:00
Subscribe to the “Practicing Connection” monthly email to keep up to date on our latest podcasts, blog posts and workshops.
Join the “Practicing Connection Community” on LinkedIn. The community is designed for people who support military families in a variety of settings both on installations and in our communities. JTNDZGl2JTIwaWQlM0QlMjJidXp6c3Byb3V0LXBsYXllci0xOTM5MzY0MyUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRmRpdiUzRSUzQ3NjcmlwdCUyMHNyYyUzRCUyMmh0dHBzJTNBJTJGJTJGd3d3LmJ1enpzcHJvdXQuY29tJTJGMjA5OTk4MyUyRmVwaXNvZGVzJTJGMTkzOTM2NDMtcHV0dGluZy15b3VyLWljZWJyZWFrZXJzLXRvLXdvcmsuanMlM0Zjb250YWluZXJfaWQlM0RidXp6c3Byb3V0LXBsYXllci0xOTM5MzY0MyUyNnBsYXllciUzRHNtYWxsJTIyJTIwdHlwZSUzRCUyMnRleHQlMkZqYXZhc2NyaXB0JTIyJTIwY2hhcnNldCUzRCUyMnV0Zi04JTIyJTNFJTNDJTJGc2NyaXB0JTNF (Season 7, Episode 26)
Do icebreakers always make things awkward?
Have you ever had to do an icebreaker that made you cringe? What if your icebreakers actually helped your team do better work?
In this episode Erin and Jessica discuss why icebreakers sometimes suck the energy out of the room and share real world examples of what it is like when they actually work.
Then Erin shares a practice on how to design an icebreaker that makes team building, making connections, and getting work done easier.
Links and resources from this episode:

Sign up for our monthly newsletter: https://oneop.aweb.page/practicing-connection-newsletter
Join our LinkedIn group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/12879756/
Send us a message: practicingconnection@oneop.org

JESSICA BECKENDORF: [00:00:00] Hi, thanks for listening to the Practicing Connection Podcast. I’m Jessica. Today we’ll be talking about icebreakers, and Erin’s going to be sharing a practice with us.
Hi, Erin. Let’s start by asking you, putting you on the spot, what’s the most memorable icebreaker you’ve been asked to participate in?
‘Cause I know people hate these, so let’s give them some good memories!
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Gosh, okay. A couple of years ago, during a team meeting at my office, my boss brought a marble and she had us all stand in our circle, and we had to hold the marble and then share a piece of wisdom, and then pass it to the next person.
And it was like really enjoyable. People had a lot of really wise words, but I ended up being at the end of the group, and the first three things that I had thought of had already been said by someone else.
So I was scrambling, and then I also noticed as we were [00:01:00] going, everybody got more and more sincere and it was really sweet, but it was also like building this intensity in a way where I just, you know, I was second to last. There was no way I was going to say something profound at that point because like there really, you know, at that time there were maybe 30 people in our office so I was going 29 out of 30.
I decided to pivot, and so what I said was, “Good computer hygiene is restarting your computer once a week.” And then I passed the marble on, and the whole room burst out laughing in a really good way. Because it had been these really like sincere, beautiful things.
And then I just had this very practical, actually honestly I wanted everybody to start restarting their computer once a week because they weren’t and it was causing problems. I was an IT liaison at the time and it was, anyway, it was so funny because people [00:02:00] quoted that back to me for a couple of weeks after that and started restarting their computers when they hadn’t been.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: So you spread some good in the world too.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: So I spread some good in the world. And it was such a jovial meeting after that, which was so funny.
And I don’t think it was just because I happened to tell a very funny joke, but I think also people were able to share something that was important to them.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Right.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: And then it was received by the group, which I thought was really cool. What about you? Do you have any memorable icebreakers?
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah, actually, do you mind if I give you one that I participated in and one that I facilitated?
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah, go for it.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Okay. So the first one was during the pandemic and there was a meeting, a virtual meeting, and the person who was facilitating was very well versed in how she had us play this game.
I’m going to call it like, “Do you remember when we … ” And then, [00:03:00] you know, fill in the blank, because what she did was she started out by saying, calling out someone’s name, like in this case, “Hey, Erin, do you remember when we went on that vacation?” And then your job would be to be like, “Oh, yeah. We went to Greece and, uh, we saw the ocean,” right?
And then the next person kind of adds to it, and I know that it’s, it was a silly story in the end, but it was actually an incredibly connecting experience. I don’t know if it was partly because it was in the middle of the pandemic and it was nice to just be a little silly together, because context makes a huge, huge difference. But we really felt connected.
And we kept doing callbacks the entire meeting. We kept saying, “Oh, yeah, when we were in Italy and we were at that festival, we slipped on the tomato juice, remember that?” You know, it was a really great experience, and I think that can be kind of hard.
And then the one that I’m remembering that I found to be so [00:04:00] meaningful for me is, I was facilitating a very unique workshop where it was sort of strategic planning, but it was strategic storytelling, and just kind of a different way. And we started an icebreaker that was a game called, it’s pretty well known, called Story of Your Name. And it was a multicultural workshop.
We had two different interpreters that were there, that were interpreting everything that we were saying in two different languages, and basically you choose one of your names, whether that’s your surname or your nickname or your first name, and we had people just tell us the story of like, where did it come from or what did it mean to you?
And this one woman told a beautiful story about her nickname and how her sister called her this nickname, and her sister passed away when she was very young, and she had this beautiful story about her name. And it wasn’t just this woman. They all had beautiful stories about their [00:05:00] name and they all felt so connected at the end, and I felt so connected to them and it was beautiful.
But that’s not, you know, the appropriate icebreaker for every situation. That was appropriate for that situation.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah, yeah. I love that. I’ve actually done that one before and it’s amazing how much easier it is to remember people’s names when you hear a story about what their name is.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yes.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: I was so thankful that the facilitator did it because I remember stories better than I remember names.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yes, we all do.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: And I was like, “Somebody was cooking here. Someone was thinking about what they were doing because I now know everybody’s name in the room.” And there were like 30 people I’d never met before. So it was very, I was impressed.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: And it’s funny too when there’s so many people who are like, “Oh, I don’t have a story about my name.” And then they start telling you about their name and you’re like, “What are you talking about? You do have a story about your name. You just told it. ” But they always think they don’t have a very good story [00:06:00] is what it is, right? That’s the context.
Well, we’d love to hear from all of you about the memorable icebreaker that you’ve been asked to do. Email us at practicingconnection@onop.org or click on the link in the show notes. We see and respond to every message and we can’t wait to hear from you.
– break –
JESSICA BECKENDORF: All right, Erin, let’s talk about icebreakers, because I know so many people dislike that.
Why do you think so many people dislike icebreakers? Let’s talk about that.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah. Well, I mean, I will fully admit that I have been an icebreaker hater.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: I feel so sorry for you being paired up with me because I love a good icebreaker. Anyway, you go ahead, sorry.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Well, now that I facilitate things as part of my job, I don’t hate all icebreakers. I just hate purposeless icebreakers.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah, [00:07:00] yeah.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Okay, so I think ideally, you know, an icebreaker is something that will help build camaraderie in the room, but often people think you can do that just by making everybody do something awkward or by sharing, like, a really trite fact about yourself, like, “Tell me your favorite color.”
And that’s, you know, not boring, but it’s also not interesting. So if you have a huge room and then everybody has to say their name and their favorite food, unless you’re the person who plans to make everybody’s favorite food like me, that’s not necessarily fun.
So a lot of times it feels like wasting time or it doesn’t feel like it has a purpose, or it makes people awkward, or it brings discomfort in this space. And there isn’t trust among the group to really survive the discomfort.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Right. No, that’s such a great point. You know, we were talking a little bit before we started recording and I mentioned that, it’s funny [00:08:00] because I think, because I do like to talk and I do like icebreakers, you would think that I would love all icebreakers, but I don’t. I agree with you.
I don’t like the ones that feel like they’re purposeless and I don’t like the ones that feel like it’s just forced interaction, versus something that can be joyful and fun. The example I was giving you was, it’s my preference to not show up to a venue and be given a card with a question on it, and then ask to go and talk to people about that question. I would rather, but some people are not feeling like this, I would rather just go and talk with people. If I needed to go talk to people, I’d rather go talk to people.
But a lot of people really like that game, and so it’s really kind of, you know, personal, I guess, how you might feel about things like that. But I do think purposeless is difficult, and I would not say that a game or an activity that asks you to discuss a [00:09:00] question on a card, I wouldn’t say that that’s purposeless, but –
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: But maybe you think the question’s boring?
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Hmm, maybe.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Do you like small talk, like typical small talk, or do you tend to like asking people small talky questions that really dig in deeper?
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah, that’s a really good question, because I tend to have the ability to be able to go deeper with someone really fast, if that’s where they want to go to. And so, I have no problem just going and talking to people, but I know that that’s not easy for a lot of people.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah. Hmm. I think another thing that I see sometimes as a reason why people dislike doing icebreakers is when you have an icebreaker that’s effective at letting people share something personal about themselves, or you start a meeting with a, “How’s everybody doing?” check-in, and then nothing that happens in that section impacts the rest of the meeting.
Like you do the little icebreaker because you’re [00:10:00] supposed to do a community building bit, and then you end in immediately your business. But if you spent the first 10 minutes of the meeting where everybody is saying they’re tired, they’re burnt out, they’re overwhelmed, and you don’t do anything to address that whatsoever and you’re just like, “Okay, thank you for sharing. Moving on.” You know?
JESSICA BECKENDORF: It can even be a simple, like, “Okay, is there anything we should change on our agenda based on what we just heard just now?”
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Or like at one point I was facilitating a meeting and I had everybody do a check-in, and half of the room hadn’t gotten to eat lunch and/or they had like physical pain in their body.
And I just said, “Okay, before we move on to the content of our meeting, I would like to take a five-minute break at the top of this meeting so everybody can go get some food and water and take care of their body. I will see you in five minutes.”
Like, “Get out of here, come back in five minutes.” Or just message me if you really need to go take care of your migraine and leave the meeting. [00:11:00] And that’s where even that’s an example that makes me look really good, but also it’s an example of what it means if you’re going to do a check-in and ask people how they are, don’t just ignore that and move on.
Like integrate your icebreaker into a meeting. And I think more broadly too, I’m curious if you have any thoughts about if so many people dislike icebreakers and they’re so awkward, what can they do for us? Why is it worth still doing them? Why is it worth participating even if somebody gives you something and you’re like, “This is the worst.”
JESSICA BECKENDORF: That’s a really good question. I mean, I always like to tell people that every single element of your meeting, including your icebreakers, if you’re planning icebreakers, needs to have a purpose. You can even write down at the beginning, maybe after a while you don’t need to write it down anymore, but I’m going to do this activity with them, and I think I’ve told you in the past that I don’t tend to use the term icebreaker anymore because so many people hate [00:12:00] it.
I just say, “activity.” But, you know, “Here’s the activity that I’m planning.” Well, what do I hope it will do for people?
So what do I hope it’ll do for them and what do I hope it will contribute to the meeting? So not just that it’ll loosen people up, right? I mean, that’s not necessarily a bad purpose, especially if your meeting is going to have a lot of participation, but, also, like, what will it do to help contribute to the meeting?
And I’m, by the way, I’m not saying that I think that your icebreakers also need to have some sort of output for the meeting. I’m just saying think about the purpose, and have a purpose for it. And so I think what they can do for us are many different things. If you’ve thought about the purpose, like maybe this group, it’s the first time they’re getting together, so they need to get to know each other. Maybe it’s a team that’s going to have to have high trust.
So maybe you want to think about, well, maybe it’s too soon [00:13:00] for the story of your name, like what we were talking about a little bit ago, but maybe what we could do is, another type of icebreaker that will get them smiling with each other, right?
‘Cause we know laughter is one way that people connect and start to build some trust. So, I think that they can do many things and I feel like that’s just sidestepping the answer, Erin, and I don’t mean to do that, but because I can’t list out all the things they can do for us because you need to have a purpose for it, and once you figure out that purpose, then you can match it up with an icebreaker that will fit that purpose.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah. I get why your answer is your answer, and I agree with it. I also think that icebreakers are sneaky ways to that – sneaky is such a malicious sounding word, but an obtrusive way for a facilitator to get a read of the room,
JESSICA BECKENDORF: [00:14:00] Yeah.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Who’s comfortable talking, who’s not comfortable talking, who is new, who knows people,
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Who’s seeing through your efforts.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Who needs to move their body.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Right? Oh yeah, right.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yes. And so, I think when I’m thinking about facilitating, I’m thinking of icebreakers as, “Here’s a beat where I can check in on the room, give people an opportunity to move or stretch, or like a brain break.”
We’ve talked about needing to change modalities so that your brain doesn’t get fatigued before, and I think icebreakers can do that when they’re implemented well.
I think also that, if you’re not the facilitator, if you’re just a participant, and you’re asked to do an icebreaker and internally there’s a part of you that just says, “Ugh, I hate this,” it’s worth doing it anyway, especially if you trust the facilitator. Because there’s [00:15:00] probably a reason why they’re doing it.
So it’s a little bit of a trust the process, and it’s also a relational building thing to respond yes to somebody else’s bid. Are you familiar with the idea of a bid?
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Like a bid for connection?
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah. So someone is offering you an opportunity, and I will confess that I don’t always love small talk. I love talking with people, but if we’re only talking about the weather and sports teams, that is not my favorite kind of conversation.
At one point I used to work at a front desk and I would have the same conversation with every single person who walked in the front door. They all wanted to ask me how I was doing and, you know, that was a struggle.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: I always felt bad for people that asked me that question because I will tell them I’m not just fine.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: But a lot of what I was realizing is, oh, this is a way that people build a sense of [00:16:00] safety. And while it may feel rote and boring to me on occasion, it’s worth doing because for that other person, it helps them feel safe to have a different conversation with me later, and the later conversations are the ones that I like.
So this is the thing that I can do in order to help people feel comfortable with me. So I think icebreakers are often that same kind of thing. I often, you know, I think people who don’t like icebreakers might also be people who don’t like small talk, because it feels purposeless and meaningless. Anyway, I think you should try to do it because it’s a way to engage in the community and say, “Yes, I’m here, I’m here to participate.”
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. We should in the future think about doing an episode about small talk, because I think it’s not as small as people think it is. Maybe that’ll be the title. So what do you think makes a good icebreaker from your perspective?
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah. I like icebreakers that are interesting.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: But interesting [00:17:00] according to you.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah, so I’m torn because I think there’s part of me that’s like, I like a good juicy question or a playful question or something that brings a little bit of joy or whimsy, or something that isn’t just getting immediately to business.
I recognize that it’s not everybody’s thing. But from a more serious like facilitator mindset, I think what makes a good icebreaker is having the thing that you’re doing tied in either with meeting the needs of the people in the room, or helping people feel more connected with the purpose of the gathering.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yes. That’s close to the answer I was thinking of. So when I think about what makes a good icebreaker, because they can fill so many different purposes, and if you’ve really thought about the purpose, then that’s a good icebreaker.
A good icebreaker is one that meets the [00:18:00] purpose that you intended, or, look, you can plan for an icebreaker to meet a purpose or to meet the needs of a group and maybe it doesn’t always work out, but to me, what makes a good icebreaker is just one that is either meeting the needs of the people, or meeting the intended purpose.
And when it goes wrong, it’s okay. Learn from it, right? Do it differently next time.
So, what practice are you bringing today? I’m excited about this because I had a little clue as to what you were working on and I’m really excited. I think this is a great practice.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah. So I’m going to walk us through how to write a magic question.
Have you heard of a magic question before?
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yes, I read the book you were telling me about.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Oh, great.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: the Art of Gathering, I think, right.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah, I learned about magic questions from Priya Parker and I know that she wrote the book, The Art of Gathering. I don’t know if I read this in her book or if I read it in her newsletter, but –
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Got it. Yeah.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: It comes from Priya Parker, and she describes a magic question as [00:19:00] a “Question that everyone in the group is excited to answer, and everyone is interested in hearing each other’s answers.” It has to be both.
So some examples are, ‘what’s the last time you cheered so loudly you lost your voice?’ ‘What’s a live performance you wish you could see again for the first time?’ ‘What do you own that you’re pretty sure nobody else in this group owns?’
I’ve done that one before. It’s very fun. And then, ‘if someone named a menu item after you at a restaurant, what would it be?’
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Grilled cheese sandwich.
No, I love these questions so much. I’m often asking one that’s very similar to the live performance one. I usually ask people, ‘what’s the first live performance they went to?’ ‘Where was it?’
And there’s all kinds of follow-up questions you can ask with that as well, and people love telling the story of their first live performance, [00:20:00] or the first one that they really loved or whatever.
So I love these questions.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah. And what I like about magic questions in general is they’re a really easy icebreaker to implement. They don’t need materials. You can do them a lot of different ways. They work in a big group or a small group. You can have people split into small groups. If you know that your group needs to move around, you can have everybody stand up and go talk to a person and answer this question and then switch people.
There’s a lot of different ways you can use it. You can use it on Zoom, you can have people drop their answers in the chat, you can have people journal about it. So it’s a really, I think, useful way to come up with one question or a couple of questions that you can use a bunch of different ways, depending on who’s in the room and what the room feels like.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: I’ve sometimes just put it on, like, a big easel, or on a slide, and I tell people as they’re walking in, like, “find someone that they can share that answer with,” which I know is opposite of what I told you, that I don’t [00:21:00] like to do that, but these questions to me are ones that I do want to answer and I do want to hear other people’s answers.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yes. And I have found one of the common threads in these questions is they’re questions that promote people telling a story about something they’ve experienced. They’re almost always questions that inspire people to share something that you had no idea about, and it’s usually something that they’re very interested in or passionate about. So it’s a very compelling story a lot of the time.
And that I think is also why magic questions are really good for getting to know people, finding shared values, finding shared experience. They’re really good at community building and also bringing the energy of the room up.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Right. And even if you’re not finding the shared values, just the practice of sharing values is really important.
So you’ve [00:22:00] given us some really great examples. Let’s talk about how to write a good magic question.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yes. Okay. So I have a four-step process, and this does require a little bit of creativity because –
JESSICA BECKENDORF: A big process, four steps?
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: I promise it’s not as hard as you make it sound, Jessica.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah, I know. It’s not hard.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: So one of the reasons magic questions take a little bit of intentional thought is because different groups of people are going to need a different question. Different situations are going to need a different question. So I’ve set up a series of questions that I use to figure out the qualities of the room, so that you can then write the question that’s going to work for the group and the setting and the purpose.
So step one is to think about who is going to be at your meeting or gathering. Do you know how many people are going to be there? Do they know each other?
Do they trust each other? is it a formal setting? Is it an informal setting?
Just think a little bit about [00:23:00] what is the room and who are the people who are going to be there.
Step two is to think about what are you trying to accomplish at this gathering? Some examples might be building connection and trust, brainstorming an idea, making a decision, working on a project together. Those are all common things.
And then step three is what tone will best serve the purpose of your meeting?
JESSICA BECKENDORF: This is such a good one. I love that you have this tone question, or this tone planning in here.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yes, because the difference between something that has people tell humorous stories and something that has people tell sincere stories is big.
So figuring out, what emotional atmosphere do I want people to be in? And I think this is also helpful because I’ve used this before in a partner meeting, where we had two people coming and there was some tension in the group about what is our purpose. And we were [00:24:00] making really important decisions about the future of the program.
And so I wanted us to think through, how do I ramp down the animosity intention and ramp up this sense of connection and conviction in the work that we were doing? And so that was kind of the tone I was going for, right?
Okay. So once you’ve figured out who’s going to be there, what you’re trying to accomplish and the tone, what question could you ask that would encourage people to share a story?
That’s a broad question, so I’ll give you a bit of an example. So, one time – actually I just told you about this. There were groups of people coming together to talk about a project, and it was contentious and we were talking about how we were going to facilitate a learning experience for people. And there were a lot of different organizations who were doing it together, and they all had very different cultures.
And so the question that we started the gathering with was, “What is something that a teacher taught you that you still think about today?” And it was [00:25:00] so good. People were thinking about this teacher, and it was very much more sincere than funny most of the time.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: It helped people think about, “Oh, why was this such an impactful experience for me?
And then it helped us look at what are our values for providing educational experiences for people and how do we provide good ones? And then that started to guide our decisions around how we were going to implement educational programming, because people were thinking about their own experience in an educational program. It worked so well.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: I love that.
I really love this process, and you are right. It wasn’t nearly as complex as I was making it sound like with four steps. It’s actually really, really simple. And so I wonder though, if you wouldn’t mind just briefly going over the four steps one more time before we close out because yeah, I do think it’s nice and simple.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Step one, think about who is going to be at your meeting or gathering. Step two, what are you trying to [00:26:00] accomplish with your meeting? Step three, what tone will best serve the purpose of the meeting? And then step four, what question could you ask that would encourage people to share a story?
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Love it. Thank you so much for guiding us through that, Erin, I really appreciate this thinking on the magic questions. I’m always encouraging people to ask more questions of each other, and to go much beyond, “how’s the weather?”
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah. And if you end up doing this and coming up with questions, I would love to hear them. I keep a little list on my phone of good questions, so if you come up with some, please email us, or leave us a voicemail. I would love to hear. There are links in the show notes if you want to do either one.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Well, that’s it for this episode. Thanks so much for joining us.
If you enjoyed this episode, click the share button in your podcast app to share it with a friend. We’ll be back next week. Until then, keep practicing.
[00:27:00]
CREDITS: The Practicing Connection Podcast is a production of One-Op and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, US Department of Defense under award number 2 0 2 3 4 8 7 74 3 3.

Coping with Client Loss: Professional Approaches for Service Providers
2026-06-18 11:00 - 12:30
Client loss — whether through suicide, combat-related death, illness, or other traumatic circumstances — carries profound implications for those who serve military-connected populations. This webinar explores the historical, clinical, and systemic realities surrounding client death, particularly within high-stakes, high-responsibility roles such as counseling, advocacy, chaplaincy, and case management.
Participants will examine the personal, professional, and spiritual dimensions of grief that arise when a client dies, including secondhand trauma, moral distress, and the often-silenced grief of providers. We will explore how organizational culture, role expectations, and systemic pressures shape the experience of loss — and why this topic deserves greater attention in military-serving communities.
This session lays the foundation for Part 2, which will focus on coping strategies, healing practices, and post-crisis growth.
Learning Objectives:

Describe the historical and systemic context of client loss in military-connected care settings.
Differentiate personal, professional, and spiritual grief responses to client death among service providers.
Identify indicators of secondary traumatic stress, moral injury, and disenfranchised grief following client loss.
Explain the rationale for and core elements of organizational postvention and structured support for providers following a client’s death.

Dr. Richardson McFarland is a Licensed Professional Counselor-Supervisor, Board Certified Chaplain, and Board Certified Telemental Health Provider. She holds a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Houston, an M.A. in Biblical Counseling from Dallas Theological Seminary, and a Ph.D. in Advanced Studies of Human Behavior from Capella University. In addition to her clinical work, she serves as an adjunct professor in the counseling ministries department at Dallas Theological Seminary. She specializes in grief and loss, trauma, compassion fatigue, burnout, chronic illness, stress management, and spiritual distress.

Certified in Family and Consumer Sciences (CFCS): This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits from the American Association for Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close June 18, 2028.
Board Certified Patient Advocates (BCPA): This webinar is approved for 1.5 CE contact hours by The Patient Advocate Certification Board. Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close June 18, 2028.
Board Certified Case Managers: This webinar is approved for 1.5 CE clock hours from the Commission for Case Manager Certification (CCMC). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close June 18, 2027.
Sexual Assault Response Coordinators (SARC) and Sexual Assault Prevention and Response (SAPR) Victim Advocates (VA): This webinar is approved for 1.5 CE credits from D-SAACP Credentialing. Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close June 18, 2029.
Certified Family Life Educators (CFLE): This webinar is approved for 1.5 CE credits from the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close June 18, 2029.
Certified Health Education Specialist (CHES) and Master Certified Health Education Specialist (MCHES): This webinar is approved for 1.5 CE credit from the National Commission for Health Education Credentialing (NCHEC). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close June 18, 2028.
Domestic Abuse Victim Advocates: This webinar is approved for 1.5 CE credits from the National Advocate Credentialing Program (NACP). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close June 18, 2026.
Social Workers, Licensed Professional Counselors, and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists: This webinar is approved for 1.5 CE credits from the University of Texas at Austin School of Social Work. Check with your state licensing agency for reciprocity and/or credit approval if licensed for other professions or in one of the following states: CO, FL, HI, IA, KS, KY, MI, NY, ND, OH, OK. Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close June 18, 2029.
OneOp Certificates of Attendance are available for those interested in additional documentation of professional development activities.

If the button above does not appear, please access the continuing education survey through this link: https://auburn.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6EbKL5SWEpMsLki. If you have any questions, please email ce@oneop.org.

Webinar Slides
Webinar Resources

Photo Credit: From Adobe Stock by NanSan, file #: 89942899

Navigating Tricky Partnership Problems (Listener Q&A)
2026-06-18 06:00 - 17:00
Subscribe to the “Practicing Connection” monthly email to keep up to date on our latest podcasts, blog posts and workshops.
Join the “Practicing Connection Community” on LinkedIn. The community is designed for people who support military families in a variety of settings both on installations and in our communities. JTNDZGl2JTIwaWQlM0QlMjJidXp6c3Byb3V0LXBsYXllci0xOTM1NTM1MCUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRmRpdiUzRSUzQ3NjcmlwdCUyMHNyYyUzRCUyMmh0dHBzJTNBJTJGJTJGd3d3LmJ1enpzcHJvdXQuY29tJTJGMjA5OTk4MyUyRmVwaXNvZGVzJTJGMTkzNTUzNTAtbmF2aWdhdGluZy10cmlja3ktcGFydG5lcnNoaXAtcHJvYmxlbXMtbGlzdGVuZXItcS1hLmpzJTNGY29udGFpbmVyX2lkJTNEYnV6enNwcm91dC1wbGF5ZXItMTkzNTUzNTAlMjZwbGF5ZXIlM0RzbWFsbCUyMiUyMHR5cGUlM0QlMjJ0ZXh0JTJGamF2YXNjcmlwdCUyMiUyMGNoYXJzZXQlM0QlMjJ1dGYtOCUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRnNjcmlwdCUzRQ== (Season 7, Episode 25)
How do you build community connections that actually work?
Have you ever gotten stuck as you try to build community partnerships?
In this month’s Listener Q&A, Erin and Jessica answer questions about classic partnership problems:

What do you do if you can’t find time to build connections during work time
How do you navigate miscommunication years into a partnership?
If I can only do one thing, what should I focus on?

Links and resources from this episode:

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Send us a message: practicingconnection@oneop.org

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: [00:00:00] Hi, thanks for listening to the Practicing Connection Podcast. I’m Erin. My co-host, Jessica, is here as well. Today, we’ll be answering listener questions about partnerships. Hi, Jessica. How are you feeling about today’s questions?
JESSICA BECKENDORF: They’re all terrible.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yikes.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: No, of course I them. I love any questions that get you and I talking and commiserating on solutions. I’m excited to get to it.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah, me too. We had several that I’ve kind of saved up over time that are specifically about partnership building that I think are, like, complimentary with each other. So I’m excited to dig into that today.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: I love that that was an intentional theming on your part.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah. Are you ready for our first question?
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Absolutely.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: All right, here we go. [00:01:00]
“Hi. I’ve been listening to a lot of your interviews about partnerships. I work one-on-one with military spouses. I know that building community connections or maybe even strategic partnerships would help me do a better job of supporting them, but I am booked all day with client meetings and my performance is measured by how quickly I can help my clients go through our program. How do I make time for community outreach when it isn’t supported by the way my job is set up. I don’t want to have to use all of my personal time to do it, but I’m starting to think it isn’t possible any other way with my workload. Should I just ignore my work-life boundaries and do outreach on my personal time?”
JESSICA BECKENDORF: No, full stop. That is, well, it’s no – and absolutely not. I mean, it is really important to you know, maintain some separation, right, in your life. I remember a long time ago, way back when I was a city planner, I was really interested – I was a [00:02:00] city planner in another city from the one that I lived in, and I was really interested in being on the planning commission at the city that I was living in.
And through a series of circumstances that got put on pause and frankly, the more and more I thought about it, when the mayor of the city I live in reached out to me and said, “Hey, I’d encourage you to, you know, apply to be on our plan commission,” I was like, “Wait, I’m going to go to work all day and do city planning stuff, and then I’m going to come home and do city planning stuff: I might want to rethink this. There are other ways to give back to my community.”
And so, it is really important to kind of maintain some sort of boundary between your work and your personal time. My suggestions in this situation, I can not only relate to it, but understand the difficulties, especially when I think in this case you said that performance is measured [00:03:00] by how quickly you can kind of get the clients through.
I would actually start maybe with your supervisor and, you know, sharing a little bit that you have a goal to connect with other people in the community who are working on issues of importance to your clients, so that you can actually serve your clients better. They may be able to then support you in finding some relief somehow in your schedule and maybe not.
And if there’s no way to fold this kind of partnership work into work hours, maybe there’s a way to make it kind of fun and pleasurable related to, you know, your personal time. So maybe there’s a coalition that you’re really interested in connecting with people on but you just don’t have the space to go to their meetings and to support them in any other way.
Maybe they’re having a fundraiser and you can just show up at that fundraiser and just contribute to it somehow or, you [00:04:00] can just kind of be part of the fun parts of it. That might be one thing you can do, and then you’re not giving all of your personal time away to that, right?
An example I have is I know someone who their thing is throwing darts. Like they compete in dart tournaments all the time, and they’re putting together a charity dart tournament for a charity that they support. And so perhaps there are things like that. If your thing is, fill in the blank, you know, then maybe that’s something that you could kind of combine it into something pleasurable.
But I would start with your supervisor and make the case that this is something that could actually help you move your clients through the process. Or it could help you with your client work and perhaps there can be some relief there.
Erin, what do you think?
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah. I think you made a lot of good points. I don’t have a hard no, which is shocking to me. I’m like somewhat [00:05:00] notorious in my workplace for being like, “Do you need help with boundaries? Go talk to Erin. She’s got the best ones.” And I was like, “Wow, that’s so nice of you to say. I’ve worked hard on them.”
I think specifically to the question about, “Should I ignore my work-life boundaries and do outreach on my personal time?” My answer is, you shouldn’t ignore your boundaries, but if after you’ve talked to your supervisor, it’s clear you won’t be able to get work time to do it, can you shift them? Like, don’t throw your boundaries completely out the window.
You’re like, “Okay, I don’t like it, but the reality is I will not be able to do this during my work time, and I can’t use my breaks or my lunch to do it because I need those for my brain.”
Especially if you’re in client meetings all day long, do not use your breaks to have more meetings. Go rest your brain.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: So glad you brought that up, Erin. That was on my mind too. It’s like, don’t use your breaks to do that.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Like, maybe if you’re extroverted and it’s refreshing to talk casually with a person, you [00:06:00] could have a lunch with someone, maybe, but genuinely don’t try to shove this into your breaks because it’s not enough time, you’ll be stressed out and you won’t get the brain break that you need to not completely burn yourself out.
But if you are going to do it after work, I think it’s really helpful to kind of pause and ask yourself, “What limits am I going to put on the time and money and energy that I’m going to expend on this?” And so I think it’s really helpful, if you have to use your personal time, be the most strategic you’ve ever been.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yes.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Think about, okay, what connections are going to most serve me, and how do I build those?
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: That’s one option. The other option is be very unstrategic and go for what is going to be the most fun thing, because genuinely some of the most interesting networking that I have done is when I’ve just gone to do something fun that I wanted to [00:07:00] do, and I was like, “Okay, I’m networking with people in my community by going to this free salsa class.”
And then I met people and had these really interesting conversations about the work that I was doing and the work they were doing. And, you know, obviously, we make a podcast for our job that’s not everybody’s life, but I think sometimes, especially if you’re just trying to get to know people in your community, you can go to a community event that is going to be fun.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Go have fun and just talk to people and intentionally make friendships with people who you don’t know.
So if you’re going to go do a fun thing, don’t just go with your best friend who you’ve already met and don’t talk to anybody else. Go and talk to other people.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: I would say things like chambers of commerce and Rotary clubs. I know a lot of people think, I mean, yes, they’re focused on business for sure, but there’s a lot of nonprofits that belong to them as well, certainly they’re a more formalized sort of way, but they’re always having events.
I’ve [00:08:00] heard really great things about Rotary clubs in particular, and I used to work for a Chamber of Commerce, so I know what those events are like and they can be a whole lot of fun.
A lot of people don’t like them because of the networking aspect and, you know, we talk a lot about how to have those conversations and how to talk with people, how to start relationships with people through conversations,
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yes. I will also add one last thing, which is one of the things I’ve really learned about work-life balance is that in order to have balance, when you leave work, you can’t just do nothing. Find a way to do something in your off time. I think that may also help it feel less like it’s stealing from you to do this in your off work time, if you also make time when you’re out of work to do something you care about.
And, like, obviously capacity is a real [00:09:00] issue. I’m not saying burn yourself out. I’m not saying hurt yourself or stop sleeping. I’ve seen people really burn themselves out by like going really hard on networking, and going really hard on everything and then never sleeping. And I would never say do that because that’s miserable.
Like, long-term, it’s very miserable. But I do think if you are spending, say you’re committing to a half an hour a week of non-work time doing intentional networking – that’s just a really arbitrary number. Also commit 30 minutes of time to doing something that you absolutely love doing, not chores not taking –
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Not games on your phone, unless you truly enjoy that, I guess.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: I, you know, save games on your phone for your 15-minute break in between client meetings and your lunch. Like, that’s when your brain needs a break, and you need to just play those games on your phone. Because I have found it’s so much easier to not resent the amount of time I’m networking outside of work [00:10:00] if I’m also doing fun stuff outside of work.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: That’s great. Let’s go to the next question. Okay, so I’ve got this one:
‘“What do you do when you’re already into a partnership and you realize you aren’t aligned on core values like you thought? My team recently started having conflict with a partner org we’ve had for two years, when we realized we’ve been using the same words to mean different things. Now things are tense as we started having convos about it, conversations, and we can see the partner org withdrawing and thinking of us more and more as outsiders, to save face with than collaborators. Is this a trust thing? Is this something else? How do we tell if we should push through or let the partnership die?”
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Wow. Okay. A lot to unpack there.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Is it a trust thing? I mean, probably a little bit if they’re drawing away. [00:11:00] If you can tell that they’re starting to treat you as outsiders, something is hard there.
I think it’s possible it might also be a process thing. I find in partnerships it’s rarely just one thing that makes it hard especially, you know, you didn’t say what words you have different definitions for.
So I feel a little bad because I don’t have specifics to get into, but I think often what I see in collaborations is there’s different communication norms, or there’s different decision making norms and then you think you’re going along together, but then suddenly there’s tension.
Yeah, wow. Okay. I think you might have more advice on that, so I’m gonna let you dig into those things.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: I appreciate what you were saying though, because this is the stuff that, these norms and coming to like a shared purpose, some shared values, these are the [00:12:00] things that consistently I’ve seen groups want to skip. They’re like, “Hey, we’re adults. We can handle this.” And even if they do, even if you’ve got – I saw a reaction. Did you want to react? Did you want to share something about that?
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Okay. I just … Yes, you’re totally right. People want to skip the, like, “What is our purpose? What are our norms? How do we collaborate with each other?”
Nobody ever wants to have the, “How do we have conflict” conversation at the beginning of the relationship. Both personal relationships and professional relationships. And then, people have breakdowns of communication and then they fight and they don’t have an understanding of, “Okay, how are we going to do this though?”
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Right.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: So that was my reaction. I was just like, “Oh man, you’re so right. People don’t think about how to fight before they have fights.”
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. I mean, look, even if you went through the work, and I’ve seen a lot of groups, they’re willing to go through the work of talking [00:13:00] about, “What’s our shared purpose going to be? What’s our shared goals, our even values?” Like some of them are willing to have those conversations, but they don’t often get into the weeds of defining them.
They’ll be like, “Okay, you know, our values are … ” And they’ll kind of have, you know, three words separated by periods, right? Like it’ll be almost more like a tagline, right? You know, trust –
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Confidentiality.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Right? “These are our values.” And then there’s no like definition, a clear cut definition of like, I mean, team values are literally how internally you are going to act so that you are living your values and moving toward your purpose.
So not only are they internally how you’re going to act with each other, but they’re also values that can be acted upon in a way that the external world can see that you’re living your values, that [00:14:00] you’re working toward a shared purpose.
And so my advice is to at the outset, right from the beginning, define, define, define. Define shared definition, shared agreement on what the definitions are, define what the words mean and what they don’t mean, right? Not just, “This is what it means,” but also, “Here’s what we’re leaving out.”
Like, “These are the things that we don’t mean by this term or by this word,” right? What’s included? What’s not included? This is really a classic issue, and so I said define this at the outset. That is the ideal, of course and not only define it at the outset, but also keep revisiting, like, “Do we still mean this? Does this still match what we mean?”
And at the beginning, it can feel a little repetitive and weird to keep revisiting it, but it is still important, and at some point a new person [00:15:00] is going to join. They’re going to be like, “Whoa, wait a second, that’s not how I would think of that term.” And so then you can invite conversation about, “Okay, is this still what we mean?”
So, defining at the outset, that’s ideal. I think it is never too late though to redefine your group principles, or to define, to say, “Hey, wait a second, we’re having some problems here. Maybe we need to actually come up with a set of principles.”
And in fact, I would say that you should, if you’ve got group principles, you should review them regularly together. If you don’t have them, you can define it now. Unless things have gotten toxic in your relationship with this other organization, right?
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah. Okay. So I think you raised some really good points, and just this question was a great question, and also there were, like, four questions in it.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah, I know.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: So I kind of talked about, like, realizing your values don’t align, and [00:16:00] reopening the conversation, and I would encourage in most cases to be more direct in your communication than you would maybe be comfortable with.
Of course, that is not appropriate in all contexts. Your mileage may vary if you’re from – I have heard that if you’re from the South, sometimes really direct communication is not responded too well. I’ve found sometimes in the Midwest, really direct communication has not responded too well. My family was not from the Midwest, we moved here, we learned the hard way.
And also I have found sometimes that in this situation where it’s clear that there’s tension, being the person who’s willing to take on, like, the shame of naming the tension and just being like, “Hey, I’m noticing we’re having tension around this. I think we need to have a conversation. I know it’s probably gonna be a little uncomfortable, but I think it’s going to be easier to tell how to move forward if we actually talk about it. ”
And then actually talk about it and don’t dance around it and just say, [00:17:00] “Hey, we think this word means this. It seems to us like you mean this. Are we correct in that? Are we getting it right?” And then give them space to communicate what’s happening with them.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Even say it, like, “Here’s how we look at this word or this term, and you find out how they’re looking at it now the conversation,” I think can become, in the context of us working together, “Are these at all compatible and how can we define this together?”
Like, “How can we come to a shared understanding of what this means?”
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yes. I think especially in the question they said something about like, “Viewing us as outsiders to save face with.”
So that tells me they feel like they need to perform a kind of way or like they can’t be imperfect.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Hmm. Yeah.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: And so I think that’s part of why that direct conversation will really help, because [00:18:00] then you say, “Okay let’s just figure it out, because there’s no shame if we need to pivot how we’re working together, or if we want to change what our collaboration looks like. We just want us to be on the same page.”
And so I want to quickly just address the very last question, “How do we tell if we should push through or let the partnership die?” And I think for me, the answer to that is there’s no one single thing that’s going to automatically tell you.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: If you haven’t directly addressed, “Hey, I’m noticing a conflict, can we talk about it?” try that first, you know?
Like don’t just let a partnership die or ghost on a partnership before you have the challenging, slightly uncomfortable, direct conversation about, “Hey, it seems like we’re miscommunicating. It seems like maybe we need to renegotiate how we want to collaborate with each other. Are you open to having that conversation with us? The work that we do is important and making sure that [00:19:00] our partnership is working for both of us is also important to us.”
And I think being willing to have that conversation should be your first approach. And then if in that conversation you’re realizing, “Oh, we aren’t compatible,” is there a way you can coordinate with each other if you’re not collaborating? Is there a way you can stay in contact and like, do parallel work, maybe not collaborating on things but referring people to each other?”
There are ways you can work with people that aren’t directly collaborating on projects, and maybe that’s a better fit for your organizational structures and your values and how you have to use money.
And we work at Extension, which is like this really interesting combination of university bureaucracy and county government system. We work with nonprofits and we work with businesses
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Local governments too.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Everybody has different timelines. Everybody has different ways of dealing with money, and sometimes it’s just not super [00:20:00] compatible. And that doesn’t mean it’s wrong, it just means that you have to maybe pivot how you’re working with each other.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. For someone who thought that you weren’t going to have as much to say on this, I think you contributed such a rich answer.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Okay, great. Final question:
“If I only have time to do one thing to upskill my collaboration, what should I focus on?”
JESSICA BECKENDORF: I think the single best thing that we can do is sort of, like, step zero instead of, like, step one, which is knowing yourself about as well as you can. Because you’re always changing.
So that means continually learning about yourself. Like, for example, what from your past or your present influences how you think and act? What are your preferences? What are your triggers? How do you trust? Do you trust immediately until someone has broken that trust, or do you trust not at [00:21:00] all until someone has earned it? Right.
What are your boundaries? Learn them and communicate them when necessary. I think that if you only have time to do that, get to know yourself: make it a thing that you do, continually be curious about yourself.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah. Well, that’s a good answer.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. Like, “This person said this and it made me feel something.” Well, what did it make you feel? Why do you think it made you feel that way? Really think about that.
The more you do that, the faster that thinking about yourself happens, the faster your kind of reflections happen, and yeah, that’s my answer.
What do you think?
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Oh, I have two that are tied and I’m having a hard time picking which one is the one you should really do. I think I’m going to cheat and say that they’re combined.
Okay. So I think, and I’m very biased, but I think the most important thing you can do is practice communication skills, [00:22:00] specifically how to be direct and kind. I think there is so much room for miscommunication, especially if you’re collaborating with people who are different than you, and learning to express yourself clearly.
And especially, expressing complex ideas simply and directly can go such a huge way. It can take you so far in terms of being able to collaborate with different kinds of people, people who don’t already know your field and the jargon of your field.
And I think if you’re like, “Communication skills are just so broad, that’s too broad of a category, Erin. Narrow it down for me.” I specifically want you to think about power dynamics and how you communicate across them. So what power do you have, are you wielding it on purpose and how do you communicate?
And that means sometimes you need to pause [00:23:00] before you talk in this space, because you have a lot of power and you’ll shut down the conversation if you jump in too soon.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: And in those situations, Erin, I just want to quickly add, because I’ve been in a room before and I’ve talked about this here, where a question was asked and everybody in the room looked to this one person who didn’t have any positional power in the room but had, like, monetary and political capital in that community. And everyone wanted that person to answer.
They were afraid to say anything until that person answered, not because this person was particularly threatening or anything. And as that person, not just holding back but maybe inviting and saying, like, “I would love to hear from a couple of other folks on this. I appreciate everything you bring as well.”
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: That’s a great example.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Holding back and/or inviting, yeah.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: I think too, it’s really easy to feel in some situations that you don’t have power. But if you’re in a collaboration with other [00:24:00] people and you’re serving the same clients, that’s a weird term for it, maybe not everybody uses the word clients, but we’ll use that one because it’s pretty clear.
So if you’re trying to collaborate, to offer services to the same group of people, you also have power in that situation because you know that audience, you work with that audience, you can’t speak fully to their experience because you maybe are not a part of that audience. But I think it’s important to know that if you are going to collaborate with someone, you will be bringing something to the collaboration and with that comes power.
And so noticing, “How do people respond to me when I’m in a room? How do I make sure I’m both participating and leaving space for others to participate?”
I personally get a lot of feedback that I’m intimidating. Because I’m very confident and I’m very comfortable saying what I think. So when I am walking into a room, I’m thinking a lot about, “Am I leaving space for other people? Am [00:25:00] I leaving space for people to disagree with me, without being afraid?”
Which feels like, I mean, I think I’m a really cheerful, jolly person. And so I don’t think of myself as being intimidating. People are like, “Well, Erin, you’re just so confident and you aren’t afraid to be called out. You’re not afraid to publicly change your mind if someone brings up a good point.”
And I was like, “Oh, okay. That’s intimida-” like it wouldn’t have occurred to me that that was intimidating.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: That’s really interesting. I’ve not had that feedback, but I’ve never been the one in the room who – I’ve never been afraid. I’m not necessarily confident, I don’t come off as confident, but I’m not afraid to ask questions or to say, “Well, what if this, or what if that?”
And the thing is, in the moment, I think I often have seen the feedback has been a lot of silence, or maybe it’s like, “Well, we’ll get to that later, whatever.” But then after the meeting is when I have people reaching out to me and thanking me for, like, [00:26:00] saying what I said, for naming whatever it was that I was noticing.
The thing is, I’m doing it in a way where that’s just part of what I feel I think I need to do in the moment, but I’m not, like, super confident when I do it. But what I’m trying to say here is that those skills maybe will look little bit different to other people, or people will see them differently, or receive them differently.
I am someone who learning to be more direct is a challenge for me, and it’s one that I’m interested in learning more about. So I’m glad that we are partnered up, Erin, because I can learn a lot from you!
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Wonderful. All right. Any other thoughts before I – we’ve had a good convo, so I don’t want to –
JESSICA BECKENDORF: This is great. Thank you so much for having this conversation with me, and for putting the questions together in such a great themed way. I appreciate it.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah. All right. Well, that’s it for this episode. Thank you for joining us.
If you have a question or a hot take, or you disagree [00:27:00] with any of our advice, we’d love to hear from you. Please share your thoughts.
You can email us at practicingconnection@onop.org. We would love to hear from you. We see and respond to every message, and we promise not to share anything without your permission.
We’ll be back next week. Until then, keep practicing.
CREDITS: The Practicing Connection Podcast is a production of One-Op and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, US Department of Defense under award number 2 0 2 3 4 8 7 74 3 3.

A 360 View of the Spouse Employment Environment
2026-06-12 08:00 - 09:00
OneOp courses are available for free through Thinkific. Get started by registering for a free account on Thinkific. This interactive, 90-minute course is designed to help military and civilian service providers level up in their roles, strengthen systems awareness, and approach spouse employment work with clarity, confidence, and a strengths-based mindset. This course is an applied, interactive learning opportunity providing a foundation for military and civilian service providers. Participants will gain a clear understanding of who military spouses are and the barriers that impact career continuity — including relocation cycles, licensure portability, childcare access, and policy considerations.
With that foundation in place, participants will build a practical toolkit for identifying spouse needs, responding with a strengths-based approach, and making informed referrals that improve employment stability and long-term career outcomes.
Estimated time to complete: 90 minutes
Learning Objectives
After engaging in this course, learners will be able to:

Identify common barriers that military spouses face when seeking and maintaining employment.
Describe employer policies and workplace actions that can promote spouse employment, hiring, and retention.
Recognize prominent policies that influence military spouse employment and address common misconceptions.
Summarize key Department of War and civilian programs that support military spouse employment.
Connect military spouses experiencing unemployment or underemployment to appropriate support services.

Register and enroll on Thinkific.com, the platform used to host OneOp courses, for free! For help getting started on Thinkific email us at contact@oneop.org

Interactive components and links to videos are included, so make sure you have a strong internet connection.
Units and resources will open in a new window be sure to turn your pop-up blocker off.
The content includes audio and video, ensure your computer can play audio and video files, and open PDF files.
To ensure progress is saved, please pause and resume learning between units.
In order to receive certain continuing education credits and/or a certificate of completion for general use, some users may be required to take a cumulative post-test at the end of the entire course. You will have five attempts to pass the final post-test at 80% or better.
It is expected that students will view all materials, engage with the activities, and complete reflections.
For information about this course or assistance with completion please email contact@oneop.org

Chengfei Jiao serves as a Postdoctoral Scholar for OneOp and in the Department of Human Development and Family Science at East Carolina University. She will begin her position as an Assistant Professor at Lamar University in August 2026. She holds a Bachelor of Social Science in Psychology (Honours) and Organizational Psychology from the University of Cape Town (South Africa), a Master of Arts in Child and Family Education from the Education University of Hong Kong (Hong Kong SAR), and a doctorate in Human Development and Family Science from Florida State University (USA). Her research focuses on interpersonal relationships and relational well-being among young adults and couples across various social contexts.
Kayla Reed-Fitzke serves as the Primary Investigator of the Spouse Employment Collaboration team with OneOp and is an Associate Professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Science at East Carolina University. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Human Development and Family Science from Virginia Tech, a Master of Science in Marriage and Family Therapy from the University of Kentucky, and a Doctorate in Marriage and Family Therapy from Florida State University. Her research centers on promoting health and well-being among military families, with a focus on translating research to real-world practical tools practitioners can use in support of their work with military families.
Kim Smith serves as the Spouse Employment Program Coordinator with OneOp and is a Research Associate in the Department of Human Development and Family Science at East Carolina University. With more than 25 years of experience in higher education, she has devoted her career to supporting individuals in their academic and professional growth. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Education and a Master of Science in Technology Management, leveraging this foundation to connect education and innovation in ways that create meaningful opportunities for students and professionals. Kim designs professional development for those serving military families and brings extensive experience supporting service members and their families through research, innovation, and a strong commitment to access and opportunity.
The authors would like to give special thanks to Josie Beets, Abby Keeler, Kristy Kibler, and Jenny Rea for their contributions to the development of this course. Jennifer Chilek, M.Ed., is an instructional designer and online course developer with more than 20 years of experience creating accessible, learner-centered online education for higher education, outreach, and professional development audiences. Jen has developed and taught online courses for LoneStar Community College and Colorado State University Global and has created digital learning content for Texas A&M AgriLife Extension, OneOp, Texas A&M School of Law, and other academic and nonprofit initiatives. Her work focuses on transforming complex subject matter into engaging digital learning experiences that support practical application, meaningful learner engagement, and real-world impact.
Molly Herndon is the Director of Programming for OneOp. Since 2011, she has shaped innovative programming. She advances OneOp’s mission by leading the annual Academy. She holds degrees from Appalachian State University and North Carolina State University. This course has been approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits for many different professionals accredited through the credentialing agencies listed below.

Certified in Family and Consumer Sciences (CFCS): This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits from the American Association for Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close June 11, 2028.
Board Certified Patient Advocates (BCPA): This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) contact hours by The Patient Advocate Certification Board. Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close June 11, 2028.
Board Certified Case Managers: This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) clock hours from the Commission for Case Manager Certification (CCMC). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close June 11, 2027.
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Photo Credit: crizzystudio | Adobe Stock 819585491

Insights and Best Practices from the USDA Summer Meal Programs
2026-06-11 11:00 - 12:30
The Summer Meal Programs are USDA-funded, state-administered programs providing free, nutritious meals and snacks to children 18 and younger in low-income areas during the summer, when school is not in session. Join experts from the USDA Food and Nutrition Administration and leaders from a summer site near Fort Bragg for a professional development webinar focused on expanding access to nutritious summer meals for children. This session will provide an overview of federal program priorities, highlight practical strategies from a successful summer meal site, and discuss opportunities to strengthen community partnerships and program operations. Participants will gain both policy insights and on-the-ground perspectives to support effective planning and implementation of summer meal programs.
Learning Objectives:

Explain the goals, structure, and key requirements of the Summer Meal Programs as administered by the USDA Food and Nutrition Administration.
Identify effective strategies used by summer meal sites to increase participation, improve meal service, and reach children in underserved communities.
Discuss opportunities for collaboration among schools, community organizations, and local partners to strengthen summer nutrition programs and improve nutrition readiness.

Program Analyst
Summer Policy and Demonstrations Branch
Community Meals Policy Division
USDA Food and Nutrition Administration
Program Analyst
Summer Policy and Demonstrations Branch
Community Meals Policy Division
USDA Food and Nutrition Administration

Executive Director
Child Nutrition Services
Cumberland County Schools
Fayetteville, North Carolina

Certified in Family and Consumer Sciences (CFCS): This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits from the American Association for Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close June 11, 2028.
Certified Nutrition and Wellness Educator (CNWE): This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits from the American Association for Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close June 11, 2028.
Registered Dietitian Nutritionists (RD/RDN) and Nutrition and Dietetics Technicians, Registered (NDTR): This webinar awards 1.5 CPEUs in accordance with the Commission on Dietetic Registration’s CPEU Prior Approval Program. Note: Eligibility for CPEU credit will close on May 18, 2029.
Certified Health Education Specialist (CHES) and Master Certified Health Education Specialist (MCHES): This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education credit from the National Commission for Health Education Credentialing (NCHEC). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close June 11, 2028.
Certificates of Attendance: OneOp Certificates of Attendance are available for those interested in additional documentation of professional development activities.

If the button above does not appear, please access the continuing education survey through this link: https://auburn.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_7W1uKLMfPUzB4q2. If you have any other questions, please email ce@oneop.org.

Webinar Slides
Webinar Resources Photo Credit: Storyblocks

Do you see yourself as a generous collaborator?
2026-06-11 06:00 - 17:00
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Join the “Practicing Connection Community” on LinkedIn. The community is designed for people who support military families in a variety of settings both on installations and in our communities. JTNDZGl2JTIwaWQlM0QlMjJidXp6c3Byb3V0LXBsYXllci0xOTMwNDQ4NiUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRmRpdiUzRSUzQ3NjcmlwdCUyMHNyYyUzRCUyMmh0dHBzJTNBJTJGJTJGd3d3LmJ1enpzcHJvdXQuY29tJTJGMjA5OTk4MyUyRmVwaXNvZGVzJTJGMTkzMDQ0ODYtZG8teW91LXNlZS15b3Vyc2VsZi1hcy1hLWdlbmVyb3VzLWNvbGxhYm9yYXRvci5qcyUzRmNvbnRhaW5lcl9pZCUzRGJ1enpzcHJvdXQtcGxheWVyLTE5MzA0NDg2JTI2cGxheWVyJTNEc21hbGwlMjIlMjB0eXBlJTNEJTIydGV4dCUyRmphdmFzY3JpcHQlMjIlMjBjaGFyc2V0JTNEJTIydXRmLTglMjIlM0UlM0MlMkZzY3JpcHQlM0U= (Season 7, Episode 24)
Do you see yourself as a generous collaborator? Have you ever been generous with a collaborator, only to leave disappointed?
This week’s practice is all about unpacking generosity. Making time for generosity can build trust, which is a key ingredient to collaborative relationships.
In this episode from the archives, Bob and Jessica discuss what generosity can do for you in your relationships and why it can be challenging to offer generosity to new people. Then Bob guides us through a simple reflection to dig into your motivations and align with your values.
Links and resources from this episode:

Genuine Generosity: https://randomactsofleadership.com/genuine-generosity
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ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: [00:00:00] Welcome to Practicing Connection. I’m Erin, and today we are talking about practicing generosity in our relationships.
This episode is part of our From The Archive series, so you’ll be hearing Jessica and Bob dive into this topic later in the episode. I’ve really enjoyed listening to our archives and selecting episodes to share with you all.
Often I will pitch Jessica an idea for a Practicast only to find out it’s something we already have a recording of in our archives. This is one of those episodes.
Every time I go and listen thinking, “Well, maybe I can just rewrite it.” But honestly, the episodes are so thoughtfully put together, and the practices are so helpful to me personally that I find myself wanting to just pass them right along to you.
In the spirit of that, I want to just provide a little bit of framework for you guys before we dig in. We often talk a lot about what it takes to collaborate with new people, and sometimes our tools can get really complicated. [00:01:00] figuring out how to be generous in your relationships is one of those basic things that is simple, if not easy, but it can make such a big difference.
I love the reflection that Bob guides us through in this episode. It is not complicated, but the questions are really good at challenging us to be honest with ourselves about what our expectations actually are and how we’re showing up in our relationships. I hope you enjoy this episode and I’ll see you on the other side.
– break –
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yourself as a generous collaborator, research consistently points to the power of generosity in building trustful long-term working relationships. Yet we are often hesitant to risk leading with generosity. Hi everyone. This is Jessica, and welcome to this week’s Practicing Connection podcast, where we highlight a specific practice you can use in your life and work.
This week’s practice is [00:02:00] all about generosity. Making time for generosity can build trust, which is a key ingredient to collaborative relationships. While engaging in acts of generosity can be vulnerable, the benefits are too big to ignore. My practicing connection co-host Bob Bertsch, will be guiding you through a practice related to generosity later in this episode.
But first, we’ll learn a little more about generosity in general. Hi, Bob.
BOB BERTSCH: Hey Jessica, I’m looking forward to this conversation. Generosity is one of those pillars of the working out loud process, which was important process to both of us. I know. So I’m anxious to talk about it.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Well, I’d like to start with connecting generosity to collaboration.
How does generosity play a role in collaborative efforts?
BOB BERTSCH: Well, I think there are a couple of ways generosity plays a role in collaboration. The first is in its role in building trust. In order for people to cooperate, they have to have some level of trust in each other. [00:03:00] So when we first encounter someone new, there’s often uncertainty because we can’t predict how that person will behave, and as a result, we don’t know how to behave in that person’s presence.
So approaching that first interaction with generosity provides a foundation for trust. It demonstrates a view of others that’s giving and assumes positive intent on their part. We’re social creatures, so that generosity that you extend is likely to be reciprocated. Research has shown people very precisely reciprocate the degree of cooperation that they received from the other in the past interaction.
So with a giving attitude and an assumption in favor of positive intent, as the basis of the relationship, trust is more likely to be developed because that generosity is likely to be reciprocated. So the second role generosity plays in collaboration is in [00:04:00] mediating social dilemmas, like when there is uncertainty, disagreement, or maybe a perceived gap in reciprocity.
The social dilemmas are gonna be part of any collaboration at some point, or any relationship really at some point. Research by Clap Wick and Van Lang has shown these social dilemmas can be challenged by what they call negative noise. And what they mean by that are mistakes that cause actual outcomes to be worse than they were intended to be.
And an example would be like accidentally saying the wrong thing. Many of us have done that before, or forgetting to respond to an email, right? Those are just mistakes, but they impact, you know, the outcome. They found that this negative noise is more challenging if you’re in a transactional or tit for tat strategy in terms of the relationship, and it was less challenging in relationships, [00:05:00] grounded in generosity.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: That is so interesting and I definitely have been the person who has forgotten to get back to emails and, and things like that. So I’m curious to learn more about why it’s helpful to understand our motivations behind our acts of generosity. Can you share a little bit about that?
BOB BERTSCH: Sure. So that research that I just mentioned about negative noise, being a bigger challenge in transactional or tit for tat strategies than in those grounded in generosity.
If we’re going to take advantage of knowing that we need to know which strategy we’re using, and we think we do. But the problem is sometimes we think we’re being generous. But we actually have expectations we would associate with a tit for tat strategy. John Stepper wrote about a wonderful example we can use to try and think about this and examine it, and the example is holding the door open for [00:06:00] someone.
So on the surface, it seems like a completely generous strategy. But when you think about it more deeply, we often find that we have expectations of that being a transaction. For instance, like how do you feel when you hold the door for someone, but they don’t acknowledge you at all? They don’t say thanks.
They don’t smile. They don’t make eye contact. Do you feel differently about the action?
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Isn’t it? Isn’t that them just being a jerk? I’m just kidding.
BOB BERTSCH: That could be too.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: No, no, no, no!
BOB BERTSCH: Or if you hold the door for someone upon entering a building and then you end up, you know, coincidentally exiting together and they don’t hold the door for you.
If you find that you are expecting some kind of reciprocation, then you might not have had a completely generous strategy in mind, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just a different strategy, right? Holding the door is just a helpful example. Sometimes we think we’re being generous with others in our [00:07:00] work.
When we’re really expecting reciprocity, right? And if we aren’t clear with ourselves about our expectations, then we can’t be clear with our coworkers and let them know that, hey, we’re expecting some kind of. Reciprocity, especially if we’re presenting our actions as being completely generous, right? So that lack of clarity can have a really negative impact on trust and in turn cooperation.
So I think that’s why it’s important to kind of know, are we motivated here purely by generosity or are we expecting some kind of transaction?
JESSICA BECKENDORF: What are the things that can get in the way of having a generous strategy? Why is it sometimes difficult to be generous or to lead with that strategy versus thinking in a reciprocal way?
Again, like you said, there’s, it’s nothing, not, it’s not that there’s anything wrong with thinking in a reciprocal way, but, you know, [00:08:00] what gets in the way of us leading with that generosity instead?
BOB BERTSCH: So a few things come to mind for that. One is relevant past experience. Note ‘relevant.’ So we might not be generous with someone because we have kind of learned not to.
They’ve taken advantage of our generosity in the past, so we might be able to be generous with that person again, if something has changed for them or maybe something’s changed for us or the context is different. Or we could try being generous with them in kind of lower risk ways to see if we can find our way back to trust.
But that’s just based on a, you know, past experience. So sometimes we find ourselves not being generous because, you know, we got burned by that person. That’s what makes it relevant, by the way. And then finally, another reason that it can be hard is that we often misapply past experience.
You know, we have had, many of us have had previous experiences of being hurt by those that we [00:09:00] trusted, and that can make it difficult to be generous with someone new. So I think that’s misapplied. I think because we’re not basing that on someone new. We’re basing it on somebody who did it before.
Right. That’s why I called it misapplication. So I think practicing generosity and reflecting on our acts of generosity can be helpful in overcoming those kinds of barriers that you asked about.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Thank you. I think it’s time for us to practice this and I think this is a reflective practice.
So could you please walk us through that?
BOB BERTSCH: So I’ve adapted this practice from questions shared by Susan Mazza in her blog post, Genuine Generosity, and we’ll link that from the show notes and from the words of many other teachers over the years. I’m grateful for their generosity in sharing their wisdom with me, and I’m glad to share this with you.
So. Let’s start by recalling a time when [00:10:00] you believed you had acted generously and found you were less than satisfied with the outcome. Try to bring to mind the place you were, the action you took, the other person or people involved, and the feeling of dissatisfaction.
So now that you’ve brought that to mind, think about what you really wanted or expected in return for your generosity. Be honest with yourself here. This is an opportunity to consider what motivates your generosity and why this particular situation left you feeling unsatisfied. Now with that experience still firmly in mind, consider how it would’ve been different if you had gotten what you wanted.[00:11:00]
What would that have looked like? How would it have been different for you and how do you think it would’ve been different for the recipient of your generosity?
Next. Think about the beliefs and values that you hold that contributed to this experience. If your experience does not match what you consciously think you believe, then you’ll know there’s work to be done to align your beliefs and values with your actions. And finally, now that we’ve kind of considered that situation, think about one way that you can be genuinely generous this week.
How can you let go of your expectations for reciprocity of any kind and just be generous.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: [00:12:00] Wow. Thanks so much for guiding us through that practice. I actually practiced it while you were saying it. I really appreciate that, Bob. Thank you so much.
BOB BERTSCH: You’re welcome. I really enjoy talking about generosity and these kinds of ideas and it was my pleasure to share that.
– outro –
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: That’s it for this Practicast. Thank you for joining us for the simple but challenging reflection. I hope it helps you be more generous, not only with others, but also with yourself.
If you enjoyed this episode, please consider sharing it with a friend or a colleague. We’ll be back next week. Until then, keep practicing.
[00:13:00]
CREDITS: The Practicing Connection Podcast is a production of One-Op and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, US Department of Defense under award number 2 0 2 3 4 8 7 74 3 3.

OneOp’s Impact on Military Family Readiness
2026-06-09 14:00 - 15:00
This presentation will highlight findings from OneOp’s 2025 Impact Evaluation. The data shows that providers are applying what they learn to make meaningful changes in their work. Reflections from OneOp learners bring that data to life, demonstrating how professional development is leading providers to improve their practice and better support the Military Family Readiness System.
Built on a powerful partnership between the Land Grant University System, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, and the War Department, OneOp was created to fill a gap that no other organization had addressed: the ongoing, specialized professional development needs of every service provider working across the Military Family Readiness System.
OneOp is the only entity of its kind. Open to all and at no cost, OneOp brings together distinguished professionals and War Department subject-matter experts to deliver research-based, evidence-informed programming that reflects the existing and emerging needs of military families and the professionals who serve them.
Dr. Kostelecky is the National Project Director and Principal Investigator for OneOp. He is also an Associate Professor of Human Development and Family Science at Auburn University. Kyle has been with the project since its inception. Bob Bertsch is OneOp’s National Project Leader and Co-Principal Investigator. Bertsch, an Extension Specialist at North Dakota State University, has been an integral part of OneOp since 2011. He oversees strategic initiatives to enhance OneOp’s ability to support military family service providers and strengthen the Military Family Readiness System. Dr. Hlavaty is responsible for leading OneOp’s programming evaluation efforts to measure the impact of our programming. Utilizing mixed-methods approaches, She provides data-driven insights that inform strategic decision-making and drives continuous improvement. She earned her PhD in Human Development and Family Science from Auburn University. Photo Credit: south_agency please use expiration: 2 years as a back-end tool to help with date expiration, do NOT add that verbiage to the webinar page. For example:
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Board Certified Patient Advocates (BCPA): This webinar is pending approval for 1.5 continuing education (CE) contact hours by The Patient Advocate Certification Board. Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close [Enter Date expiration: 2 years]

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Board Certified Patient Advocates (BCPA): This webinar is approved l for 1.5 continuing education (CE) contact hours by The Patient Advocate Certification Board. Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 3/28/2027.

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Social Workers, Licensed Professional Counselors, and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists: This webinar is pending approval for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits from the University of Texas at Austin School of Social Work. Check with your state licensing agency for reciprocity and/or credit approval if licensed for other professions or in one of the following states: CO, FL, HI, IA, KS, KY, MI, NY, ND, OH, OK. Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close [Enter Date expiration: 3 years].

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OneOp Certificates of Attendance are available for those interested in additional documentation of professional development activities.

2025 Impact Report and Methodology

Why Community Engagement Efforts Fall Flat
2026-06-04 06:00 - 17:00
Subscribe to the “Practicing Connection” monthly email to keep up to date on our latest podcasts, blog posts and workshops.
Join the “Practicing Connection Community” on LinkedIn. The community is designed for people who support military families in a variety of settings both on installations and in our communities. JTNDZGl2JTIwaWQlM0QlMjJidXp6c3Byb3V0LXBsYXllci0xOTI3OTk0NSUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRmRpdiUzRSUzQ3NjcmlwdCUyMHNyYyUzRCUyMmh0dHBzJTNBJTJGJTJGd3d3LmJ1enpzcHJvdXQuY29tJTJGMjA5OTk4MyUyRmVwaXNvZGVzJTJGMTkyNzk5NDUtd2h5LWNvbW11bml0eS1lbmdhZ2VtZW50LWVmZm9ydHMtZmFsbC1mbGF0LmpzJTNGY29udGFpbmVyX2lkJTNEYnV6enNwcm91dC1wbGF5ZXItMTkyNzk5NDUlMjZwbGF5ZXIlM0RzbWFsbCUyMiUyMHR5cGUlM0QlMjJ0ZXh0JTJGamF2YXNjcmlwdCUyMiUyMGNoYXJzZXQlM0QlMjJ1dGYtOCUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRnNjcmlwdCUzRQ== (Season 7, Episode 23)
Most of us don’t ignore input – we just ask for it too late. And by then, the decisions are already made.
What if the biggest issue with community engagement isn’t whether you do it – but when and how?
In this episode, Jessica and Erin explore a simple but powerful two-part practice that can transform how collaborative work unfolds: engaging with people before decisions are made, and closing the loop afterward by showing how their input shaped the outcome.
They unpack why even well-intentioned teams often bring in community voice too late, how that affects trust and participation, and what it looks like to embed engagement into the way you work – not just treat it as a final step.
If you’ve ever wondered why engagement efforts fall flat – or how to make them more meaningful – this episode offers a small shift that can make a big difference.
Links and resources from this episode:

Episode: “What the Room is Telling You: How to Read the Room”
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ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: [00:00:00] I feel like this is something we do all of the time. We bring really smart people together to address a big important community issue. We have great conversations. We design something really thoughtful, and then we ask for community input after every decision is already made.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: It’s like, “Here’s what we’re thinking. Any feedback?”
And really I want to be clear that I think we mean it sincerely. And most of the time, all the groups I’ve worked with, they mean it sincerely. But by that point, even if the group doesn’t think this is the case, a lot of the big choices have actually already been made.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yes, I agree that it usually comes from a really good place. It’s usually, “Oh, we don’t have time,” or, “This is so important, we have to be moving on it. We have to get something done.”
But then they put all this energy and effort into it, and they’re surprised when people push back or when they get no engagement at all.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Right. Or, people show up and it feels like they’re reacting to what you’re saying instead of helping to shape the project. When maybe your intent was, you were hoping people would come and [00:01:00] help shape the project, but they seem to be reacting. Yeah. It’s an issue.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Mm-hmm.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: So let’s explore a small shift that can make a really big difference in how all of this plays out, especially in collaborative work.
​- intro music –
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Today we’re talking about a practice that connects really closely to the kinds of collaboration we often focus on in this podcast, it’s this idea of engaging with people before decisions are made and then closing the loop on it, showing your work and sharing it back with the people you engaged with.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yes. I love that you’re saying both of those things, because you really need both. You need to ask for input and then close the loop or else it isn’t effective.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: We talk a lot about cross-sector collaboration, like bringing together different organizations, different perspectives, different kinds of expertise, but one thing we haven’t really focused on as much is [00:02:00] what it looks like to fully include community voice in that work, not as a separate step so much as part of the collaborative work itself.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah, that makes sense. Because it’s really possible to have a strong collaboration across organizations and still not be meaningfully engaged with the people most impacted or affected by an issue.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah, and pretty often when engagement does happen, it happens later than we think it does, like later in the process.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Hmm. Or later than it should happen.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Which brings us to the first part of this practice: Engage before you decide.
The first part of this practice is really about timing. It’s about bringing people in when things are still open, when there’s still real opportunity to shape what happens next.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: So I think one thing that’s helpful to say here is that we’re bringing them in at the beginning, because part of the community voice that you need is having the community shape how the problem is defined, not [00:03:00] just responding to a proposed solution.
And I think that’s so important because sometimes your solution doesn’t hit what the community needs because you aren’t aware of what they need.
Right? You don’t know their side of the problem.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Or you’re not aware of all the perspectives, because once a group has spent time developing a plan, even if it’s informally, right, you’ve just kind of gotten together and you’re like, “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if we were addressing this issue?”
It becomes much harder to change direction, there’s already momentum and some of those on the planning team might even become defensive of the plan, even if they truly do want to hear feedback.
Like we said, we think people genuinely do want to hear feedback most of the time. And when it’s gotten to the point where you’re like, you crafted something and you’re like, “okay, what does everyone think?” It’s already a little bit too late because there’s a plan in place, right?
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yes, and people can tell, people know when you’re railroading them. If you’ve already put down the tracks and there’s already a car on the tracks and you’re like, “See, we’re [00:04:00] going to the zoo,” or whatever, and you’re like, what is happening? The zoo is maybe a bad example, but you know, people can feel when you actually are willing to change things or when you’re just performing.
“Oh yeah, we care about your opinion,” and it can really be demoralizing and just kind of like stop things before they get started.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah, and I mean, in all the reading I’ve done on this topic, one thing that really stands out to me is that engagement isn’t just a set of tactics. I think a lot of times it’s how are you going to do your engagement? How are you going to do that? Is it going to be through surveys?
Are you going to have community forums? Are you going to have a booth at the local fair where you, you know, have a clipboard and you’re asking people at the fair their opinion on things.
It’s more than that. This is something that needs to be embedded in how you work, and timing is a really big part of building that embeddedness.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: So in practice, this could be a pretty simple shift. Like before you move forward with a plan or a [00:05:00] decision, you pause and ask who or who else has direct actual experience with this issue? And have we talked with them yet?
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. And, have we talked to them in a real way, right? Like that old 80/20 rule. You should be doing only 20% of the talking and the rest is all listening.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah, I think those percentages are probably imaginary, but I think the point behind them is so true because when you’re engaging the community, you need to listen to what’s being said and also to what’s not being said.
And small plug for our own podcast: we have a great episode called How to Read the Room. If you feel like you need more help figuring out what the community’s not saying, you can check that out. We’ll put it in the show notes.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: All right. So the second part of this practice is called Closing the Loop, this is also though where a lot of engagement efforts can break down.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah, that makes sense. Imagine if people are asked for their input, and then never hear what [00:06:00] happens or what decisions were made, or they listened to the input session and absolutely none of it makes it into the final progress or project.
And then they don’t explain why. Like there’s nothing at all about why the decisions were made the way they were made. Oof.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. And that’s a good way to put it. When there’s no clear connection between what they shared and the decisions that were ultimately made over time, that makes it a lot harder to sustain engagement. So if you need to go back and get more engagement in the future, they’re not sure that their input’s actually gonna be making a difference.
So the trust breaks down, and engagement is ultimately about building trust.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah. I think that that’s such an important thing to keep in mind as you’re deciding how you do engagement, is that trust aspect because it’s easy to think, “Oh, they’re gonna be disappointed that we’re not doing what they asked us to do.”
And the answer is like, yeah, they [00:07:00] probably might be disappointed. And that doesn’t inherently mean that you’re going to break trust. If you can explain, “Here’s our reasoning, here’s why we made the choice that we made. We understand you might be disappointed and we feel like this is the best path forward to meet x, y, z things.”
And just even communicating an acknowledgement of, “We know this isn’t what you expected,” can leave space for trust to not be broken and completely destroyed.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah, I love that. You know, really taking what they said and sharing out ‘here’s what we heard.’
And not only that, but having a little bit of sharing or sharing your work about how the input was not used, right? Because both of those things matter. So sharing back about “Here’s how your input was used, and oh, we also have this input and we weren’t able to use it,” because, you know, fill in the blank.
Closing the loop tells people what you heard, [00:08:00] what changed because of what you heard from them and what you couldn’t change and why you couldn’t change it? I cannot tell you how many times I’ve seen decisions that were made, like new policies created, things like that, and they don’t share why they made the final decisions or what all went into those final decisions.
They don’t show their work, but they expect everyone to get on board. It’s just so frustrating. And you know, they don’t understand why people either reacted, like we said earlier, reacted to it, or why they’re just not engaging with it.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah, sorry, I’m having flashbacks here. Sounds like that hit on some reality with you. There are many times where I wished that people just hadn’t even asked for my opinion because they didn’t even address it. And I was like, “Well, why did I waste my time with this? Right.” Oh, ooh.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Not that you need more examples, [00:09:00] I’m sure people have had a similar experience at some point, so I am so on board with the showing your work.
Even if you can just tell me why you made a different choice, that is so helpful to me.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah, even if I don’t agree with that, like there have been times when someone did share with me why they didn’t go a certain direction, it was a direction that they were just kind of showing their work about it in this way that we’re talking about. And I was able to disagree with the direction they went in, yet I could go along with and support what was being done in the end because I understood, I at least understood.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah. Okay. So we just had a great long conversation. Can we just, like, in the shortest way possible, can we just re-talk about the two components together?
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. Absolutely.
So I mean, really what we talked about today was concepts that can be turned into practices, right? So the first one is, engaging with people before you [00:10:00] make any decisions. This is front loaded listening or front loaded co-creation, whatever you want to call it.
This is about just taking that moment to pause when you’re in a collaborative effort, especially one that calls for some community engagement and you say, “What kind of engagement do we need? Who needs to be here? And, “How can we engage with them?
And then once you’ve done that, do not forget to go back after the final decisions have been made. You’ve chosen a direction, your project is going to go one direction or another. You need to go back then and say, “Hey, thank you so much. Here’s how your input is making a difference, and here’s what we weren’t able to address and here’s why we weren’t able to address it.”
Those are the two things that we’re asking you to do.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Beautiful. Thank you so much for that summary.
So I imagine that not every collaboration you work on will require community [00:11:00] engagement, but those that do would benefit a lot from both of these strategies being used, and specifically these two pieces being used together, because they really do reinforce each other.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah, you could think of them as bookends in a way.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: I like that.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. They really do reinforce each other, and when you engage with people before you make any decisions about the direction you’re going to go in, you get better input and better alignment right from the start.
And then when you close the loop, you build the trust that makes future engagement stronger.
If we’re thinking about collaboration as a system, working toward addressing important issues, community voice has to be part of that system, not something that sits outside of it.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yes. While community engagement can feel like one more thing and you don’t have time for it, folding it into your process can help you build trust for the implementation [00:12:00] phases for future projects.
And it’s so worth giving it a shot, because if you think you don’t have time to do community engagement, you don’t have time to do this project three or four times.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. Love that.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: I mean, three or four is maybe not every project, but if you think you don’t have time for engagement, you definitely don’t have time to have to start all over two years from now. So just a little plug, try it out.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: That’s it for today’s episode. We’d love to hear what you thought about this episode. Send us your thoughts and questions at Practicing Connection@oneop.org.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: You can click the like or share button in your podcast app to share this with a friend or a coworker.
We’ll be back next week with a new episode. Until then, keep practicing.
[00:13:00]
CREDITS: The Practicing Connection Podcast is a production of One-Op and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, US Department of Defense under award number 2 0 2 3 4 8 7 74 3 3.

Helping Preteens Thrive Through Change
2026-06-03 11:00 - 12:30
Middle schoolers face big changes in identity, independence, and peer relationships. These challenges that can be made harder by deployments and relocations. This session will equip professionals to help students advocate for themselves, keep friendships across distance, and access extracurricular activities soon after a move. We’ll highlight the role of caregivers as steady anchors and professionals as guides through unfamiliar school cultures. Participants will learn approaches that build confidence, adaptability, and leadership in preteens navigating changing environments.
Learning Objectives:

Apply two techniques to build self-advocacy skills in new school contexts.
Identify two ways to maintain friendships during transitions.
Develop a plan to connect preteens to extracurricular activities within 60 days of relocation.

Brent Edwards serves as the Youth Programs Coordinator for Commander, Navy Installations Command (CNIC) Navy Child and Youth Programs, where he leads the development of Navy-wide policies and supports the operational and professional needs of 104 Youth Centers across 71 installations worldwide. Since joining CNIC in 2010, he has strengthened the quality and consistency of School Age Care, Teen, and Youth Sports and Fitness programs, helping ensure military and DoD families have access to safe, high-quality youth experiences that support overall family readiness. A graduate of Oregon State University, Mr. Edwards began his career in military youth programming in 2004 and has held leadership roles at installations around the globe. LTC Elisha Dansby serves as the Child and Youth Services Program Manager at Headquarters, United States Army Reserve, where she leverages military, community, and national partnerships to ensure Army Families have access to essential supports and services wherever they reside. In this role, she coordinates directly with the Department of Defense and Army youth-serving organizations to strengthen service delivery and family readiness. A board-certified nurse practitioner since 2012 with more than 30 years in nursing, LTC Dansby began her career as an LPN in the U.S. Army Reserve and earned her AASN, BSN, and MSN degrees before assuming her current position in October 2023.

Certified in Family and Consumer Sciences (CFCS): This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits from the American Association for Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 6/3/2028.
Board Certified Disability Management Specialists: This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) clock hour from The Commission for Case Manager Certification. Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 6/3/2026.
Certified Family Life Educators (CFLE): This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits from the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 6/3/2029.
Certified Health Education Specialist (CHES) and Master Certified Health Education Specialist (MCHES): This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education credit from the National Commission for Health Education Credentialing (NCHEC). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 6/3/2029.
Michigan Certified Teachers: This webinar has been approved for 1.5 SCECH from the Michigan Education Association’s Center for Leadership and Learning. Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 6/3/2029.
Social Workers, Licensed Professional Counselors, and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists: This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits from the University of Texas at Austin School of Social Work. Check with your state licensing agency for reciprocity and/or credit approval if licensed for other professions or in one of the following states: CO, FL, HI, IA, KS, KY, MI, NY, ND, OH, OK. Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 6/3/2029.
OneOp Certificates of Attendance are available for those interested in additional documentation of professional development activities.

Additional Resources
Webinar Slides Photo Credit: Adobe Stock 423742895

Understanding Service Animal Rights When the Law Gets Ruff
2026-06-01 08:00 - 17:00
Service animals play an important role in supporting individuals with disabilities, yet confusion surrounding service animal laws remains common across workplaces, housing, schools, healthcare settings, restaurants, transportation, and public accommodations. This direct-to-learning session provides an overview of federal laws governing service animals, emotional support animals (ESAs), and assistance animals, while clarifying the rights and responsibilities of handlers, businesses, employers, housing providers, educators, and service professionals.
Participants will explore the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Fair Housing Act (FHA), Air Carrier Access Act (ACAA), Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, and relevant state laws through practical examples and recent legal cases. The session also addresses common misconceptions, permissible questions, direct threat considerations, service animals in training, and best practices for navigating accommodation requests in real-world settings.
This learning opportunity is ideal for professionals working in education, healthcare, housing, disability services, human resources, law enforcement, transportation, hospitality, and community-based organizations seeking to better understand disability rights and service animal accommodations.
Learning Objectives

Differentiate between service animals, emotional support animals (ESAs), and assistance animals under federal law.
Identify key federal laws that govern service animal access in public accommodations, housing, employment, transportation, and educational settings.
Explain the rights and responsibilities of individuals, businesses, employers, and housing providers regarding service animal accommodations.
Recognize permissible and impermissible questions related to service animals under the ADA.
Apply legal principles and best practices to real-world scenarios involving service animal access and accommodation requests.

Senior Attorney
Disability Rights Texas
Denette Vaughn joined Disability Rights Texas (formerly Advocacy, Inc.), in 1998, and is currently assigned as a Senior Attorney on the CAPE team which handles disability issues in employment and accessibility. Since 2012, Ms. Vaughn has handled cases involving discrimination against service animal handlers beginning with a case involving a combat veteran who was denied access to a local business.
Before joining DRTX, Ms. Vaughn was the Civil Division Chief, Juvenile Division Chief, and Narcotics Prosecutor for the Lubbock District Attorney’s office. Subsequent to her time as an Assistant District Attorney, she was in private practice for 12 years working primarily in the areas of criminal, family, employment and civil service law. Much of her practice involved representing police officers and firefighters in employment disputes, including the case memorialized in a book called Substantial Evidence. She has also been an adjunct professor for Texas Tech School of Law, Wayland Baptist University, Lubbock Christian University and South Plains College, teaching courses in law, sociology and communications. She has a BA degree in Communications and a BS degree in Criminal Justice from the University of Texas at Arlington. She obtained her Doctor of Jurisprudence degree (JD) from Texas Tech University School of Law.

Board Certified Patient Advocates (BCPA): This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) contact hours by The Patient Advocate Certification Board. Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 8/1/28.
Certified in Family and Consumer Sciences (CFCS): This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits from the American Association for Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 8/1/28.
Board Certified Case Managers: This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) clock hours from the Commission for Case Manager Certification (CCMC). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 8/1/27.
Board Certified Disability Management Specialists: This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) clock hour from The Commission for Case Manager Certification. Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 8/1/27.
Certified Family Life Educators (CFLE): This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits from the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 8/1/29.
Certified Health Education Specialist (CHES) and Master Certified Health Education Specialist (MCHES): This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education credit from the National Commission for Health Education Credentialing (NCHEC). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 8/1/28.
Social Workers, Licensed Professional Counselors, and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists: This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits from the University of Texas at Austin School of Social Work. Check with your state licensing agency for reciprocity and/or credit approval if licensed for other professions or in one of the following states: CO, FL, HI, IA, KS, KY, MI, NY, ND, OH, OK. Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 8/1/29.
OneOp Certificates of Attendance are available for those interested in additional documentation of professional development activities.

Webinar slides and resources will be added the day prior to the live session.

Board Certified Patient Advocates (BCPA): This webinar is pending approval for 1.5 continuing education (CE) contact hours by The Patient Advocate Certification Board. Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 8/1/28.
Certified in Family and Consumer Sciences (CFCS): This webinar is pending approval for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits from the American Association for Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 8/1/28.
Board Certified Case Managers: This webinar is pending approval for 1.5 continuing education (CE) clock hours from the Commission for Case Manager Certification (CCMC). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 8/1/27.
Board Certified Disability Management Specialists: This webinar is pending approval for 1.5 continuing education (CE) clock hour from The Commission for Case Manager Certification. Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 8/1/27.
Certified Family Life Educators (CFLE): This webinar is pending approval for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits from the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 8/1/29.
Certified Health Education Specialist (CHES) and Master Certified Health Education Specialist (MCHES): This webinar is pending approval for 1.5 continuing education credit from the National Commission for Health Education Credentialing (NCHEC). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 8/1/28.
Social Workers, Licensed Professional Counselors, and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists: This webinar is pending approval for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits from the University of Texas at Austin School of Social Work. Check with your state licensing agency for reciprocity and/or credit approval if licensed for other professions or in one of the following states: CO, FL, HI, IA, KS, KY, MI, NY, ND, OH, OK. Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 8/1/29.
OneOp Certificates of Attendance are available for those interested in additional documentation of professional development activities.

Webinar slides and resources will be added the day prior to the live session. Photo Credit: iStockphoto ID 2260040738; 24K-Production

Early Intervention Support for a Unique Population: Serving Those Who Serve
2026-05-28 11:00 - 12:30
This presentation will inform practitioners about challenges unique to children in the military population. Additionally, it will inform and bring awareness as to how these challenges can affect the acquisition of developmental milestones. It will examine how early interventionists utilize the Division for Early Childhood (DEC) recommended practices to achieve improved outcomes for children and their families who are impacted by these challenges. Lastly, it will educate on how the Educational and Developmental Intervention Services (EDIS) early intervention coaching framework is utilized to empower families to help their children develop.
Learning Objectives:

Describe challenges unique to children in military families and how these experiences may influence the acquisition of developmental milestones
Explain how early interventionists use the Division for Early Childhood (DEC) Recommended Practices to support positive outcomes for children and families impacted by military-related transitions and stressors
Summarize how the Educational and Developmental Intervention Services (EDIS) coaching framework supports family empowerment and promotes child development within everyday routines

Ms. Antoinette McAllister-Blyden is a licensed Speech-Language Pathologist with 18 years of experience and currently serves as a Training Specialist and Early Intervention Provider at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center. With extensive experience in Educational and Developmental Intervention Services (EDIS), she supports developmentally delayed and medically fragile children and trains providers to implement evidence-based practices. As the spouse of a U.S. Army veteran, she brings both professional expertise and personal insight to her work with military-connected families. Ms. Ashley Simpson has over 20 years of experience in Special Education and serves as a Program Manager and Early Intervention provider with Educational and Developmental Intervention Services (EDIS) at Vicenza Army Health Clinic in Italy. She holds master’s degrees in Conflict Analysis and Dispute Resolution and English as a Second Language and has extensive experience supporting at-risk, developmentally delayed, and medically fragile children across early childhood and school-age settings. Ms. Simpson is passionate about supporting military families and collaborating with programs such as New Parent Support and Child and Youth Services.

Board Certified Disability Management Specialists: This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) clock hour from The Commission for Case Manager Certification. Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 5/28/2027.
Certified Family Life Educators (CFLE): This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits from the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 5/28/2029.
Early Interventionists and Early Childhood Educators: This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits from the Early Intervention Training Program (EITP) at the University of Illinois. Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 6/30/2027.
Illinois Early Care & Education Providers: This webinar is approved as a Gateways to Opportunity Registry-approved Training for early care and education professionals in Illinois through 6/30/2027.
Certified Health Education Specialist (CHES) and Master Certified Health Education Specialist (MCHES): This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education credit from the National Commission for Health Education Credentialing (NCHEC). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 5/28/2029.
Michigan Certified Teachers: This webinar has been approved for 1.5 SCECH from the Michigan Education Association’s Center for Leadership and Learning. Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 5/28/2029.
Social Workers, Licensed Professional Counselors, and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists: This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits from the University of Texas at Austin School of Social Work. Check with your state licensing agency for reciprocity and/or credit approval if licensed for other professions or in one of the following states: CO, FL, HI, IA, KS, KY, MI, NY, ND, OH, OK. Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 5/28/2029.
OneOp Certificates of Attendance are available for those interested in additional documentation of professional development activities.

If the button above does not appear, please access the survey through this link: https://auburn.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3TSCTpiTgYXTJ8a. If you have any questions email ce@oneop.org. Additional Resources
Webinar Slides Photo Credit: Adobe Firefly

Empathy in Action: Going Beyond Surface-Level Interactions
2026-05-28 06:00 - 17:00
Subscribe to the “Practicing Connection” monthly email to keep up to date on our latest podcasts, blog posts and workshops.
Join the “Practicing Connection Community” on LinkedIn. The community is designed for people who support military families in a variety of settings both on installations and in our communities. JTNDZGl2JTIwaWQlM0QlMjJidXp6c3Byb3V0LXBsYXllci0xOTI1MTc2NSUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRmRpdiUzRSUzQ3NjcmlwdCUyMHNyYyUzRCUyMmh0dHBzJTNBJTJGJTJGd3d3LmJ1enpzcHJvdXQuY29tJTJGMjA5OTk4MyUyRmVwaXNvZGVzJTJGMTkyNTE3NjUtZW1wYXRoeS1pbi1hY3Rpb24tZ29pbmctYmV5b25kLXN1cmZhY2UtbGV2ZWwtaW50ZXJhY3Rpb25zLmpzJTNGY29udGFpbmVyX2lkJTNEYnV6enNwcm91dC1wbGF5ZXItMTkyNTE3NjUlMjZwbGF5ZXIlM0RzbWFsbCUyMiUyMHR5cGUlM0QlMjJ0ZXh0JTJGamF2YXNjcmlwdCUyMiUyMGNoYXJzZXQlM0QlMjJ1dGYtOCUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRnNjcmlwdCUzRQ== (Season 7, Episode 22)
Empathy mapping is a simple tool for helping you imagine someone else and their experience.
In this From the Archive episode, Bob and Jessica explore a powerful tool designed to deepen your connection with others—empathy mapping.
Whether you’re working with military families, service members, or anyone navigating life’s challenges, this practice can help you step into their shoes and understand their experiences on a whole new level.
Jessica shares her insights on how empathy mapping can move us beyond surface-level interactions, offering practical steps to apply this tool in your work or personal life.
Links and resources from this episode:

Empathy Map Activity
Opening to Joy and Love by Sebene Selassie
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ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: [00:00:00] Welcome to Practicing Connection. I’m Erin, and today we’re diving into empathy mapping as part of our From the Archive series.
In this series, we’re updating and re-releasing retired content that we feel is still relevant today. I picked this episode for two reasons. One is in the first half, Bob and Jessica have a short discussion about Joy that I absolutely love.
I’ve been on the “work should be more joyful” train since my very first episode. So anytime I can bring joy into the conversation, you know I’m going to do it.
The second reason is that empathy mapping is a really simple tool for a thing that we all need to do all of the time, and that’s imagining someone else and their experience more complexly.
A huge part of being a service provider or even just being a part of a community is working with people who are different from you. This is a nice tool to have in your back pocket for when you get stuck.
I hope it’s as helpful to you as it is to me.
BOB BERTSCH: [00:01:00] Thanks for listening to the Practicing Connection Podcast. I’m Bob, my co-host, Jessica is here as well. And today we’ll be diving into a tool that can really enhance our ability to connect with the people we serve. And Jessica will be sharing a practice with us related to that. Hi, Jessica. First of all, happy birthday.
Did you have a good birthday? How was it?
JESSICA BECKENDORF: I did. It was actually exactly what I needed several years ago. It kind of happened quite by accident. I started to take the day off from work, which that part’s not an accident, but I started to take the day off from work, and that first year I just kind of tooled around town.
I just went where I felt like going. And it felt so freeing and it reminded me of how much I enjoy an adventure, even though, you know, I was really just kind of going around town. But I was going to different places and that I don’t normally go to, and I was spending, you know, two hours in a bookstore just kind of [00:02:00] looking at books and, you know, looking at all the possibilities.
So yeah, that’s what I did this year. I took the day off, you know, I went to some thrift stores. I enjoy the adventure of finding interesting, odd antique pieces and I didn’t really find anything though. Yeah, I just did a, a few things like that.
BOB BERTSCH: Well, that’s awesome. It’s not about what you find, right? It’s the journey
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Exactly.
BOB BERTSCH: Looking for.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: That’s exactly what it was for me. And I just kept gut checking, like, just because last year I went to a yarn store doesn’t mean this year I need to go to one. And, uh, just because in the past I’ve gone to a bookstore, didn’t mean this year I needed to go to one and I didn’t. Even though that’s one of my favorite things to do on my birthdays to go to a bookstore.
But you know, last year I bought two books and I am three quarters of the way through one of them at this point. So I’m like, I don’t want any more books. Let me get through the ones I have. So
BOB BERTSCH: well, that sounds You doing awesome? I’m doing great. Yeah. I’ve been thinking about [00:03:00] joy,
JESSICA BECKENDORF: ah,
BOB BERTSCH: because of some meditations that I’ve been listening to.
The Zen teacher, Charlotte Jo Beck has a quote and she said, joy is exactly what is happening, minus our opinion of it. And the. Recorded meditation I was listening to and she shared that quote, which I hadn’t heard before. And seven A said that Charlotte Jo Beck was trying to get at the distinction between happiness and joy.
And that’s something I really hadn’t. Thought about and one distinction that seven A shared was like, happiness has an opposite, right? Unhappiness, but what’s the opposite of joy? And that was pretty thought provoking for me. Seven A describes joy as the capacity to appreciate the good in each moment without pushing away what might be unpleasant.
So I’ve been thinking about that a lot. Trying to get in touch with that feeling of joy in that sense that I’m willing to take things [00:04:00] as they are willing to let things be as they are, and not confusing joy with happiness. So that’s not super inspirational or anything like that, but it’s what I’ve been thinking about.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Oh, that’s really interesting. And Snet is actually one of my favorite meditation people. I feel like anything she says, I get some sort of inspiration out of this idea that it’s a joyful act to appreciate the good in the moment, even when there might be some unpleasantness going on that is really thought provoking.
I’m really glad you shared that. I’m, I’m gonna have to think on it a little bit.
BOB BERTSCH: So Jessica, I know you’ve chosen to talk about empathy mapping today, so could you share a little bit more about the activity and why you thought it was important to highlight it?
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah, absolutely. Um, I’ve used [00:05:00] this activity quite a lot for developing communication strategies. Um, so when we first talked about the idea of perspective taking, um, this of course kind of leapt to my mind.
I pulled up my empathy mapping activities and started pouring over them and remembering really the successes I’ve seen people have as they’ve used it. So empathy mapping is often used in the context of marketing to design customer profiles. Communication strategy, but I’ve also seen empathy mapping work really well as a tool for building understanding of a person.
Or a group as we’ll talk about later. It’s not a perfect tool. It should be one of several tools, but we’ll, we’ll talk a little bit about that later. But for example, I’ve used it to help community members get a better sense of where county board members are coming from. Recognizing that these officials really want to be good stewards of public dollars, even when it might seem like they’re just kind of focused on the budget, and that’s it.
Just the dollars. It’s meant to help you [00:06:00] get past your assumptions and begin to understand someone else’s perspective. Um, which is really important when working with military families and service members.
BOB BERTSCH: Yeah, that’s a great point. This idea of perspective taking is important to understand, uh, the unique challenges that military connected individuals face, especially during transitions like deployment, relocation or reintegration into civilian life.
And really just to, you know, try and understand better everybody’s experience. ’cause we all come from different experiences and bring. Our experiences to whatever we’re dealing with in that moment.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah, I appreciate that you put it that way. And you know, this also ties into, um, something that we’ve talked briefly about called the Military Transitions Theory, which provides a framework for understanding the various phases that military personnel and their families go through during their transitions.
The theory highlights the importance of understanding, not just the physical changes [00:07:00] like moving to a new duty station, but also the psychological and social adjustments that come with those changes. By taking the time to kind of see the world from a different perspective, we can better support military families through these transitions and well, that’s kind of why I thought of this activity.
BOB BERTSCH: So how does it help us apply sort of our understanding of different perspectives in, in practice, in a practical way?
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. Um, because it’s structured as a way to step into someone else’s shoes, it can help us move beyond the surface level observations and really dig into what a person is experiencing.
Again, we’ll go into this in a minute. This is one tool of many, right? You are using your own knowledge of that person. To fill this out. So unless you’re ground truthing it, you’re not really digging into what they’re experiencing. But it’s a way for you to start to see the perspective, the different perspective.
So for military families, this means understanding not just what they’re [00:08:00] doing or saying, but also what they’re thinking and feeling as they navigate these transitions. Right? You might be hearing what they’re saying and seeing a little bit of what they’re doing, but this really helps you dig a little bit into what they might be thinking and feeling as well.
BOB BERTSCH: This is really interesting. I’m excited to learn how to use this. Could you walk us through how to put empathy mapping into practice?
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Absolutely. So we’ve provided a link in the show notes where you can download the template. This template has kind of a goofy looking individual in the middle of the paper and around this individual are some different areas for you to focus on.
And, um, add your notes too. So in the first box, you’re gonna wanna start with defining who you’re focusing on. It’s often really, really helpful to think of someone specific. So even if you are trying to think of a group of people, try to think of someone specific. A military spouse who’s just relocated, perhaps a veteran transitioning to civilian life, or a kid [00:09:00] coping with a parent’s deployment.
Depending on what your role is, think about a person. Then consider their goal something that they need to do. So for example, maybe a military spouse needs to build a new support network after a move, depending on what your role is, figure out what kind of goal they’ve come to you for. This goal should be something observable, something you can see them trying to achieve.
Then you’re gonna move on to thinking about what they see around them. So there’s another box there that says, what do they see? What’s their environment like? Are they surrounded by new places, unfamiliar faces, or challenging situations? So understanding what they see can give us insight into their daily reality.
And then move on to looking at what they might be saying to others. So what are they communicating about their experiences? This can reveal a lot about their mindset and what’s important to them, which will be really helpful to you later. And then after you move on to thinking about what they’re [00:10:00] doing to reach their goal.
So are they already taking steps to connect with others? Are they seeking out resources? Are they trying to maintain their routines and trying to maintain some structure in their lives? Finally, you would listen to what they are hearing. So this sounds kind of confusing because I said we’ve gone through.
Uh, what are they seeing, saying, doing, but what are they hearing? What are the advice, the opinions and expectations that they might be hearing from those around them? And then finally, look inward after considering these external experiences. So what they’re seeing, saying, doing, and hearing, we shift to their internal world.
This is where you can focus on their thoughts and feelings. So what emotions might they be dealing with? I think there’s a lot of information out there for some of these transitions about the typical emotions that people go through as they’re experiencing things like deployment, for example. So what emotions are they dealing with?
What worries or hopes might they be carrying? And [00:11:00] this part of the empathy map helps us connect with their experience on a deeper level. All of that said, I have some tips. I’ve alluded to it a couple of times already. I really want you to consider a tool like this to be one tool among many, and the practice should really be approached with care, using it together with other methods and feedback mechanisms.
So what I mean by that, for example. Keep in mind that empathy mapping starts with what you know of a person you can, and you should find ways to ground truth your map, or you could end up with superficial insights. Um, you could also end up with some stereotyping. And things like that. Another tip I have is just like any activity, try to go into it with an awareness of the biases and assumptions that you have that may affect the results.
So for example, with financial clients, you could do the financial genogram activity we talked about some weeks ago on this podcast. Um, that could help widen your awareness of your biases and [00:12:00] assumptions when it comes to financial applications. Otherwise, the process could end up being more of a reflection of your views than the actual experiences of the person being mapped.
And then lastly. Consider the systemic or structural factors that affect people when completing your map. The empathy map activity often focuses on individual experiences, so definitely keep those other things in mind. So I know that those are three really big tips, but I would not let that scare you away from going through this activity ’cause I’ve gone through it many, many times with people and it is really a helpful tool.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: That’s it for this episode. Thank you for joining us. If you do this empathy mapping exercise, we would love to hear how it went. You can email us at practicingconnection@oneop.org or use the link in the show notes.
We’ll be back next week. Until then, keep practicing.
[00:13:00]
CREDITS: The Practicing Connection Podcast is a production of One-Op and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, US Department of Defense under award number 2 0 2 3 4 8 7 74 3 3.

Sunrise to Sunset: Supporting Children with Autism Throughout Their Day
2026-05-22 08:00 - 17:00
OneOp courses are available for free through Thinkific. Get started by registering for a free account on Thinkific. This course builds service providers’ understanding of autism in early childhood and equips them with practical, family-centered strategies for supporting military-connected and civilian families across home, community, and educational settings. Emphasis is placed on continuity of care, collaboration across systems, and practices that promote inclusion, resilience, and positive developmental outcomes. Learning Objectives:
Participants will be able to:

Describe autism in early childhood, including key characteristics, prevalence, variability, and early developmental indicators that may prompt further evaluation.
Discuss screening, diagnosis, and service eligibility processes, and examine how military-related factors may impact identification and continuity of care.
Demonstrate family-centered, culturally responsive practices to support children and caregivers following identification, with attention to transitions, routines, and service coordination.
Discuss and design inclusive, strengths-based strategies that support daily routines, nutrition, participation, and peer engagement across home, community, and early learning environments.

The material presented in this course is adapted from the work of Professors Hedda Meadan, Jamie Pearson, Katie Wolfe and Mandy Rispoli. It has been updated and converted into this course by Michaelene Ostrosky, Ph.D., Celest Austin, M.D., Ph.D., Robyn DiPietro, Ed.M., Misty Krippel, Ed.M., and Crystal Williams, Ph.D. Instructional and program design was completed by Jen Chilek. M.Ed. and Molly Herndon, M.S..

Certified in Family and Consumer Sciences (CFCS): This course is approved for 2.5 continuing education (CE) credits from the American Association for Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 5/22/2028.
Board Certified Patient Advocates (BCPA): This course is approved for 2.5 continuing education (CE) contact hours by The Patient Advocate Certification Board. Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 5/22/2028.
Board Certified Case Managers: This course is approved for 2.5 continuing education (CE) clock hours from the Commission for Case Manager Certification (CCMC). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 5/22/2027.
Board Certified Disability Management Specialists: This course is approved for 2.5 continuing education (CE) clock hour from The Commission for Case Manager Certification. Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 5/22/2027.
Certified Family Life Educators (CFLE): This course is approved for 2.5 continuing education (CE) credits from the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 5/22/2029.
Early Interventionists and Early Childhood Educators: This course is approved for 2.5 continuing education (CE) credits from the Early Intervention Training Program (EITP) at the University of Illinois. Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 6/30/2027.
Illinois Early Care & Education Providers: This course is approved as a Gateways to Opportunity Registry-approved Training for early care and education professionals in Illinois through 6/30/2027.
Certified Health Education Specialist (CHES) and Master Certified Health Education Specialist (MCHES): This course is approved for 2.5 continuing education credit from the National Commission for Health Education Credentialing (NCHEC). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 5/22/2029.
Michigan Certified Teachers: This course has been approved for 2.5 SCECH from the Michigan Education Association’s Center for Leadership and Learning. Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 5/22/2029.
Social Workers, Licensed Professional Counselors, and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists: This course is approved for 2.5 continuing education (CE) credits from the University of Texas at Austin School of Social Work. Check with your state licensing agency for reciprocity and/or credit approval if licensed for other professions or in one of the following states: CO, FL, HI, IA, KS, KY, MI, NY, ND, OH, OK. Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 5/22/2029.
OneOp Certificates of Attendance are available for those interested in additional documentation of professional development activities.

Photo Credit: iStock-1918838267

School Liaisons and Extension: A Network of Support for Military Youth
2026-05-21 06:00 - 17:00
Subscribe to the “Practicing Connection” monthly email to keep up to date on our latest podcasts, blog posts and workshops.
Join the “Practicing Connection Community” on LinkedIn. The community is designed for people who support military families in a variety of settings both on installations and in our communities. JTNDZGl2JTIwaWQlM0QlMjJidXp6c3Byb3V0LXBsYXllci0xOTE4NzU5OCUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRmRpdiUzRSUzQ3NjcmlwdCUyMHNyYyUzRCUyMmh0dHBzJTNBJTJGJTJGd3d3LmJ1enpzcHJvdXQuY29tJTJGMjA5OTk4MyUyRmVwaXNvZGVzJTJGMTkxODc1OTgtc2Nob29sLWxpYWlzb25zLWFuZC1leHRlbnNpb24tYS1uZXR3b3JrLW9mLXN1cHBvcnQtZm9yLW1pbGl0YXJ5LXlvdXRoLmpzJTNGY29udGFpbmVyX2lkJTNEYnV6enNwcm91dC1wbGF5ZXItMTkxODc1OTglMjZwbGF5ZXIlM0RzbWFsbCUyMiUyMHR5cGUlM0QlMjJ0ZXh0JTJGamF2YXNjcmlwdCUyMiUyMGNoYXJzZXQlM0QlMjJ1dGYtOCUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRnNjcmlwdCUzRQ== (Season 7, Episode 21)
When military kids move, their whole world shifts—schools, friends, routines, and support systems.
In this episode of Practicing Connection, school liaison Karen Watkins-Diouf and 4-H educator Jeremiah Johnson share how they work together across military and civilian systems to make sure those kids don’t fall through the cracks.
Military-connected kids move more often than most of their peers, and every move disrupts their relationships, routines, and sense of belonging at school and in the community. In this episode of Practicing Connection, we talk with Karen Watkins-Diouf, Army School Liaison at Fort Campbell’s Army Child & Youth Services, and Jeremiah Johnson, Christian County Extension Agent for 4-H Youth Development at the University of Kentucky.
Karen and Jeremiah describe what school liaisons and county Extension educators actually do, how their roles intersect, and how their partnership creates a wider network of support for military families—on and off the installation. They share practical stories about bridging military and civilian systems, navigating “two languages,” and keeping families at the center when youth are dealing with repeated transitions.
You’ll hear concrete ideas for connecting with school liaisons and 4-H in your own area, and a simple first step any school, organization, or community leader can take to start building similar collaborations to support military-connected youth.
Links and resources from this episode:

Look up the 4-H military liaison in your state: https://www.4-hmilitarypartnership.org/find-your-liaison.html
Find a Military School Liaison near you: https://installations.militaryonesource.mil/search?program-service=12/view-by=ALL
Sign up for our monthly newsletter: https://oneop.aweb.page/practicing-connection-newsletter
Join our LinkedIn group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/12879756/
Send us a message: practicingconnection@oneop.org

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Hi, welcome to the Practicing Connection Podcast. I’m Erin Carlson Rivera.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: And I am Jessica Beckendorf. I’m really excited for this episode because I’ve been learning a bit about the important role of school liaisons, as a hub and a connector in the networks of support for military families, and I’m looking forward to diving into this conversation to learn more.
Our guests today are Karen Watkins-Diouf, Army-School Liaison at Fort Campbell’s Army Child and Youth Services, and Jeremiah Johnson, Christian County Extension agent for 4-H Youth Development at the University of Kentucky.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Karen has been a dedicated Army school liaison for four years now with the Army Child and Youth Services, to expand over 25 years of CYS experience to her mission of supporting military connected families. Her journey includes roles as a teacher, curriculum specialist, and a director within Army childcare programs, when she isn’t serving military families.
Karen is a published children’s book author [00:01:00] and currently working on her second book.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: That’s so cool. And with over a decade of experience in 4-H youth development, Jeremiah focuses on leadership, agriculture, and supporting military connected youth through programs in STEM, financial literacy and civic engagement.
He’s also a published author and a nationally recognized leader in 4-H, including receiving the Distinguished Service Award from the National Association of Extension 4-H Agents.
Hi, Karen and Jeremiah. Thank you so much for joining us on Practicing Connection.
KAREN WATKINS: Good morning.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: So Karen I’d love to start with you. Could you walk us through what a school liaison actually does, day to day? Because I think a lot of people might not fully understand the scope of your role, or maybe I should just speak for myself, because I don’t fully understand the scope of your role. And the more I learn, the more I want to learn.
What does it look like?
KAREN WATKINS: A pretty large scope. School liaisons are located at each installation, and we are the [00:02:00] main contact for military families, local school systems. And we also work hand in hand with our command team, the installation leadership on the installation, so we work with our top commanders on the installation for school related matters.
We’re their subject matter experts for school related matters, pre-K through 12th grade. We also build partnerships with the civilian and military community to help address common education challenges that military families have. We help with school transitions, when military families are moving stateside or overseas to other schools. We contact other school liaisons to help with that school transition process.
And we do so many other things, but school transitions are our main job. We help with deployment support, college and career readiness. We do parent and educator workshops, me and the other school liaison that I work with here. It’s two of us, and I work with Laquvia Garrett. We are both Certified Master [00:03:00] Resiliency trainers.
So we do a lot of resiliency training for military students in the schools. We work closely with counselors – military life consultants. We also work closely with the military interstate compact, the Mik 3, to make sure that schools are in compliance with military children.
It’s a lot. We do a lot every day, all day, and we work all summer.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Oh, you work all summer?
KAREN WATKINS: Yes, planning for the next school year. And we’re also before and after school programs, doing workshops and things like that for the youth.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: So Jeremiah, for listeners who might not know what a county extension educator does, can you give us a quick picture of your role in general, and then share how 4-H youth development fits into supporting the military community?
JEREMIAH JOHNSON: Yeah, definitely. So as a county extension agent for 4-H here in Kentucky, our role is to, in short, [00:04:00] take research-based practices and educational opportunities for families and youth in our counties from that university. And using a list of needs that our county has identified, we take those back to the county so that we’re able to have the most impact and meet the needs of our county.
We cover a ton of different areas ranging from agriculture, natural resources, communications, expressive arts, healthy living, leadership, civic engagement, the list goes on. But we have a ton of different opportunities.
At the end of the day though, it’s all about that research based curriculum and resources that we have. I think that sets us apart. And allows us to have the greatest impact for families in our community when it comes to military audiences.
We add another level to that in that you look at military families, oftentimes they’re very transient, so they’re moving all over all the [00:05:00] time. And extension is national.
We exist all across the country, and we are that consistency for families, for youth, so that whenever you move and you’ve got a kid that maybe they’re in Georgia a week ago and now they’re in Kentucky, 4-H can be that consistency.
So it’s a lot of similar programs. Maybe not exactly a mirror of each other, but it’s a lot of similar programs for those families, and it creates that sense of consistency and belonging for those youth.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Wow, I hadn’t thought about that. I’ve worked at Extension for a long time myself, but I can see that kind of continuity piece being really impactful, especially for young people.
JEREMIAH JOHNSON: Yeah, definitely.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: I wish I had known about 4-H when I was a military kid. It’s funny though because my mom was really involved in 4- in Wisconsin, before she met my dad when she was a kid, [00:06:00] and when I started working for Extension and I saw all the things that 4-H does, I was like, “Mom, it’s not just animals! It’s all these other things. I could have joined that.” And she was like, ‘Oh yeah, I know. I used to do sewing all the time.”
And I’m like, why didn’t you tell me?!
JEREMIAH JOHNSON: Right. 4-H has grown so far beyond what you traditionally expect. One of our largest areas in our county is consumer and financial education. Just basic finance for families, and who doesn’t need that, whether you’re a kid or an adult, like that is something that we have found that transcends generations.
But also it doesn’t matter your background and which installation you’re transferring from or anything like that. Like that is something that is needed.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Just before this meeting, Jeremiah, you and I talked a little bit or we were all talking a little bit about how your collaboration with Karen, or Karen, your collaboration with Jeremiah, has been [00:07:00] ongoing since you guys met on different projects.
So how did the two of you first connect, what was that initial spark that kind of brought a school liaison and an extension educator together? I mean, already we see all of the reasons why you should connect, but tell us your story.
JEREMIAH JOHNSON: So I think what’s that saying? ‘Hindsight’s 2020.’ When I first started this journey, trying to find ways to partner with military youth, I didn’t really know where to go. I didn’t know I guess where that door was to walk in.
And it all happened by accident. Karen and I just happened to be on a Zoom call that was talking about 4-H programs and resources that were coming out, and a new curriculum that was coming out, and it was one of those, I mean, we’ve all been on those Zoom calls.
Introduce yourself in the chat. And I saw her name pop up and it said, Fort Campbell, Kentucky.
And I said, hold on a minute. So I’m immediately chatting over here, “Hey uh, Ms. Karen,[00:08:00] let’s set up a meeting and talk. I’m in Christian County, I’m right here with you.”
That’s really how we met the first time.
KAREN WATKINS: Yep. And the rest is history.
JEREMIAH JOHNSON: Right.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Well, and I think, Jeremiah, you were mentioning that one of the things Karen was working on at the time was homeschool kids. And I guess, how did you start realizing that there’s a potentially great partnership here?
JEREMIAH JOHNSON: I think it was after that call. I emailed Karen, we chatted, we sat down and had a meeting, and then it was one of those we already had some programming going on at Fort Campbell. It wasn’t to the level it is now by any means.
And so we talked about that, and that’s when I learned a lot about what Karen’s job is and how she is extremely connected with every aspect of the installation. And she had that pulse on what was going on and what was needed. And so Karen brought up the idea of homeschool [00:09:00] groups and how we serve that population.
KAREN WATKINS: Yeah. Because one of the services to include what a school liaison does is non-traditional homeschooling options for families and including homeschooling. We have a large population of homeschool families on the installation.
And most people don’t think of military families as homeschooling because we have schools on the installation. If we have an installation that has schools, you know, civilians assume, Oh, they don’t do that. But no, we have a large population of homeschool families.
But the other school liaison that I worked for, me and Mr. Revia, we were in the process of rebuilding our homeschool program to offer lots of options. And I was getting a lot of questions from parents. They would call the office and they would want resources, but the parents were asking the same questions. It was like different parents with same questions. And I’m a data person, so I’m like writing this down and I’m putting little check marks by the questions that were asked again.
And [00:10:00] so I went to my coworker and I was like, “Hey. I’ve got a lot of homeschool parents asking a lot of the same questions, wanting resources. They want different things just for homeschool families.”
Because you know, home school families can feel isolated, because they’re kind of set apart. And so I went to her and I was like, “Why don’t we have a meet and greet or something?” So then I started asking parents what they would like to have for their children? And they were like “Well, can’t we have some of the same things that the schools have and things like that.’
So I start researching, and I’m a 4-H kid, I grew up in a rural town, and I was like, man, we should try to get some 4-H programming in. And then that’s when Jeremiah, I was talking to him about it and then when he reached out to me and I was like, “Hey, how can we incorporate 4-H into our homeschool program?”
So that’s how we like really got that started because I started asking the parents and pulling the parents, “Hey, [00:11:00] would you like 4-H?” And again, that continuity of care with 4-H, it’s national. Then parents were like, “Oh my gosh, I was a 4-H kid and I did this. Yes, we would love to have that.” And we didn’t have that here, in our homeschool program.
So Jeremiah and I got together and we started building it in our program.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Wow. That’s great. So it sounds like you guys work pretty closely together. What do you think is the thing that really makes collaborating work for the two of you?
JEREMIAH JOHNSON: We talked a lot about this the other day. I think it’s just open and consistent communication.
KAREN WATKINS: Mm-hmm. I think a lot of times whenever you’re trying to partner with folks, like, we both ask a lot of questions to each other about the program. You name it, we’ve talked about it. And it has really blown my mind.
JEREMIAH JOHNSON: I’ve learned a lot about Karen’s job through that, but I’ve also learned a lot about the installation and what things there are. And so it’s just those open lines of communication with each other [00:12:00] to better understand what all we can each offer and through discussions we were like, oh, we can join together on this project.
And so we’ve found some other avenues of involvement with the installation now too, because of that.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah, the more you’re in contact with someone, the more opportunities and the more you think of them too, when you’re like, “Oh, I wonder if Karen’s thought about this before,” and then you just keep the conversation going.
It sounds like you guys have done that really well. Cross sector partnerships, and this is one of them I think, even though you guys have a lot in common, but cross-sector partnerships can be really tricky. Military and civilian organizations don’t always speak the same language. What’s been your approach to bridging that gap?
I hear this, by the way, from all of the cross-sector folks that I’ve talked to that ended up collaborating. I think this was one of the biggest things they had to overcome. “Sometimes I don’t know that it was yours,” but yeah. What’s your approach to bridging that?
KAREN WATKINS: So one of the things, [00:13:00] me being on the military side, there are lots of regulations. Okay. So there are lots of regulations, acronyms, you know, limits to things that I explained to Jeremiah.
He’ll say, “Karen, what about this?” And I’ll be like, “Oh, well, according to article so and so regulation this, we can’t do that.” So me understanding the military side of what can be done, what can’t, as far as military children and installations, that helps us a lot.
And me explaining acronyms to him, “Hey, Karen, what does that mean?” And blah, blah, blah. And then I’ll explain to him. So on my side, that helps us a lot.
JEREMIAH JOHNSON: Yeah, I was definitely going to say both the military and extension love some acronyms, and none of them makes sense to anybody if you’re not in that circle.
KAREN WATKINS: Exactly.
JEREMIAH JOHNSON: So it was like, we have had to sit down and be like, “What are you talking about? I don’t know what this is..” or, “Oh, [00:14:00] that means this for us.”
KAREN WATKINS: Yeah.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: And then even within organizations, and Karen, I’m not sure if this is true for the military, but within Extension, like I don’t know what 4-H acronyms are and Jeremiah, I’m sure that if I told you some of the acronyms from, you know, community and economic development, you’d be like, “What?”
JEREMIAH JOHNSON: Right, right.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Does that happen in the military as well, like across the silos? The acronyms are difficult.
JEREMIAH JOHNSON: I would say so. We talked the other day because we work with a lot of other 4-H agents that are working with other installations, and even from the different branches, school liaisons sometimes are called different titles, or they’ve got just school liaison officer or school liaison. So it’s really knowing that branch of the military and how those positions work.
Because I’m telling you, we love some acronyms. They love some acronyms.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: What about, I want to take this in a different way [00:15:00] as well, there’s the language, there’s the literal language, but what about ways of working also, did you find anything that you had to navigate there?
JEREMIAH JOHNSON: I think it’s more of a reporting piece on the backside, but again, we just call them different things.
KAREN WATKINS: Mm-hmm.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Got it.
JEREMIAH JOHNSON: Where the army might call it a storyboard, I’m calling it a success story. Like it’s the same thing. We’re highlighting what all we’ve done and the statistics and all that.
KAREN WATKINS: Yeah. And we do have to report that. Because the army, yeah, we have 4-H and BGCA programming in our programs, our youth programs. So it’s expected of us, and then we have to show, “Okay, you’re utilizing this, is it useful for you?” And things like that.
Because the Army wants to make sure that the programming is very useful for youth. So the more we use it, the more the Army is looking into it. Like Jeremiah and I with this homeschool [00:16:00] programming, it’s like it got recognized at the top, “Wow, look at what Fort Campbell’s doing with homeschool.”
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Oh.
KAREN WATKINS: So that data is important. Yeah.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: That’s great to hear.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: So this is either, one of you can answer or both if you both feel passionate about it, can you share a specific moment or story where you saw that your collaboration made a real difference for a military family?
KAREN WATKINS: We were talking yesterday, but I did, ’cause I have to, again, data with the Army, I have to write everything down.
But I have a family that came for – we have to send homeschool resources. There’s a process. If they’re on the installation, they send a letter of intent to the superintendent. Then the superintendent just sends their name to our office and we supply them with tutor.com resources, and other things that parents are asking about.
And I had this one parent, and Jeremiah, I don’t know if you remember her, but she was at the homeschool meet and greet last September. And she sat in on the session that [00:17:00] you gave for the parents, the workshops, and she was a 4-H kid herself and things like that.
And she sent me what we call an ice comment, where parents or patrons, on the military base, they can gripe or they can brag about an experience they had, and she put in an ice comment and it was a good one. And she was so excited about homeschool program and how helpful we were to her.
And then she just went on and on about 4-H, and she says, “My children are going to get to experience 4-H,” you know, like she did, as a youth. So I thought that was really cool. I can think of it yesterday, Jeremiah, but yeah, she put in an ice comment.
JEREMIAH JOHNSON: I love it.
KAREN WATKINS: Really cool. You know you’re doing the right thing when those simple things like that, when parents let you know that it was an asset to them.
JEREMIAH JOHNSON: I think even that day at the kickoff for homeschool families, we received a lot of comments that were [00:18:00] like, “We finally have something that we can do with our kids, and we’re not left in the dark,” because so many things are just tied directly to the schools or the centers. This was something that we could just make happen.
And I will say, go back to partnerships. And those communications. When Karen came to me with the idea or the need of homeschool programming, she had already found a partnership on the installation where we were going to have access to a facility. It had gymnasiums in it. It had a computer lab, it had a kitchen.
So we could do all the things that a traditional club would do, and have the resources there available with staff that were ready to help make it happen.
KAREN WATKINS: Yeah, our CYS sports program, shout out to Ms. Page. And she was excited about it because years ago, you know, they had some 4-H, activities going on in the building and then she was [00:19:00] like, “Oh my gosh, this would be great.”
And so when we all met, then we just started expounding on stuff. We knew that we were having our homeschool PE. Because we have homeschool PE there, and so when we have our homeschool meet and greet on the day of the meet and greet, they sign up for homeschool PE. They get to meet the staff that’s going to be working with their child. Then of course they get to meet Jeremiah and get to have a parent workshop, a 4-H parent workshop, and then they get to see my face.
It’s so funny when we have the meet and greets because I only connect with them through email. So when they come to the meet and greet, they go and then they’re hugging me. So the whole school is like this little, this one little community. So it’s like really cool when they see me, and Ms. We are face to face, when they know us over email all year and they finally get to see us.
And Jeremiah and I, we’re planning more things to do for the homeschool families.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: That’s awesome.
KAREN WATKINS: Yeah.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: So I know that Fort Campbell spans multiple counties and [00:20:00] states. I’m wondering, do the extension educators from those other counties, and the others in Tennessee as well, do you all get together and coordinate?
JEREMIAH JOHNSON: So I’ve met with some of them a few separate times. So as you all are aware, every state has different extension resources. So there are some things that I do not have as much of that Tennessee might have. So they’re helping out with some of those things.
They’re also doing a lot of military programs for those families that live off the installation in their community, and we keep, again, open communication with them, because we have some families that are homeschooled associated with Fort Campbell, but maybe live on the Tennessee side.
So we still have those conversations with those agents to keep them in the loop and work with them on providing opportunities for their families regardless of what their zip code is or where they live.
KAREN WATKINS: And [00:21:00] we make sure we invite them to the meet and greet. And we had a lot more this last time from the Montgomery County area that came to the meet and greet. Some of them come on the installation for their homeschool PE requirement and things like that. And because we have the 4-H, we’re getting a lot more families coming to do the enrichment programming.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: That’s great.
KAREN WATKINS: Yeah, it is.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Let’s talk a little bit about the off-installation stuff. So Karen, you are available to work with any school or organization in the state that wants to support military kids. And maybe I should say military school liaisons or school liaisons are available to work with any school or organization in the state that wants to support military kids, not just those that are near the installation.
Do you get a sense that like everyone knows that, I mean, how do you get the word out about that? Because that’s something that I had not heard and I had no idea.
KAREN WATKINS: We not only serve the schools wherever there are military [00:22:00] connected students, we are there for everyone. We not only serve the M post schools, but we have Clarksville, Montgomery County, and she and I split the county because it’s a large county.
And then we have Stewart County, Tri County, Todd County. So we have surrounding counties, wherever there are military connected students, we are there to offer services. So we are in those schools.
And we really had to introduce ourselves, reintroduce ourselves when we got this job to the schools again: who we were, let them know what school we are assigned to and that we are here to assist you. And once those principals and assistant principals and counselors realize who we are and what we can offer them, but we had to put ourselves out to let them know that it’s, “Wow they utilize our service.”
And then we’re in a community. We’re at the autism walk. We set up information booths. We have the gold star wives festival, we set up a table there. So we are [00:23:00] out there in the community. We just finished our month of the military child fest last weekend, and Jeremiah was there. And he and I set up a table together, and there were so many parents coming in when they saw the 4-H.
So that’s how we get that word out, we have to put ourselves out there.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. Wow.
KAREN WATKINS: We get out, and then we get invited to a lot of different things.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: If there’s a school across the state that has a few military connected kids in it and they’re like, “Hey, we’d like to know how we can make sure these kids feel welcomed and stuff,” is that something they can call you about?
KAREN WATKINS: Yes, because we have a program called Army Youth Sponsorship, and just like years ago, soldiers, when they would go to installation stateside or overseas, they would be assigned a sponsor for that family, and that sponsor would help that family get acclimated to the area. Help them with where to go to register for school, basic things when you move to a new place, you want to know [00:24:00].
The Army had sponsors, well now we have Army Youth Sponsorship, so we have youth sponsors for the children, yes. We train the counselors and the administration on Army Youth Sponsorship Training, explain to them how it works. They get a banner for their school. So they know that they get excited for being an Army Youth Sponsorship School, they get this big Army youth sponsorship banner.
So when military families move and they come to a civilian school and they walk in, they go, “Oh, wow. They have an Army Youth Sponsorship program for my youth.” And it is youth driven. We train the staff and then they incorporate it in their programs. We have Purpose Star schools. Purpose Star schools are schools that are in the state that are recognized as military-friendly.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Mm-hmm.
KAREN WATKINS:So we have Army Youth Sponsorship and we have purple star schools, and we let the administration know, “Hey, this is what we can do for you.”
[00:25:00] The training is free. This is part of our job that we have to do. And they get recognized. We get proclamations from the mayors in Christian County and Montgomery County every year to be recognized as purple star schools and purple up day.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: It’s a whole community of support.
You know, I ask that partly because I think not a lot of people realize that military families are more spread out than we think they are. A lot of times they’re not just on or right next to the installation.
KAREN WATKINS: Right. Because they may be in a reserve unit, yeah.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yes. Reserve guard and active duty. They’re more spread out than we often think.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Okay. I think this one is for Jeremiah, so extension educators are in nearly every county, and school liaisons are positioned near every installation. That’s a really powerful alignment as you’ve talked about earlier.
Do you see potential for [00:26:00] that to be leveraged more broadly outside of the two of you across Kentucky, or in other places nationally? Do you think this is a type of partnership that could be duplicated in other places?
JEREMIAH JOHNSON: Definitely. That was something we talked about the other day. When Karen and I first met, it was just by happenstance. I did not know what her role was. I didn’t know how it fit in, and I’m gonna be honest, the school liaison officer is, I don’t want to say the gatekeeper, but they’re the front door to the installation. They know all the connections.
And I think if there are other extension educators out there that don’t know that, it’s going to be more difficult for them to build those partnerships with the installation, it’s going to be more difficult for them to find those connections. And I think if they start with school liaison or school liaison officers, it opens a lot of doors for them.
And it also helps create partnerships that are meaningful because like I said earlier, Karen [00:27:00] has a pulse on the needs of Fort Campbell, so she knows where we need to help as far as programming and curriculum and specific things. And if she doesn’t know, she knows who to talk to to get that answer.
So this partnership has been very good, and it is something that can be replicated very easily elsewhere in the country. Even in Kentucky, we’ve got folks with our other installation, there’s some active duty soldiers that are at that installation, but their kids are located four or five counties away. Because when they came back to Kentucky, the mom wanted to live with a grandparent, and it just made it simpler for the family.
You know what I mean? But the school liaison folks are still able to help that family out, even though they’re not really right there next to the installation. So I think just recognizing that partnership and then on the extension side, I’m able to communicate that with some of the other extension agents so that they know that that’s a good resource for them and that they can continue to build [00:28:00] partnerships there to support all kids.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing that, Jeremiah, it sounds like the two of you, like you said, it was a happenstance kind of meeting. But in a way, you know, Karen, you chose to be at that meeting that day. Jeremiah, you chose to be there also. I have meetings that, or I should say Erin and I have meetings now, that we go to in our state where we get the word out about even just OneOp.
And I’ve been carting around some 4-H cars, because Wisconsin 4-H has had some activities going on for military families, and so I’ve been carting around some slides for them, and so I make sure that this information’s being shared. And we’ve had people come up to us after meetings saying, “How have I never heard of you?”
If we don’t get out there, that’s not going to happen, or people aren’t going to know. And so I guess where I’d like to go next with this is, maybe Karen, I’ll start with you. And Jeremiah, please chime in as well. [00:29:00]
You guys met by chance. And it’s great. And now you both know so much more about the work that you all do and you can build off of that. So keeping that in mind, what do you wish more community organizations understood about how to support military families?
KAREN WATKINS: I wish they understood, first of all, that it’s possible, and then the possibilities. Utilize the resources that we have.
A lot of times when we go to schools and we tell them what’s available to them, just like you said, they’ll say, “Oh, I didn’t know you existed!” Or they don’t really take on the opportunity of utilizing the resources that we have.
And in schools we are assigned at, I wish that schools knew to utilize, when we make our visits, we have mandated visits that we have to make. So when we come in and do a visit and we say, “How can we help you? Could we help with this? Could we do this?” [00:30:00] Take advantage of that.
I just don’t think schools realize the advantages and the bridge that school liaisons have. We don’t want to come in just when there’s issues or problems, or when a parent comes in and wants us to help resolve an issue with their child’s education.
So we really want them to know that we are there to help with other things too. Really positive things, yeah.
JEREMIAH JOHNSON: Yeah, and I, backing that up, honestly simply put, it’s easy to partner. I think as a community partner, sometimes when you think of military installations, you know, there’s regulations, there’s rules, there’s specific things you have to follow. And I think for some partners they think about that and they’re like, “I just don’t have time. I can’t make this work.”
And that’s where Karen comes in. She already knows those policies, she knows the connection, she knows all of that. So [00:31:00] Karen and school liaison officers are able to put your fears at ease, but also say, “Here’s the things, here’s the areas we can focus on. Here’s the resources we need,” and really open those doors.
KAREN WATKINS: Yeah, the support is easy. I really want them to know that it’s simple. The support is so easy and we’re so willing. Our command team on the installation, our garrison commander, our command Sergeant Major, they want to help.
We have a meeting every year called the start meeting. It’s a strategic meeting where all of the local superintendents and school directors come in and they express the needs that they have, and they talk about what’s going good and what’s not going good in the schools.
So our command, our Army command is very interested, and want to help support not only our military connected students, but our military community, our community as a whole. They just need to see how easy it could be and how helpful it could be, that’s what I wish they [00:32:00] knew.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Well, at the end of the day, it’s about supporting kids and the families, and so how awesome it is that there are so many people out there that want to do this. And I would say extension and the school liaisons, the more I learn about the school liaisons, you guys both make it easy to partner.
JEREMIAH JOHNSON: We try to. The CYS folks at Fort Campbell are absolutely amazing, and Karen has been that gateway to make it happen and just to have those open discussions about partnerships and things, it’s been wonderful.
KAREN WATKINS: Fort Campbell is pretty cool.
JEREMIAH JOHNSON: I agree.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: You’re not at all biased though!
KAREN WATKINS: Great leadership. We have great leadership though, you know, our leadership is awesome,
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah.
Okay. I have one final question. I often hear this idea, and I think probably both of you can answer this, but I’ll probably start with Jeremiah and then Karen, you can do the follow up. But I often hear this [00:33:00] idea that the military takes care of their own, and then there’s this silent addendum of, “Oh, so we don’t have to care about it.”
And I am curious what would you say to people who don’t conceptualize military families as being a part of their community?
JEREMIAH JOHNSON: I look at it as I serve everyone in my community, period. It doesn’t matter about background or anything like that. We’re here to serve our entire community, and I do think the military provides a lot of wonderful resources for their families, but we also have additional resources for them.
But part like Ms. Karen said earlier, part of some of the requirements for the installation is they have to have extension and 4-H programming there. So yes, they provide for families, but we are part of that. We’re providing that piece for them, I guess is what I’m trying to say. And it helps us serve all youth, period.
KAREN WATKINS: And like our youth, like you said, the programming is through that programming.
When me and Ms. Laquvia, when we go [00:34:00] into public schools and we do resiliency programming, that’s not just for military connected students. So we touch everyone. Yes, it’s for everyone.
So when we do these things, just like youth sponsorship, when we go in and we train counselors and administrators in schools on youth sponsorship, that programming, it touches every student. So it doesn’t matter who moves to that new school, they’re still going to have a youth sponsorship team of youth welcoming them and something like that. So our programming, what we do, our services, what we do for the military community, it serves all youth.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Mm-hmm.
KAREN WATKINS: We happen to be there because of the military, but our programming and what’s so awesome about it, it spills over into the community.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: That’s wonderful. That’s wonderful. I mean, creating places that people can feel like they [00:35:00] belong includes, you know, including everyone in that discussion.
If there’s an organization or a school that wanted to make sure they were supporting their military families, whether that school is, across the state from the nearest installation or right next to the nearest installation, what’s the first step you would tell them to take?
And this could be for either one of you. Maybe I’ll start with you, Karen. Of course.
KAREN WATKINS: Start with me.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Start with the – so even if they’re across the state, they should contact the liaison at the nearest installation. Okay.
KAREN WATKINS: Because even if they contact me from another state, I can contact another school liaison in that state.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: So everyone contact Karen!
KAREN WATKINS: Yeah, Yeah. You know, I can connect them with the school leads. And that’s what we do for our soldiers when they’re moving and they fill out paperwork and say, “Hey, I’m moving to Alabama.” And we’re [00:36:00] like, “Oh, okay, I got that.” They fill out paperwork, I get all their information. I send that transition referral to the school liaison in Alabama, and that’s how that works.
JEREMIAH JOHNSON: Yeah, definitely your first stop should be to call your school liaison office. I will add that is one area that we communicate the same on. There is a national network of 4-H military liaisons, and every state has one point of contact. So if you’re on the school liaison side and you’re wondering how to get in touch with 4-H and you don’t have that local connection yet, simply do an internet search and you will find a searchable database by state of 4-H liaisons, and they can connect you with the local folks or they can help you work through that and how to have that partnership.
So the word of the day is liaison, whether it’s school liaison or the 4-H one, but it will get you to the right direction.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: [00:37:00] Thank you so much for joining us, Karen and Jeremiah. I have really learned a lot about the school liaisons, and I would love to talk with more of them. So, Karen, I’m going to call you since you’re the first point of contact for school liaisons.
Thank you so much for joining us, both of you.
JEREMIAH JOHNSON: Thank you for having us.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: That’s it for this episode. Thank you so much for joining us. If you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, click the share button in your podcast app to share it with a friend.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: We’d like to thank our announcer Kaylyn Gobel, Maggie Lucas, and Joyce Fond for their help marketing and Nathan Grim, who composed and performed all the music you hear on the podcast. We hope you’ll listen again soon.
Until then, keep practicing.
[00:38:00]
CREDITS: The Practicing Connection Podcast is a production of One-Op and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, US Department of Defense under award number 2 0 2 3 4 8 7 74 3 3.

Innovative Strategies for Stronger Military Nutrition Environments
2026-05-20 11:00 - 12:30
The War Department is continuing to pursue six lines of effort to strengthen nutrition readiness for military service members and their families, and the first line of effort involves increasing access to healthy food. The military nutrition environment includes all foods, drinks, and dietary supplements available on military installations and ships, thereby creating the food environment where service members live, work, and train. Improvements to the food environment start with the Military Nutrition Environment Assessment Tool (mNEAT), a standardized War Department web-based app to assess the nutrition environment of military settings. mNEAT scores healthy food policy, availability, and behavioral design across a variety of food service venues. This webinar will describe research efforts to improve the nutrition environment at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, as well as outside the continental U.S. (OCONUS) installations. Attend this webinar to learn how nutrition and health promotion experts and leaders can improve the food environment using tools, including mNEAT, to strengthen nutritional readiness for service members and their families.
Learning Objectives:

Describe how the nutrition environment impacts nutrition security for military service members and their families.
Illustrate how the Military Nutrition Environment Assessment Tool (mNEAT) can be used by public health professionals, registered dietitians, food service leaders, health promotion specialists, and providers to assess the food environment.
Identify practical ways to improve the nutrition environment at your installation or workplace.

Health Promotion Element Chief
Registered Dietitian
Ramstein AB, Germany

Military Nutrition Environment Project Manager
HJF employee collaborating with the USU Consortium for Health and Military Performance (CHAMP)

Associate Professor
Department of Military and Emergency Medicine
Uniformed Services University

Health Promotion Element Chief
Registered Dietitian
Nellis AB, Las Vegas

Certified in Family and Consumer Sciences (CFCS): This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits from the American Association for Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close May 20, 2028.
Certified Nutrition and Wellness Educator (CNWE): This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits from the American Association for Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close May 20, 2028.
Registered Dietitian Nutritionists (RD/RDN) and Nutrition and Dietetics Technicians, Registered (NDTR): This webinar awards 1.5 CPEUs in accordance with the Commission on Dietetic Registration’s CPEU Prior Approval Program. Note: Eligibility for CPEU credit will close on May 11, 2029.
Certified Health Education Specialist (CHES) and Master Certified Health Education Specialist (MCHES): This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education credit from the National Commission for Health Education Credentialing (NCHEC). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close May 20, 2028.
OneOp Certificates of Attendance are available for those interested in additional documentation of professional development activities.

If the button above does not appear, please access the survey through this link: https://auburn.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_ehuqSOlyDlf4iH4. If you have any questions, please email CE@oneop.org. Webinar Slides
Webinar resources Photo Credit: AdobeStock_1411905923.jpeg

Supporting Academic and Social Continuity for Mobile Elementary Students
2026-05-14 11:00 - 12:30
When elementary students change schools, even motivated students can struggle. They may lose interest in learning, miss their old friends, and not get the help they need right away. This webinar provides practical strategies to keep children engaged, connected, and successful through relocation and other school transitions.

Learning Objectives:

Identify strategies to promote and maintain academic continuity for mobile students, including timely transfer of IEP and 504 plans.
Apply practices that support social integration with peers and teachers during school transitions.
Recognize and address the unique educational needs of mobile and homeschooling families.

Dr. Cabrera is a Professor of Human Development at the University of Maryland whose research centers on father involvement, parenting, and the social and cognitive development of children—particularly within low-income and ethnically diverse families. She is a widely published scholar and editor, has held national and international leadership and visiting scholar roles, and currently co-leads fatherhood and healthy marriage research at the National Center for Research on Hispanic Families and Children.

Certified in Family and Consumer Sciences (CFCS): This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits from the American Association for Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 5/14/2028.
Board Certified Disability Management Specialists: This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) clock hour from The Commission for Case Manager Certification. Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 5/14/2026.
Certified Family Life Educators (CFLE): This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits from the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 5/14/2029.
Certified Health Education Specialist (CHES) and Master Certified Health Education Specialist (MCHES): This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education credit from the National Commission for Health Education Credentialing (NCHEC). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 5/14/2029.
Michigan Certified Teachers: This webinar is approved for 1.5 SCECH from the Michigan Education Association’s Center for Leadership and Learning. Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 5/14/2029.
Social Workers, Licensed Professional Counselors, and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists: This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits from the University of Texas at Austin School of Social Work. Check with your state licensing agency for reciprocity and/or credit approval if licensed for other professions or in one of the following states: CO, FL, HI, IA, KS, KY, MI, NY, ND, OH, OK. Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 5/14/2029.
OneOp Certificates of Attendance are available for those interested in additional documentation of professional development activities.

If the button above does not appear, please access the continuing education survey at this link: https://auburn.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_eFCaj0nRgaLcpqm. If you have any questions, please email ce@oneop.org. Additional Resources
Webinar Slides Photo Credit: AdobeStock 82811999

Who's Missing From Your Network?
2026-05-14 06:00 - 17:00
Subscribe to the “Practicing Connection” monthly email to keep up to date on our latest podcasts, blog posts and workshops.
Join the “Practicing Connection Community” on LinkedIn. The community is designed for people who support military families in a variety of settings both on installations and in our communities. JTNDZGl2JTIwaWQlM0QlMjJidXp6c3Byb3V0LXBsYXllci0xOTE2ODA3MiUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRmRpdiUzRSUzQ3NjcmlwdCUyMHNyYyUzRCUyMmh0dHBzJTNBJTJGJTJGd3d3LmJ1enpzcHJvdXQuY29tJTJGMjA5OTk4MyUyRmVwaXNvZGVzJTJGMTkxNjgwNzItd2hvLXMtbWlzc2luZy1mcm9tLXlvdXItbmV0d29yay5qcyUzRmNvbnRhaW5lcl9pZCUzRGJ1enpzcHJvdXQtcGxheWVyLTE5MTY4MDcyJTI2cGxheWVyJTNEc21hbGwlMjIlMjB0eXBlJTNEJTIydGV4dCUyRmphdmFzY3JpcHQlMjIlMjBjaGFyc2V0JTNEJTIydXRmLTglMjIlM0UlM0MlMkZzY3JpcHQlM0U= (Season 7, Episode 20)
Most of us don’t mean to work in silos – but our calendars and inboxes quietly build them for us.
In this episode, Jessica and Erin guide you through a five-minute exercise to map your work relationships, notice who’s missing, and take one small step outside your silo this month.
We get busy, go to the people we already know, and stay in our lanes. In this episode of Practicing Connection, hosts Jessica and Erin walk you through a simple, five-minute exercise to map your work network and make the invisible visible.
You’ll list the people you’ve talked with about work over the past month, then explore patterns across sectors, roles, geography, and experience. Along the way, you’ll surface quiet assumptions, notice who’s overrepresented, and identify whose voices are missing from your conversations.
Finally, Jessica and Erin invite you to choose just one gap to focus on this month—and to reach out for one conversation that takes you a step outside your silo. It’s a gentle, practical way to start building a more intentional, inclusive network that strengthens your work and your community.
Links and resources from this episode:

Sign up for our monthly newsletter: https://oneop.aweb.page/practicing-connection-newsletter
Join our LinkedIn group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/12879756/
Send us a message: practicingconnection@oneop.org

JESSICA BECKENDORF: [00:00:00] Think about the last five people you talked to or collaborated with on your work.
You’ve got them in mind?
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Now ask yourself, do they all work in the same sector as you, the same organization, same type of role?
JESSICA BECKENDORF: If the answer is yes, you might be working in more of a silo than you know.
– intro –
Welcome to Practicing Connection. I’m Jessica.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: And I’m Erin. Today we’re giving you a short practice-based episode, where we give you something you can actually do to strengthen connections in your work and in your community.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: And today we’re talking about something that sounds kind of obvious, but can actually be really hard: to see the shape of your network.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Ooh. I’m gonna be honest. I don’t even think about the shape of my network at all, so I’m glad you’re bringing this forward. Because I don’t conceptualize it as a shape at all. So that’s [00:01:00] super fun. But I’m guessing that we’re talking also about the kinds of people who are in our network?
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. It’s like, is it lopsided in ways that we don’t want it to be lopsided?
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Okay. Sure. That makes sense. You know, I think most of the time you don’t wake up and say to yourself, “Well, I’m only going to talk to people who already do exactly what I do, and think exactly what I think.” But I imagine that happens pretty easily. It certainly has with me in the past, where you get busy and it feels good to have somebody agree with you. And maybe you’re avoiding conflict if you’re a mid-westerner.
And then you just kind of stay in your lane.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. Yeah. And sometimes we stay in our lanes because of that time issue, like you were saying. And before you know it, you are operating in a silo, right. And being in Wisconsin, I guess, many of us operate in silos naturally.
I’m just kidding. Terrible joke.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Nah, we love farmers. Don’t fret.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: We do, we do. But [00:02:00] seriously, before you know it, you’re operating in a silo, right? You’re solving problems with the same few people.
You’re hearing the same perspectives, and you might be missing entire groups of people who are working on the same issues that you are, but they’re working on it from a different lens or a different experience, or different part of the community or state.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Okay, so today’s practice is about making the invisible visible. We’re going to walk you through a simple exercise to map your network and spot the gaps.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: And then we’ll talk about what to do with that information, because awareness without action is just, I guess, it’s just sort of interesting.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: That’s nicer than I would’ve said. Sure. A very diplomatic action is good. All right. How do we get to the action?
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Okay, here’s what you’ll need:
A piece of paper, a pen, and if you’re MacGyver, maybe a rubber band and a nail. No, I’m kidding.
[00:03:00] You need a piece of paper, a pen, and about five minutes of uninterrupted time, maybe 10 at the most. You could do this right now if you want to pause us along the way, or you can do it later. It’s totally up to you.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: And full transparency, this might feel a little uncomfortable. You might notice things that you wish were different. That’s okay. And that’s actually the point.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah, we’re not here to judge your network, and you shouldn’t either. Just be open to seeing it more clearly so that you can be more intentional about where you build your network in the future.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: All right, let’s walk through it.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: All right.
First step, make a list of the people you’ve talked to about work in the last month. The people that you’ve talked to substantially, right? Maybe you’ve even collaborated with them on something.
It’s not just meetings. Include things like emails, phone calls, coffee conversations, text threads, anyone that you’ve engaged with about your work.
So you’re making this list.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: [00:04:00] And you don’t need to overthink it. Just write down the names that come up for you, and aim for at least 10 to 15 people if you can.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Once you’ve got your list, move to step two. This is where you’re going to look at patterns. If it’s easier, you could, if you’re like me, you could find a way to visually see these patterns by using color coding or symbols. But if you do that, just make sure that you create a key, so that you know what it all means later on.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Are you speaking from practice, Jessica?
JESSICA BECKENDORF: I am speaking from experience. Yes. But you don’t have to do it that way. You can really just consider our questions while you’re looking at your list. That’s totally fine too. And write down your observations, on the side.
So we’ll start by posing some questions, and I want you to just look at your list of names that you just came up with, and just notice what comes up as we ask these questions.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Okay. The first question, “What sectors or fields are [00:05:00] represented?” Are they mostly nonprofits? Government education, private sector, faith-based, military connected.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: – Not military connected.
So just look at your list and consider what’s overrepresented for your context. What’s overrepresented, and what might be missing entirely.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: And the next question, “What roles do these people have?” Are they mostly peers or people who do similar work to you, or are there supervisors, funders, directors, community members, frontline staff, people with direct experience of the issues you’re working on?
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Again, just notice, who’s on the list? Who’s not on the list? Whatever matters for your context, for the work you do, who’s there, and who should be there but isn’t.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Third question. “What about [00:06:00] geography?” Are you talking to people mostly in your town, in your county, in your state? Are there rural voices? Are there urban voices? Are there suburban voices?
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Here’s a big one: “Are you talking to people most impacted by the issues you’re working on, or are you mostly talking to other professionals about them?” What’s important for your role and for the people you serve? Just notice what you notice.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Okay. Now take a breath and look at your list again. What stands out to you?
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Maybe you’re really connected across sectors, but everyone’s in leadership roles. Maybe you talk to lots of peers, but no one from the communities you serve. Maybe your network is geographically narrow for the work you do. Where is your network rich and where might it be homogenous?
There’s no perfect network, but there are intentional networks, and that’s what we’re aiming for.
So now that you’ve mapped [00:07:00] it, here are a few reflection questions for you to sit with a bit.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Question one. Where are my silos invisible to me? What perspectives am I not hearing from? Because I’m not in a relationship with people who hold them.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Question two, if I’m trying to solve a problem or serve a community whose voice is missing from my network and how does that limit my effectiveness?
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: On question three, what’s the gap? I could start to close this month?
JESSICA BECKENDORF: And I want to emphasize: one gap, just one, Not, what are all the gaps that I could start to close this month? One gap.
You know, that’s all we’re asking for. I really don’t want to overwhelm anyone who are trying to develop the perfect network, because they notice that there’s a whole bunch of gaps in their network.
The perfect network doesn’t exist, like I already said. So choose one gap that you noticed. Maybe it’s a sector you don’t know [00:08:00] well. Maybe it’s a type of role you don’t usually engage with. Maybe it’s a community you serve, but you don’t have many relationships in.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: And then reach out to one person in that gap just to learn. You could say something like, “I realized I don’t know much about the work that you do, and I’d love to understand it better. Would you be up for that conversation sometime?”
JESSICA BECKENDORF: And that’s it. I mean, I’ve said this before, that change happens one conversation at a time, and I really do believe that.
But in this case, in this context, one conversation can mean one step outside your silo. And what I think is most exciting about this is that when you start to step out of your silo like this, you’re not just expanding your network. You’re sowing the seeds of becoming a network weaver, and making collaboration and resource sharing easier and more possible.
It’s not going to make your work harder, but it does take these moments of stepping out.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah, I can [00:09:00] see that. I think this also can help you model something to other people on your team, or maybe in your circle that you collaborate with, that it’s worth the effort to reach out and learn from each other.
I don’t know how much we’ve touched on it here, but part of the goal of helping you to notice where the gaps are in your network, it’s not just to give you more work to do, right? We’re not here trying to make your life harder.
But because genuinely hearing more perspectives helps you be better at your work, and sometimes it makes your work easier, and sometimes you can solve problems that you didn’t think could ever be solved when you start talking with new kinds of people about it.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. So their needs stay close to the top of your mind. Your needs stay close to the top of their mind.
You might meet someone else, and you realize, “Oh, I know just the person to connect you with and you close that triangle.”
And you introduce people, and that’s sort of how all of this, you know, grows. And [00:10:00] it’s how our jobs can be made easier, by spending a little bit of upfront time to get to know each other, and find out where those resources are.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: I love that. Okay. I know, I know, we’re trying to be very on track. And also if you have never had the high of connecting two people who don’t know each other and having them be a perfect fit, and then them doing really cool stuff, you’ve never worked for extension as a community educator! But like you just don’t know that professional high.
It is so satisfying. Whether it’s like connecting someone with a mentor, or a project partner, or helping somebody get a job, it is so satisfying. This is what makes networking worth it.
For me, I’m not a big small talk person necessarily. I love talking about weird stuff and deep stuff, but small talk is sometimes not my favorite.
And I can see how having the kind of small talk, “What’s going on with you,” conversations have led [00:11:00] to some of the most interesting deep conversations. But you’ve got to know where the deep waters are before you can dive into ’em. Right?
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Right. And you know what, I do think in a future episode, we should talk about the difference between network building and networking, because those are two different things.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: So, yeah. We’ll handle that in a future episode.
But that’s it for today’s episode, and we’d really love to hear from you, about how this went.
What did you notice when you mapped your network? What gaps maybe surprised you? You can reach us at practicingconnection@oneop.org.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: And you can click the share button in your podcast app to share this with a friend or a coworker.
We’ll be back next week. Until then, keep practicing.
[00:12:00]
CREDITS: The Practicing Connection Podcast is a production of One-Op and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, US Department of Defense under award number 2 0 2 3 4 8 7 74 3 3.

How to Handle Workplace Expectations and Other Listener Q&A
2026-05-07 06:00 - 17:00
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Join the “Practicing Connection Community” on LinkedIn. The community is designed for people who support military families in a variety of settings both on installations and in our communities. JTNDZGl2JTIwaWQlM0QlMjJidXp6c3Byb3V0LXBsYXllci0xOTEzMjAxMCUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRmRpdiUzRSUzQ3NjcmlwdCUyMHNyYyUzRCUyMmh0dHBzJTNBJTJGJTJGd3d3LmJ1enpzcHJvdXQuY29tJTJGMjA5OTk4MyUyRmVwaXNvZGVzJTJGMTkxMzIwMTAtaG93LXRvLWhhbmRsZS13b3JrcGxhY2UtZXhwZWN0YXRpb25zLWFuZC1vdGhlci1saXN0ZW5lci1xLWEuanMlM0Zjb250YWluZXJfaWQlM0RidXp6c3Byb3V0LXBsYXllci0xOTEzMjAxMCUyNnBsYXllciUzRHNtYWxsJTIyJTIwdHlwZSUzRCUyMnRleHQlMkZqYXZhc2NyaXB0JTIyJTIwY2hhcnNldCUzRCUyMnV0Zi04JTIyJTNFJTNDJTJGc2NyaXB0JTNF (Season 7, Episode 19)
This month’s listener Q&A gives us three juicy areas to cover: struggling with frequent task switching, dealing with burnout and unachievable workloads (and the expectations associated with this), and how our practices integrate with personal reflections.
Erin and Jessica respond to your questions with insight, experience and resources, to give you some great, actionable steps in your daily life.
Episodes referenced in this episode:

Everyday Practices for Organizational Resilience:
https://oneop.org/learn/everyday-practices-for-organzational-resilience/
Turning Conflict Into Collaboration:
https://oneop.org/learn/turning-conflict-into-collaboration/

Links and resources from this episode:

Sign up for our monthly newsletter: https://oneop.aweb.page/practicing-connection-newsletter
Join our LinkedIn group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/12879756/
Send us a message: practicingconnection@oneop.org

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: [00:00:00] Hi. Thank you for listening to the Practicing Connection Podcast. I’m Erin, my co-host Jessica is here as well. Today we’re answering listener questions.
Hi Jessica. How are you feeling about today’s questions?
JESSICA BECKENDORF: I mean, this is the second time we’re doing this kind of episode, and I was super stoked last time, and I might be even more excited this time. I mean, it’s really nice to, I guess, have more of an exchange, right? Because podcasts are much more of a one-sided kind of thing.
So it’s nice to have at least a few moments like this where we can kind of have an exchange with people who listen.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah. I love that. I think for me, I also really love how it feels. Some of them almost feel like getting a case study, where we’ve taught you a concept, and then here’s a case study. “Here’s a real life example of using it,” which is maybe a little bit easier to wrap your head around than our interviews, which are combining a bunch of things altogether, and this is a little more narrow [00:01:00] focused.
So all of that to say, I am also very excited. Are you ready for our first question?
JESSICA BECKENDORF: I am. Go for it. Do it. Floor is yours.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Okay, question one. “I balance so many different responsibilities in my role, and have found myself struggling more and more with transitioning between tasks. Do you have any practices to help? Please? I’m drowning!”
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Oh, no. Oh, that one sounds very – well, we better say this really quick and like, let’s publish this episode before the one we just recorded so that this person has help right away!
No, so I mean, really if only this were a simple answer and simple to implement, it’s just like you and I always say, you do need to find what works for you, right? And try different things.
But I’m happy to share some of the things that have worked for me. And, you know, one of the reasons why it’s also not a super simple answer is that we don’t always have as much control over our schedules as we’d like. [00:02:00]
I’ve been doing a lot of reading, or I’ve done a lot of reading in the past, but of course, I do a lot of reading just in general about productivity, and a lot of the things that I’ve read, give you this advice or that advice, or they give you a whole system to follow.
I have not once found an entire system out there that I could follow, the way the person set it up for themselves, that worked for me. And so I always tend to find like a little piece of this system here, a little piece of that system there, and I pick what works for me. I try things out if it works for me.
Sometimes I only keep it for a few months, because that’s when I really desperately needed that particular tool. Sometimes I drop it for a while and I come back to it later.
So here’s some of the things that I do. I like to hold aside about an hour in the morning to plan and do things like read articles, kind of easing into the day a little bit. And by reading articles, I’m not talking about like In Style Magazine or whatever. I’m talking about, you know, articles that are related to my [00:03:00] job.
So, I’ll spend that time planning, reading articles, blocking time on my calendar, and then during this time, I choose no more than three things that I need to get done that day.
The reality is, and this is what I used to do, I would list out every single thing that needed to be done. I would copy over things I didn’t get done the day before from a list, and I’d write them out again the next day. And a lot of times there would be like 10, 15, 20, 25 things on that list. It was overwhelming.
And if I could get 25 things done in a day, that would be great. But guess what? Tomorrow there’s gonna be 25 more, because it just seems like it never. Really. Ends.
But sometimes I only have time to get one thing done. That reality, when I really realized that, that was a huge wake up call. It just depends on what that one thing is, and how many meetings I have, right? Because we know sometimes the one thing on your list could be a 3, 4, 5 hour [00:04:00] project, or your one thing could be a 30 minute email you have to write.
And then if you have a lot of meetings, well maybe you only have an hour here to get things done between meetings an hour there, half an hour there. Sometimes I could only get one thing done in a day. So I choose the three priorities during that kind of one hour block where I do a little bit of reading, a little bit of time blocking, et cetera.
And I think I’ve talked about how I like to put them on a small post-it note that doesn’t have much real estate, so that I can’t keep adding to the list. But once I choose those three priorities, I block off time that day to do each. And that’s where I start to realize, “Oh, I don’t have time to do these three things today. One of them is gonna have to give and go on to tomorrow.”
Sometimes I have to drop an item because there’s not enough time between the meetings to get to it. So to me the biggest takeaway though, from how I do this, is that I don’t write out [00:05:00] everything that needs to be done in a big, long list. This helps me focus and limit how many transitions I make.
And that’s to me the key with the question that’s being asked about transitioning. And sometimes to be honest, I’ll start out by only writing down one thing. Because I see my meeting load for the day, I might add a second thing to it. If I actually get the one thing done, I might add a second or third thing to it.
But I really have just gotten very realistic about what I can actually get done in a day. And it really does help me limit the number of transitions that I make.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Okay.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: I still have too many transitions, I’ll be honest.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah, it sounds like this is a thing you think about a lot, because you immediately had a lot to say about this. I love that.
I think that’s really useful to figure out ways to limit your transitions. One of the ways that I do that is I try to bundle things. So, you know, I think of my workload in different themed buckets, and then I try to have like days or half of [00:06:00] days where I work on one particular bucket.
Again, this is not always possible, because sometimes I’m going from a meeting about one bucket to a meeting about another bucket, and I just, you know, there’s no magic fix for that, but some of the things that have helped me are scheduling buffer time in my calendar.
So I actually have a setting in Outlook where my default meeting length time is 50 minutes. Which I think is really helpful. It’s not always possible depending on the culture of where you’re at. But I think that’s really helpful. Or sometimes if I know I have a meeting right after, I’ll say at the beginning of the meeting, especially if it’s a one-on-one meeting, this is a lot easier, just say, “I’m so sorry. I have a hard stop of this time. Does that work for you?” Kind of negotiate a little bit of like a five minute break.
Some other things that have really helped me with transitions are physically moving my body when I’m moving between tasks.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: I’ve sometimes gotten up and like [00:07:00] timed myself and gone on like a five minute walk around my office. It seems silly because I’m just doing a loop, but –
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah, literally. Sometimes it’s just, ‘I’m gonna stand up and walk across the room to touch the other wall and then step back.’ It takes me 30 seconds, but even just physically moving my body helps my brain unfocus and refocus, which is great.
Sometimes when you’re in a work environment, you don’t want to get up and have walks all the time, because then there’s this appearance of you’re not working or something.
You know, it can just be, it can be messy. So other things that I’ll do is I’ll have water or a little snack that I can eat, to transition between tasks and do some kind of care for my body, help me be in my body, and that helps my brain switch.
I think the other thing that has been so helpful is to not start my day by reading emails or messages. So I [00:08:00] try to schedule like an hour buffer at the beginning of my day where I can sit and think about what are my priorities for the day? What’s important to me? What things do I need to think about? And really kind of figure out what’s going on in my work, and bring myself back to focusing on work mode and not the rest of my life mode.
And the thing that’s really helpful about that is if I start by reading my email, I get decision fatigue immediately. So I like to try to make my decisions about my day before I get inundated with a billion messages. And that has been so helpful.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: This is also reminding me, some of the things you’re saying, remind me of this great activity you can do just sitting at your desk.
If you didn’t want to get up or, or whatever, and it’s the – have you heard of the 5, 4, 3, 2 1 activity?
Okay. So, if you need sort of this little bit of a transition time, because that’s another thing you can do is even if you can’t change how many transitions you have in a [00:09:00] day, maybe you’ll be able to find like 30 seconds to a minute to do something like this, just to kind of allow you a little bit of buffer time.
And so, it starts with five. You name five things that you can see around you. Chair. A plant. Your hands. Your laptop, whatever. Just name five things that you can see.
And then name four things that you can feel. So maybe it’s your feet on the floor, maybe you’ve got a blanket in your lap. Like I often have maybe your smooth desktop, your mouse, whatever it is. Four things you can feel.
And then name three things you can hear. So in my case, it’s right now my laptop, my voice because I’m talking, you know, and I have a space heater running right now, and I can hear that.
And then two things you can smell. So that one sometimes gets a little harder, which is why it’s only two.
And then one thing you can [00:10:00] taste. And so this might be, you know, lingering toothpaste or food from your maybe coffee breath, whatever. It doesn’t matter. One thing you can taste, and if you can’t taste anything, then maybe just name your favorite smell or the favorite thing that you can see.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Okay.
That’s a great transitional activity. Because I feel like it really pulls you out of wherever you are, and it’s very like, regulating activity.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. Yeah. I really like it. It’s very calming too. Okay, let’s go into the next question. I’m going to read this one.
“It feels like I’m the only person on my team who cares about not giving ourselves burnout with unachievable workloads. We never say no to anything. Or even ask for an extension. How do I bring this up without sounding like I’m unwilling to take one for the team or without sounding like I’m uncooperative?”
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Oh, oh wow. Okay. This is a good question. [00:11:00] I am this person a lot.
Okay, some things that are really helpful are appealing to underlying shared values. So do you have a shared value for quality of work? Do you have a shared value for relationships? Do you have a shared value for sustainability?
We have episodes where we talk about collaborating with people you disagree with. And I think that practice may also work here, because there is a disagreement happening here, which is you have a different tolerance for chaos and unreasonable achievements. So, think that’s a thing that you can do.
You know, often in a situation, the only thing we can control is ourselves. That doesn’t mean that there’s not a systemic issue happening, it just means the thing you can control is you. So if you need an immediate thing to do, that’s one. Figure out where you have a shared value and then [00:12:00] connect the unachievable workload, unachievable expectations, conversation with a value.
And I find if you talk about it too, in terms of long-term stability or you know, if you can really frame it from a place of, “We want our deliverables to come quickly, but we also want them to be accurate, or quality.”
Sometimes that conversation can really help especially if you’re working with community members or clients, or if you’re producing this work for somebody else, quality does matter. You know, like you don’t want to break trust by doing so much that you’re dropping balls. I think that can be really helpful.
When it’s a situation of I am not in charge of a team, or there isn’t shared leadership on a team and I’m just being asked to do many, many things, I will ask the question, “What would you like me to stop doing to work on this new priority?
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Mm-hmm.[00:13:00]
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Or, “What task would you like me to do later so that I can do this one right now?”
And sometimes just asking that blunt question helps pull people out of the, like, ‘we have to rush, we have to do all the things,’ conversation into, ‘Oh, what’s the priority order for these tasks? Is there anything that we can do later? Does everything have to happen right now? Or are there some things that are more flexible?’
And that’s kind of a sneaky way to start helping people rethink about, oh, not everything’s immediate. Often I see this for people who have been in crisis mode for a long time and they don’t know how to shift out of crisis mode into a slower pace.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Any other thoughts? I said a lot there.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: I do. And I love that we’re taking slightly different approaches here because what came to my mind when I saw this question was something I’ve learned [00:14:00] with systems thinking, and that’s maybe one way to do this without seeming like you’re unwilling, to whatever, be a team player, which is totally not the case here, right? You’re just trying to raise the yellow flags and say, “Hey guys, we gotta think about this a little bit, right?”
But I would suggest really fleshing out with your team a definition. Like, “Let’s really define what success looks like here. Let’s define what we’re talking about with this project.”
So what are all the things that would define success for this project? And what do we not mean? Right? What are we leaving on the table? That’s still important, but it doesn’t need to be part of this right now. Like, “What do we mean by success and what don’t we mean?”
I want to be clear here that I’m not talking about what does success mean and what does unsuccess mean? What does not being successful mean? I’m talking about at a minimum, how are we defining this project, [00:15:00] and how are we defining what’s not included in this project, so that you can get really clear about all of the pieces and parts that make it up.
And people can make choices when they see, “Oh, we mean all of these things by success.” That means now, when we take a look at what our capacity is, which is, you know, one of the other things you would think about with systems thinking, that means we have a lot more thinking to do. It just sort of slows everyone down a little bit without you seeming like you’re being uncooperative, right?
You’re just saying, “Hey, we gotta define this.” That’s all you’re saying.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Okay. This made me think of another episode that we recently released called Everyday Practices for Organizational Resilience. And this talks about how to do a bit of a debrief, which means you’re going to have to be strategic.
You might not be able to launch this one whenever you want to, but after you’ve completed something, if it was high cost and you’re all tired, you can do some of the [00:16:00] questions. There’s like an inventory that we walk you through, or you walk us through to help you figure out, “Oh, what were the warning signs?”
This feels indirect, but it’s directly getting people to pause and reflect, and kind of see a bigger picture of, why was this so hard? How can we make it easier for ourselves?
And I think one of the things that will come up if you can kind of encourage these conversations is, “Oh, we haven’t ever defined what done means.” Or, “We have different definitions of what done means,” or, “Some of us don’t know the amount of work it takes somebody else to pull this off.”
“We gotta communicate more. We need more lead time.”
JESSICA BECKENDORF: “We need more cross training.” Yeah.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Those kinds of conversations are really hard to have in the moment when you’re in the weeds. But if you have any sort of built in evaluation or reflection time, you can bring some of these really strategic, targeted questions, and really help get at [00:17:00] the, ‘how do we not burn ourselves out’ conversation.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. And no one will know that you’re actually panicking about the amount of work that they’re talking about trying to do.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Exactly. Okay. We should do our last question so this episode doesn’t get too long.
Question three, “Why are so many of your practices just different kinds of reflection? LOL.”
I think the LOL means like, they’re not mad about it. I’m not sure, but that’s the question.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Okay, so no, this is great, and I was very excited about this question, and Erin, you probably noticed that when this question first was added – because you choose the questions – that when the question was first added to this document, I immediately started typing.
And I would say that it’s because I have a very strong belief that knowing yourself and knowing how you show up, like kind of out in the world and in your interactions with others, is the foundation for interacting with and collaborating with others.
And so, I worked with some colleagues a while [00:18:00] back, we’ve talked about on the podcast over the years. I don’t know that I’ve talked about it very much lately, but we developed programming on collaborative work.
So developing collaborative relationships that center the kind of trust and connection needed to effectively work together to solve big, hairy community issues. And a big focus of the research behind that program is that it all starts with knowing yourself. Often you’re getting to know yourself partially through reflection, at least partially.
And so it starts with reflection, and it starts with knowing yourself, and bringing what you know about yourself into your interactions with others. Then again, reflecting on how those interactions helped you learn about an issue, helped you learn about a perspective and even helped you learn about yourself, right? What maybe changed about your own views or your own understanding of an issue or of a particular perspective?
So to me, knowing yourself is [00:19:00] foundational work, and a huge part of knowing yourself can happen through reflection.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah. I’m also really glad someone asked this question. My answer did not come as fast as yours, but it did help me realize kind of a bunch of connections.
And one of them is this idea of curiosity, and how I really love both science and poetry, and I think both of them are lenses to view the world in which you’re coming from a place of curiosity and wanting to know more.
And that’s kind of from a personal place, and I think especially when we’re talking about inner critics, I don’t know if we’ve talked about that, but that idea of like, if your inner mental monologue is pretty critical of yourself, coming from a perspective of curiosity reflection can feel really scary if you’re used to criticizing yourself.
And so a lot of our reflections are trained to teach us how to be curious about what happened, rather than judgmental about what happened. [00:20:00] And I think that leaves space for being kinder to ourselves, and being kind to ourselves really helps us stay healthy.
Like it’s such a shift in terms, and when you’re healthy, it’s easier to do your job. It’s easier to show up in your relationships. That’s why I think it’s a priority, even though it’s kind of personal and squishy. I do think it is a professional practice, because you’re teaching yourself to be curious and kind to yourself. And when you’re curious and kind, it’s way easier to start solving your problems if you’re immediately blaming yourself or being critical.
It’s challenging to process through all of that, and then be creative about how you solve your problems. When you do reflection, it’s this way to empower yourself to start seeing solutions and finding them yourself, rather than feeling like you need some expert to tell you. Because you have lived your experience, and so you probably know [00:21:00] what you need, and the reflection helps you identify, “What do I need? Who can I ask for it? What’s going on? What happened?”
Especially if you’re like the last question, you’re in a place where you’re just doing stuff all the time. If you never have a moment to pause down reflection, practice it as a practice can be such a helpful way to help you identify, “Oh, here’s where I know what too much was.”
So you can figure out your capacity limits. You can figure out all sorts of things to make your life easier by reflecting and being curious about your own experience and your own work and your own life.
Also I have been thinking about space a lot recently. There was, you know, NASA did some stuff in space recently and one of the practices that I have always loved about NASA is when something goes wrong, they don’t immediately fire people, because they don’t want people to be afraid to admit what the mistake was. Because they want to know what the mistakes are so they can avoid them in the future.
And it [00:22:00] means that when you hear people talking about working on teams at NASA, it’s this very collaborative experience and it’s very rigorous, and the stakes are really high. But they don’t come from this place of being really judgemental and blaming each other.
They come from a place of curiosity, and it’s had really impactful results on the quality of work and the amazing things that they can do. And even, you know, scientists pause and reflect.
So just throw it out there as, reflection is actually a really cool tool that you can use to be curious and love the world, even when you’re overwhelmed and tired.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: I love it. And before you do our little outro here, Erin, I just want to say that as of the recording of this episode, I got my third thing done for the day and it’s the end of the day. So I feel like I won.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Hey, see, this is what I mean by setting winning conditions. We talked about this a while ago.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yes.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Give yourself a sticker. I’m an adult who’s still motivated by sticker charts. I know that’s not everybody’s life, [00:23:00] but I’m a little magpie.
Okay. That’s it, that’s the episode. Thank you for joining us. If you have a question or if you have additional thoughts about any of the questions we’ve asked here, we would absolutely love to hear from you.
You can email us at practicingconnection@oneop.org. There’s a link in the show notes if you don’t know how to spell that. We want to hear from you. We see and respond to every message, and we promise not to share your question without asking permission and erasing identifying details.
We’ll be back next week. Until then, keep practicing. [00:24:00]

CREDITS: The Practicing Connection Podcast is a production of One-Op and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, US Department of Defense under award number 2 0 2 3 4 8 7 74 3 3.

What the Room is Telling You: How to Read the Room
2026-04-30 06:00 - 17:00
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Join the “Practicing Connection Community” on LinkedIn. The community is designed for people who support military families in a variety of settings both on installations and in our communities. JTNDZGl2JTIwaWQlM0QlMjJidXp6c3Byb3V0LXBsYXllci0xOTA3NzcyNiUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRmRpdiUzRSUzQ3NjcmlwdCUyMHNyYyUzRCUyMmh0dHBzJTNBJTJGJTJGd3d3LmJ1enpzcHJvdXQuY29tJTJGMjA5OTk4MyUyRmVwaXNvZGVzJTJGMTkwNzc3MjYtd2hhdC10aGUtcm9vbS1pcy10ZWxsaW5nLXlvdS1ob3ctdG8tcmVhZC10aGUtcm9vbS5qcyUzRmNvbnRhaW5lcl9pZCUzRGJ1enpzcHJvdXQtcGxheWVyLTE5MDc3NzI2JTI2cGxheWVyJTNEc21hbGwlMjIlMjB0eXBlJTNEJTIydGV4dCUyRmphdmFzY3JpcHQlMjIlMjBjaGFyc2V0JTNEJTIydXRmLTglMjIlM0UlM0MlMkZzY3JpcHQlM0U= (Season 7, Episode 18)
You’ve walked into a meeting and felt it immediately – something’s off. The energy is flat, or there’s a tension nobody’s naming.
What do you do with that?
In this practicast, we share a simple, repeatable practice for reading the emotional temperature of any room.
Reading the Room is a short practice in social awareness — one of the core skills of emotional intelligence.
In this practicast, we walk through three steps for tuning into the emotional temperature of a group before and during meetings: the early arrival observation, the 3-person scan, and the traffic light check.
Perfect for service providers, coalition leaders, nonprofit staff, and anyone who facilitates groups.
Links and resources from this episode:

Join our LinkedIn group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/12879756/
Send us a message: practicingconnection@oneop.org

ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Practicing Connection Podcast. I’m Erin. Today’s Practicast is about a skill that sounds simple, but takes real intention reading the room. And my co-host, Jessica Beckendorf, will be sharing the practice with us. Hi Jessica. How are you?
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Hi, Erin. I’m doing pretty good, thanks. I’ve actually been thinking a lot about this topic lately. I feel like, it’s spring as we’re recording this, and I feel like spring every single year is like the time of year for facilitated discussions, because I have facilitated several workshops over the past few months, so I’m really excited to share about this idea of reading the room and what that means.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: I am excited too. It’s one of those skills that I think people assume is something you either have or don’t have, just like intuition, but I’m guessing there’s more to it than that.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. Exactly. I think, whether we’re walking into a team meeting or we’re [00:01:00] going into a coalition meeting, where it’s like a bunch of people who aren’t on our team, or whether we’re facilitating our group, like I have been all Spring long, or if we’re even just sitting across from a colleague, there’s always a lot more happening than what’s being said out loud. The emotional temperature of a room can influence everything.
Things like what gets decided, what goes unspoken and whether people feel safe enough to show up fully. And I really like this practice because it gives you a repeatable way to tune in to the temperature of a room before you jump into whatever business it is you need to do.
And this is great for, look, if you’re someone who thinks of yourself like your abilities in this area are not as good, or whether you’re someone who you’re like, “I feel like I can read the room intuitively, and it’s not a big deal,” I think that this just gives you a way to be very conscious about reading the room.
So it can help either group of people, right? Whether you think you’re good at it or not.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: That’s awesome to hear. I love that, [00:02:00] because I’ve noticed for me, and everybody’s a little different, but for me, I can either intentionally read the room or I can unintentionally read the room without realizing.
And then maybe not show up how I want to, or maybe exclude people. Because I don’t realize, I’m only reading off the really intense people. So I’m really excited because it sounds like you’re putting together a structure that we can use to engage in paying attention, and that gets me excited. Tell me more.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah, so I don’t have a specific name for this activity because to me it’s just, “Read the room,” which sounds actually like you’re insulting someone, right? “Read the room people.”
But it’s really just a way of practicing. So like we’ve been saying, not everyone is skilled at reading other people. Or maybe you just think of yourself as not being skilled in that way. But we all have some form of intuition when it comes to reading other people. For some people, it’s maybe more developed than others. But [00:03:00] the thing is, even if you think of yourself as skilled or not skilled at reading, other people reading an entire room is different.
The skill is part of what emotional intelligence researchers call ”Social awareness.” So the ability to notice what others are feeling, even when they don’t say it, even when they’re not saying what they’re feeling, it’s one of the most important skills for anyone doing collaborative work. Because groups carry emotions that no single person owns.
And in fact, the emotions can resonate and ricochet across the room, and because of that resonance they amplify. So basically we can put little air quotes around this word. We can sort of “catch” feelings. And if you can read those emotions, you can respond to what’s actually happening, not just what’s on the agenda.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah. That’s so interesting. I’m glad you used the idea of catching and resonating, and I’ve certainly felt that in meetings where you walk into a room and you’re like, [00:04:00] “Ooh, something’s happened in here.” I feel it can also be potentially a positive experience. I very recently went to see Project Hail Mary in the movie theaters, and I was so glad that it was a movie I chose to see in the theater because it was this really collective experience where all these people were feeling things with me, and the movie was better, which is not always how it is. Sometimes you go and you watch something with other people and they ruin it for you. But this was just such an intense thing, where I was like really resonating with the whole room.
It really felt like we experienced something together, even though I did not talk to a single other person in the room besides my husband, who I went to this movie with. And so you are saying that shows up in all kinds of spaces, not just the movie theater, and that’s something we can actually be tuned into and read nuance into.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. And there’s actually one really important nuance, and that is that we don’t all read emotional cues the same way. And we don’t all [00:05:00] get read the same way by others either. As you build the skill, it’s really worth asking yourself, “Whose signals am I most practiced at noticing, and who might I be overlooking or misreading?”
Because reading the room well means not so much hyper focusing as it means widening your lens, like being able to take in the environment and the mood. It’s a really important nuance to consider, but I think just getting started practicing is a good place to start.
And then as you go along, you can be like, “Okay, now whose signals am I most practiced at noticing? Who am I possibly overlooking or misreading?” And look, I have often misread, for example, men that are maybe a little older than me, a little bit wrong. I’ve noticed some of my own patterns that way.
And because I notice those patterns I have been able to adjust my thinking around all of it. And does it mean I’m better at reading them? [00:06:00] Yeah, it certainly means I’m better at reading it. Or what’s really happened in my case is I’m better at asking questions at the right time, right? I notice when I’m starting to feel that little bit of tension, and I ask questions, and so it helps me to widen my lens and to not misread the person who is who I’m talking to too.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yes. That is a really helpful context. I think you’ve got me really excited for learning this skill specifically, because it sounds like it’s also a really useful tool if you’re someone who has to switch contexts. You know, if you’re moving between different organizations with maybe different levels of formality or different levels of decisions get made.
Sometimes people forget that not everybody does things the way that they do, and they don’t communicate what they’re doing. So this is potentially a way to figure it out without having to make a big mistake publicly, and then have someone say, “Oh no, we don’t do that here.” [00:07:00] Right, which is a thing I have survived many times.
It’s a very survivable thing, but it’s never comfortable. So this is also okay.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: It’s really great for cross-sector collaborations. It’s a really great skill to build. If you’re going to be going into rooms where everyone in that room is coming from a different context, a different organization, a different way of doing things.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yes. Okay. You’ve got me really excited. We could chat all day, but let’s dive into it. Walk us through this. How do you do it?
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Okay, so the first step, and we’re going to be talking about this in the context of a meeting, because it is a very familiar work context to use this in. But you can adapt to this to other types of things as well.
The first step is to arrive a little early and observe, and I’m talking about just building in 60 seconds. I don’t think you need to go 20 minutes early and stare at everybody as they’re walking in the door, stare them down, [00:08:00] observe them. No, I’m talking just 60 seconds. Arrive a little early and observe.
This is before you start talking, checking your phone or setting up. Just notice. Who’s in the room? Where are people sitting? Are they clustered together or are they spread apart? Are there quiet side conversations happening? Is the energy light or is it flat?
This is your baseline information. You’re taking the temperature before the conversation starts.
So step two then is once the meeting begins, you’re going to pick three people to scan. Ideally, this will be someone you know well, someone you don’t know well, and someone who tends to be quiet. Now, maybe this is your first meeting with the group. Just pick a couple people you don’t know well, or a couple people who maybe as you were doing that kind of initial step one where you arrived a little early, you noticed one person was quiet and one person wasn’t. [00:09:00] So you could just pick those two. Doesn’t have to be three people.
So what you’re going to watch for during the meeting is things like their posture, are they leaning in? Are they pulling back? What are their facial expressions? Do they look a little confused, skeptical, or disengaged? Even if they aren’t saying anything.
And keep in mind that you might be misinterpreting their facial expressions. You can still make note of what you think they are, but please, always remember that you may be wrong. This is just for you to get a sense, and it’s your best possible sense of what’s going on.
And then the third thing is to take a look at their participation patterns. Are they unusually quiet, or are they talking more than usual? And again, if this is your first time in the meeting, you’re going to just do your best to notice those participation patterns. Maybe you don’t know if they’re usually quiet or talking more than usual, but you could say, “Oh, this person was quiet, and this person was talking a lot.” You [00:10:00] could just make note of that.
So you’re going to look for those three people. You’re going to look at posture, facial expressions, and participation patterns. All you’re doing is, noticing three people should give you just enough data without feeling overwhelmed. And then this is going to give you a clue as to how things are going along the way, right?
So you’ll keep observing those three people along the way in the meeting. And finally, this is the last step, step three is, this is where you widen the awareness to the entire group. I’m calling it a green, yellow, red traffic light check, because I am not very inventive.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: I think it’s also good teaching to use accessible frameworks, and a lot of people have experience with traffic lights, so that’s a pretty easy way to shift through information.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: We couldn’t do this with a roundabout, right?! We couldn’t describe it the same way with a roundabout.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: For people who aren’t from Wisconsin, a roundabout is also known as a traffic circle in other parts of the country.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yes. Okay.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: I had gotten into lots of [00:11:00] fights about this when we moved to Wisconsin. I was like, what is that?
JESSICA BECKENDORF: So step three builds on step two by asking you to be in tune with the whole group, not just those three people. So the best time to practice this step is after something important is shared, an idea, a decision. A question. And so you’re going to use your scanning skills from step two to take just two seconds.
And I know that doesn’t sound like enough time to read an entire room, but the more you practice this, two seconds is going to feel like the exact perfect amount of time.
So take two seconds to scan the whole group. If you’re leading the group, just make sure to take a pause. No one’s going to notice a two second pause. No one’s going to notice a five second pause. Just take a pause if it helps, take a drink of your coffee or your water or something in that pause, so it’ll just give it a little more time. They won’t know that you’re reading the room.
So then what you’re going to do is ask yourself in those [00:12:00] two seconds, “Does the group feel like they’re green, yellow, or red?” Green is that people seem engaged, the energy is flowing. This is really a clue that you should just keep going.
Yellow, something seems like it shifted. Maybe the energy dipped a little bit. Maybe someone’s expression changed. This is a clue to you that you should slow down. Maybe offer to take a break, if you’re the one leading the meeting, or maybe if you’re not leading the meeting asking, “Hey, could we have a five minute break or two minute break?”
The other thing you could do instead of taking a break is ask a question. “What’s landing for you right now? Is there anything that we’d like to name that’s happening in the room right now? What’s coming to mind for everyone right now?”
And then red: probably, obviously is where maybe the tension is quite visible. Someone maybe looks upset. The group seems a little bit fractured. A conversation has stalled.
This is the moment to pause, to [00:13:00] listen, to name what’s happening, and when I say name what’s happening, I would be really careful about that. Because when you name what’s happening on your own, you’re coming at it from your perspective. And you may not be correct about the perspectives in the room but you might say, “I’m reading that there’s some tension in the room. Am I correct?”
You could check in with everyone: “Am I correct that there’s some tension here?” And if so, you could let the people in the room name it, right? You could let them acknowledge that there’s some tension and name it.
I want to just say that how you approach the red part depends on what the issue seems to be. I’ll give you an example. I was facilitating a big group, multi-county initiative that these folks were trying to really make a difference in big ways across their counties. The meeting started out great, right? So I, we were green light at first. The meeting started out great. The energy was great.
And then, somewhere in the middle, something shifted. We went into yellow. [00:14:00] Something shifted. I couldn’t put my finger on it. They were still engaged, they were still going through the activities that I had brought for them to think through their strategic plan. But then the energy dipped.
The conversation then started to stall. That’s when we had moved into red territory. So they’re at small group tables. They started out maybe just with a little bit lower energy. So they were in the yellow zone, but at their small group tables, this is when the rubber’s supposed to meet the road in this particular activity. They were going to be coming up with action steps and all of that, and the conversation stalled.
It got quiet in the room, and I had been noticing something happening over the course of the day. We only had the one day to get these ideas down and on paper. And so, I made the choice of asking, “Okay, so here’s what I’m noticing. I’m noticing that there’s some tension.”
I checked in with them, is there tension in this room? And they [00:15:00] all admitted to it. And I said, “Can we talk about it? Is this something you feel comfortable talking about?” And they said yes. And it turns out that there was a difference in opinion about how they should proceed. About half the group was like full steam ahead, and the other half of the group was like, we need to consider the management of what we’re doing because. If we do full steam ahead, we’re going to be burnt out real quick.
And we were able to talk through that and get some things down on paper before the end of the day. Because that was the only day we had to work on it. So we were able to come to some conclusions now. It didn’t solve all their problems, but it did very publicly name what was happening in that group so that they could begin the conversations of solving or resolving, I’m gonna say in this case, resolving their issues.
So I let the people in the room name it. I named what I was noticing about the [00:16:00] tension, and I let them name what the tension was, and I checked in, “Are you guys comfortable talking about this, or should we talk separately?”
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah. Okay. I’m curious, do you use this when you’re not facilitating the room?
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Like when you and I are in conversation, is that what you’re asking, Erin?!
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: No, I just think that not everybody who listens to our podcast maybe facilitates big groups of people. Is it still useful when you’re just like, Joe Schmo, just a person in a meeting?
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah, I mean I think you could even use this with one other person, although the activity is about reading the room more than it is about reading one other person. Although certainly you could use step two with reading people’s posture, their facial expressions and their participation patterns when you’re doing one-on-one.
But yeah, I absolutely think you could use this in any kind of a group setting, with your friends, right? You could use it in a friend setting if you want to. You could use it with [00:17:00] family, and also I would always caution people to be careful. Be careful facilitating your family. There’s too much history sometimes,
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yes. Okay.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: And certainly with your team, even if your team is just three people or whatever, you could certainly use this with the team as well.
So really that two second pause, that step three is critical to the whole practice. It’s where reading the whole room actually happens, versus honing in on a few people, to check in on how things are going as you go along.
So yeah, that’s the practice. Arrive and observe. First do a little bit of an individual, three person scan. And use green, yellow, red as a way of reading the whole room before you move on, especially after you drop something big. You know, an idea, if you’re leading the meeting and you dropped an idea that the leadership of the organization wants to move forward with, and nobody had been consulted ahead of [00:18:00] time, that’s a moment to pause and just do the scan right.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah. Well, thank you for leading us through that. It sounds very useful. One thing that was coming to mind for me is a couple of weeks ago we had an episode about practicing discomfort by expanding your circles. It struck me as you were explaining this, that this might also be a practice you could use as you are experiencing a new space.
And I would perhaps say if you were using it in that space, maybe you won’t go to the point where you’re acknowledging the tension in the room and trying to do any kind of facilitation, but it may be a really good way to notice and read the room in a space that you’re unfamiliar with, and practice learning how maybe there are different ways that people express things.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: That’s a great idea. Green, yellow and looking at the whole room and just practicing naming green, yellow, red too, right? Without, maybe in that particular [00:19:00] case, it’s not your responsibility to do anything about it.
Also, we can always lead from where we are. And so if we’re in yellow, for example, if it’s a participatory meeting, you can ask a question too. If you feel like it’s your place or if you’re feeling it.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah, I am somewhat of a notorious question asker, so definitely if I had been in the room and we got into small groups and it got quiet and nobody was saying anything, I probably wouldn’t have talked to the whole room, but I would’ve asked my table and said, “Wow, it seems like none of us wanna talk? What’s going on?”
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yep. You know what? I did initially go to a couple of individual tables and said, “Am I right that there’s some tension?” I didn’t ask him what it was, I just said, “Am I right, before I address the whole room?”
But yes, I’m certain that would happen. So anyway, reading the room is about, and we talk about this all the time, right, and we always say that every single Practicast we have is one way of practicing something. [00:20:00] So in this case, reading the room is about staying aware and curious. Those are two things we always talk about about: what the people around you are actually experiencing.
And when you do that well, you can build trust, you can deepen collaboration and you can help people feel seen. That’s something that a lot of people very much enjoy. They like to feel seen and heard, so this is one way of doing that too.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Awesome. Thank you.
That’s it for this episode. Thank you all for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, please click the share button in whatever podcast app you’re using to share it with a friend.
We’ll be back next week with a new episode. Until then, keep practicing.
[00:21:00]
CREDITS: The Practicing Connection Podcast is a production of One-Op and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, US Department of Defense under award number 2 0 2 3 4 8 7 74 3 3.

IDD, Aging, and Military Families: Challenges and Opportunities
2026-04-29 11:00 - 12:00
This engaging session explores how adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) in military families can age well. It will examine age-related health needs, living arrangements and family caregiving, and practical strategies for supporting this population. Learn how to address current and future needs of people with IDD.
Learning Objectives:

Identify what aging means for people with IDD.
Explain age-related health and social changes for people with IDD.
Describe living arrangements and family caregiving.
Identify implications for military families supporting a member with IDD.
Learn about model programs to address the needs of people with IDD and their families.

Distinguished Professor
Director, Institute on Disability and Human Development
Department of Disability and Human Development
University of Illinois Chicago

Tamar Heller, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor, Department of Disability and Human Development, (DHD) University of Illinois Chicago, directs the Institute on Disability and Human Development and is the Rehabilitation Research and Training Center (RRTC) on Family Support Co-Principal Investigator. She directed DHD and the RRTCs on Developmental Disabilities (DD) and Health and DD and Aging. Her over 270 publications (including 6 books), focus on family support and bridging aging and disabilities. She was the Association of University Centers on Disabilities president, International Association for the Scientific Study of Intellectual and DD Executive Committee member, and co-founder of the Sibling Leadership Network.

Marissa Andréah Diaz, Ph.D., is currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate with the Department of Disability and Human Development at the University of Illinois Chicago. She is committed to exploring issues related to disability rights, particularly within healthcare spaces. She prioritizes research methodologies and methods that promote epistemic justice, situating disabled people as both sources of knowledge and the authors of their own lives. Her prior research experience includes interning at National Defense University and working as an advocacy trainee at Humanity and Inclusion in Brussels.

Certified in Family and Consumer Sciences (CFCS): This webinar is approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) credits from the American Association for Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close April 29, 2028.
Board Certified Patient Advocates (BCPA): This webinar is approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) contact hours by The Patient Advocate Certification Board. Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close April 29, 2028.
Board Certified Case Managers: This webinar is approved for 1.0 continuing education (CE) clock hours from the Commission for Case Manager Certification (CCMC). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close April 29, 2027.
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Burnout and Resilience in Service Providers
2026-04-23 06:00 - 17:00
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Join the “Practicing Connection Community” on LinkedIn. The community is designed for people who support military families in a variety of settings both on installations and in our communities. JTNDZGl2JTIwaWQlM0QlMjJidXp6c3Byb3V0LXBsYXllci0xOTA1NDUzMCUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRmRpdiUzRSUzQ3NjcmlwdCUyMHNyYyUzRCUyMmh0dHBzJTNBJTJGJTJGd3d3LmJ1enpzcHJvdXQuY29tJTJGMjA5OTk4MyUyRmVwaXNvZGVzJTJGMTkwNTQ1MzAtYnVybm91dC1hbmQtcmVzaWxpZW5jZS1pbi1zZXJ2aWNlLXByb3ZpZGVycy5qcyUzRmNvbnRhaW5lcl9pZCUzRGJ1enpzcHJvdXQtcGxheWVyLTE5MDU0NTMwJTI2cGxheWVyJTNEc21hbGwlMjIlMjB0eXBlJTNEJTIydGV4dCUyRmphdmFzY3JpcHQlMjIlMjBjaGFyc2V0JTNEJTIydXRmLTglMjIlM0UlM0MlMkZzY3JpcHQlM0U= (Season 7, Episode 17)
What if the key to resilience is practicing together?
This episode from the Practicing Connection archives features a conversation about burnout and resilience with guests Dr. Charles (Chip) Benight and Nicole Weis from the Lyda Hill Institute for Human Resilience at the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs.
Their research on human resilience paves the way for therapies that address the needs of trauma survivors, including service providers and others who may suffer secondary trauma.
Links and resources from this episode:

Greater Resilience Information Toolkit: https://grit.uccs.edu/
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Erin Carlson Rivera: Welcome to Practicing Connection! I’m Erin, and today we are diving into our archive to discuss burnout and resilience. This our first episode in our From the Archive series, where we are updating and releasing previously created content that is still relevant and current. Today we’re returning to an interview Jessica and Bob did with Dr. Charles Benight and Nicole Weis on their work with trauma survivors.
I am excited to share this interview! Here’s what we love about it:

Dr. Charles Benight and Nichole Weis bring both research and years of experience to their work. Their methods for how to empower individuals and communities to build mental health resilience are both tested and nuanced.
Resilience as something to be practiced rather than an innate skill
Connections between secondary trauma and burnout

Without further ado, please enjoy this archive episode!
– break –
Bob Bertsch: I’m Bob Bertsch.
Jessica Beckendorf: I’m Jessica Beckendorf. In this episode, we’ll be talking about burnout and resilience with our guests, Dr. Charles Benight and Nicole Weis from the Lyda Hill Institute for Human Resilience at the University of Colorado and Colorado Springs. The institute’s research on human resilience paves the way for therapies that address the needs of trauma survivors. Their healing division works with a variety of clients, ranging from veterans and first responders to students and community members with a focus on helping individuals and families heal from trauma. Their community training and empowerment division empowers individuals, communities, and organizations with the tools needed to build mental health resiliency.
Bob: Dr. Charles Chip Benight is Executive Director of the Lyda Hill Institute for Human Resilience. He’s a professor of psychology, researcher, psychologist, and educator who throughout his career has focused on the intersection of trauma and human resilience. Nicole Weis is the Director of Community Training and Empowerment for the Lyda Hill Institute for Human Human Resilience. She’s a licensed professional counselor and licensed addiction counselor. In her role at the institute, Nicole provides peer support training to several organizations in Colorado, teaches the trauma training for professionals online program, manages the GRIT coaching program, and liaisons with the 4th Judicial Veterans Trauma Court. Chip and Nicole, thank you so much for joining us. Welcome to the Practicing Connection Podcast.
Nicole Weis: Thank you for having us.
Charles Benight: Yes, I’m very excited to be here. Thanks, Bob.
Bob: So I’d like to start with getting a sense of what brought you guys to this work. Chip, can you tell us how you got interested in human resilience?
Charles: Sure. I think really it started way back when I was moving to Miami for my postdoctoral fellowship way back in 1992. I happened to get there three days before Hurricane Andrew hit. My wife was five months pregnant. I think that whole experience of having to relocate and establish social connections and a new job and all of that and a new baby and so forth, was really the foundation of moving from- I was studying stress in the heart before that and how heart disease occurs and how people can die from sudden cardiac arrest and emotional factors related to that. I think that whole experience with the hurricane shifted my focus on how people overcome severe adversity like a hurricane or almost anything that’s a severe trauma or adversity.
Bob: It’s interesting you mentioned having to reconnect with community when you had a baby and your family trying to reconnect. It’s something that our audience, that includes military family service providers is very familiar with because with relocation, permanent change of station, our military families are experiencing that all of the time, frequently, much more frequently than many of us are experiencing that. You see that as really important to resilience, that connection to community and network?
Charles: Absolutely. I think the military is an interesting world for that because obviously, they have their own internal connections as military members and connecting to other military providers and service members and so forth. I think that that’s been pretty instrumental for them. At the same time, their interconnections to communities shifts and changes quite frequently when they have to move.
I think that’s difficult on families specifically and the kids and adapting and obviously with deployments and so forth, it becomes a very challenging process. I think community and something Nicole and I have spent a lot of time thinking about with our GRIT program, which we can talk more about and other programming that we do, is that that interconnection between social network, social fabric in our lives is really instrumental in being resilient and being able to cope effectively.
Bob: Nicole, can you share a little bit of what brought you to this topic of resilience?
Nicole: Yes, absolutely. My interest really started with interest in trauma. I grew up in a complicated family. We went through a lot of different things growing up. What really sparked it was my brother joined the United States Air Force right after 9/11 and witnessed a lot of horrific, really difficult things, came home, and really struggled with it. Watching his journey really prompted me to go into psychology. Then I continued on. I came to the University of Colorado Colorado Springs and started working with Dr. Benight Chip in his lab understanding trauma more in-depth, continued to go through some complicated things in my life.
2017, two weeks before my wedding day, I woke up to a fire two feet away from me. I lost most of my house, lost a lot of things, and really learned the journey of resilience from that event. It coincidingly was really hearing from Chip about this dream of the institute and what resilience could really mean for everybody. That really prompted me on this road. I got to work at a crisis center for a while and worked with individuals who were really struggling with thoughts of suicide, thoughts of harming themselves, really significant crisis moments.
I got to see not only how do you help somebody, but how do you walk a journey with somebody and growing and adapting through some of those significant life events. My journey’s just been rolling with that ever since and just watching really remarkable people grow and adapt in really hard experiences. I’m still here 10 years later and I really love what we do and being able to just see those sparks in people as they get through, work through what they’ve been going through.
Jessica: Oh, thank you both so much for sharing that. How do we know when we are approaching or experiencing burnout?
Nicole: In a lot of my trainings, I have this GIF or this little video that I show that it’s this girl that’s just crawling across the screen. I always say, “If you’ve ever wondered if you’ve been burned out, do you ever relate to this picture of just crawling across the floor?” I think burnout can really feel like that of, “I’m here and I’m doing a job that I am invested in and I love, and I’m exhausted. How do I get out of bed? How do I be here? How do I perform the way I want to perform while I’m exhausted?”
To me, that’s the image of burnout that comes out. I think burnout is especially relevant for the helping professions, for the people who constantly put other people in front of them. Burnout then feels really complicated because again, “How do I do this job that I love, that I really want to be there and help people, and at the same time, I am broken right now?”
Charles: I do think the fundamental feeling of exhaustion is pretty paramount for burnout. Combined with that sense of the loss of love for whatever it is you’re focused on, whether it’s your work, whether it’s your family, that whole process can affect all of our lives, not just our work environment. I think Nicole was right, that exhaustion and not feeling efficacious anymore in terms of what we’re trying to do.
Jessica: When you’re noticing that, it feels like, “I’ve been there before.” To me, “It feels like you’re already in the middle of it.” It isn’t until you notice that you’re in the middle of it. This has been my experience that you realize, “Oh, my gosh, I’m burned out.” It sounds like from your descriptions, that that’s the reality of it that you might not realize it until you’re in the middle of it. Is that right?
Nicole: Yes. I think as a society, we’re pretty good at being reactive to things. I know Chip can talk a lot about this with our medicalized model of trauma and mental health conditions. We’re good at being reactive. We’re good at saying, “Oh, there’s been a problem, now I need to go find a solution.” What we’re not as great with is being really proactive and self-aware and noticing when there’s the first red flags, the signs that something’s different, something’s changed.
One of the things that we really emphasize with our institute is that proactive approach and just allowing yourself to be curious, “What is different about myself today?” I think if we spent the time to be a little extra self-aware without the stigma, without all of the preconceptions of what might it mean for us to be burned out, if we just acknowledge that this is a human experience, then I think there’s so many things we can do to prevent the really impact of burnout, to prevent some of the impact of stress. That piece, I think is something that goes against the norm a little bit. I’ll let Chip add to that.
Charles: We’ve had fun, Nicole and I, really talking through these cycles of how people go from feeling pretty good in their lives into this burnout phase. We’ve talked about prevention planning for organizations, for individuals, and talked about presilience as a concept that if we can get in front of things, we can then build the shell, if you will, or armament around ourselves that can help us manage these changing environmental conditions. I think the pandemic, we needed something to shine a light on burnout. The pandemic did that for a lot of people and a lot of organizations. I think that’s a key for us to look at is, what did that teach us versus, thank God, the pandemic’s over which it’s really not, but people say that, and then we just move on in our lives. I think there’s a lot to learn from that for us around Burnout.
Jessica: When you are at the point where you’re crawling across the floor, or you find that you’re having a hard time doing things that you love serving people that you love to serve, what should we do when we find that we’re crawling across the floor like that [chuckles]?
Nicole: Every few months, every year, I think Chip and I play with a theme of human experience. Lately, the one I’ve been really thinking about is you have permission to be human. It feels really relevant for a lot of helping profession because again, we tend to put ourselves second or last. Sometimes it’s hard to acknowledge the impact, stress and trauma and secondary trauma has on us. We do a lot of work with attorneys and court reporters, health care workers, some of these helping professions. For them to just admit that what they hear is hard, that alone can sometimes feel like a barrier.
I think having this idea that if you hear something that’s hard to hold on to, if you hear what somebody else has been through and somebody else’s tragedy, you’re human, and if it impacts you, you get to say that was hard, I can take a step back, and I can take a moment to absorb and lean on somebody else, power of peer, I’m sure we’ll talk about. To me, that’s what you do. You give yourself permission to say it was hard, and I’m human, and I get to feel that. It doesn’t make me any less amazing at my job.
Bob: Chip, does that secondary trauma that service providers and helping professionals experience, does that impact their risk of burnout?
Chip: It’s a very interesting question. Back in about 2008 to 2012, somewhere in that range, we did a major project called Support Net with the Army across the world. In that project, we were able to sample service providers, behavioral health providers across all of the entire globe that were related to the US Army. We learned a lot and we did publish quite a few papers from that project.
One of the things that we learned was that burnout itself actually can create a risk for secondary trauma. It makes sense that you’ve got this shell that when you’re working hard, listening to a lot of difficult issues from people and really putting yourself out there as a helping professional, that if you’ve become burned out, that information can seep through more. What we see is that actually, if you get more severe burnout, you actually have an increased risk for secondary trauma symptoms. That’s really important for us to think about as providers, because often I don’t think people put those two things together and understand how they would interact, but that’s what our studies show.
I think it’s important for the discussion, as we were just talking about that, self-care and other care in the sense of reaching out and getting support from others, as Nicole was describing the power of peer, is pretty crucial. I think a lot of helping professionals assume that they’re good, they can handle it, they’re used to taking care of other people, but they sometimes don’t prioritize themselves very well. That’s a pretty crucial piece here or else, you can find yourself on that cascade of, I’m getting burned out, I just noticed it, but I’m also having dreams about my clients and the horrific things that somebody maybe has gone through, and that stuff starts really creeping in more.
Nicole: On the topic of self-care, again, one of the things we’ve been really thinking about lately is self-care can sometimes have this fluffy feeling. Sometimes when people say, “Oh, you just need self-care,” that actually that feels like, oh, that’s even more frustrating because now you’re saying I need to add one more thing on to my plate or whatever that might feel, it feels fluffy. Especially when talking about health care workers, one of the things we really talked about is self-care is self-preservation, that you really have to be able to take care of yourself even in really basic needs.
Go talk to a health care worker and ask during your shift, how much do you go to the bathroom? When do you stop and eat besides a cube of cheese? The answers are, oh, I go 8, 9, 10 hours. Self-care is the idea of you get to stop and go to the bathroom, you get to stop and eat, you get to stop and take care of yourself. When we do that, it helps us preserve who we are, again, why you got into this field. One of the challenges we’ve been putting out in a lot of our trainings is to think about it as a way to preserve who you are when you get to stop and take care of yourself, and that it’s a pocket of time.
That self-care doesn’t have to be, oh, I have to take a day off, or I have to go on a vacation, or I have to do whatever. It’s a pocket of time. It’s a minute of meditation. It’s choosing to go for a walk during your meeting. It’s things like that, that really start to add up.
Jessica: You mentioned the pockets of time, and these are some of the ways that service providers can build a little bit of time for themselves. You also mentioned that sometimes if you tell people, “You need to just do some self-care moments.” Even when it’s little pockets of time, does that start to feel like they have to add these things to their list to check off, or are there strategies to help people build that in without making it feel like another thing that they’re supposed to do?
Nicole: One of the things we talk about is we tend to be really good at putting all of these things on our to-do list, like I have to attend this meeting, and then I have to pay this bill and then I have to work on this report. We have a to-do list. What we tend not to do is put the self-care pieces on my to-do list, like I should eat lunch today, make sure I cross that off. I can listen to this podcast today, cross that off. It’s less but it’s one more thing and more of it’s part of your day. Just as important as seeing these clients is me taking care of myself. Those get to live on equal planes, versus when it feels more important than the other.
Jessica: Yes, okay. I love that. That makes a lot of sense. Given the factors leading to burnout, what are some other things that service providers can do to build their resilience up?
Nicole: I’m going to talk about power of peer here. I think, really being able to lean on one another and to share what’s been going on, I mentioned one of the things I’m so proud about with our own institute is how much care and respect and longevity we have with each other, and how much respect for work-life experiences we have. One of the things, the trends that we’ve seen in recent years, and we talk about this in our GRIT Program, is we have a tendency of what I call a drive-by check in, that maybe I come in and it’s Monday morning, and I see Chip walking in too and I say, “Chip, how’s it going?” Before Chip has had time to answer, I’m already in my office.
We have this very casual, “Oh, how’s it going? How are things going for you?” but we rarely stop and listen to the answer and follow up and say, “No, really? How are you doing? How are you coping? I know you went through that hard thing? What’s it like for you now?” I think one of the things that we can do for burnout and, again, that self-preservation is truly check in with one another, truly take the time to say, “Really, how are you?”
That can be a 5-minute conversation, 10, 15-minute follow-up conversation, but it’s just saying I notice you, I care, I’m invested in what’s going on in your life. It gives permission for that other person to really start to share and open up a little bit. We hear all the time about how important social support is when it comes to stress, but I think it goes beyond just checking in with one another and truly asking some of those questions, which is what I love about the GRIT Program is we really break that down. That’s what I would say, social support.
Chip: I think the GRIT Program that we want people to recognize this out there and access it, it’s free and it’s at grit.uccs.edu. It’s something that really teaches people and it’s interesting, if you’re already a service provider, a lot of this information is not going to be like, oh my god, I’ve never heard that before. It’s packaged in a way to think about how to reach out to people that we care and love in our lives and really create that deeper bond and deeper support that we often think is there, but we don’t harness it. We don’t really cultivate it necessarily. I think some people do, some people are really good at that.
I think helping professionals often are good at doing that for clients, but they’re not necessarily good at doing that for themselves. I think the GRIT Program might be something for people to think about with that. This morning, for example, I went for a quick hike with a good dear friend of mine, and we had just a wonderful conversation that was deep and meaningful about our lives and what’s happening. We were out for about an hour. I was driving home, and I was thinking that filled me up. It gave me a sense of connection, we hugged each other at the end and there was just a calm, common connection in our lives around somebody cares about me and I care about them. That sounds pretty fundamental, but I think it is fundamental, actually.
Nicole: If you see a colleague coming in and they’re in crutches and holding a box and holding a coffee and holding a stack of papers and they’re struggling to get through the door, any one of us would say, “Oh, let me help you. Let me grab this for you. Let me help get you into the door.” At the same time, I think sometimes we see colleagues coming in and they look upset and they look frustrated, they look flustered and we have this, “Oh, I should respect their privacy moment.” We just let them do their thing.
I think if we start really respecting how mental health is health, it’s all one body, then we can start respecting how can we reach out in those moments as well. “Hey, I just noticed, are you okay? Is there anything I can do? Can I offer some assistance right now?” Instead, we take this really, “Oh, we’ll just leave them in their space.” That’s what I think about with those moments as well.
Bob: Do you guys have a framework for how you view resilience? We’ve been talking a lot about social support, and some resilience researchers talk about internal factors, external factors. How does your institute and your work look at the factors for resilience?
Charles: It’s a great question. To be candid, we spent six months as a team with several people on the team talking about what resilience is because it’s so used in different ways in the literature, but among people as well. What we really came down on is that, unfortunately, a lot of people think resilience is a trait and we really push back against that. I think that’s too simplistic. What resilience is is a process. It’s a process by which a person is able to adapt and change in an effective manner, a more adaptive manner, utilizing both internal resources, so our own capacity to cope, our efficacy perceptions and so forth, and external resources like social support.
We’re able to harness those in a way when we’re dealing with a severe adversity that has, in a sense, knocked us down a little bit, and we’re having to react to that and come back from it. We utilize our resources in a way that are more effective for us and that enable us to be able to overcome what’s happened. So that, I think, is what resilience is. It’s a dynamic process that’s changing across time and the utilization of resources in an effective way.
Bob: Nicole, can you talk a little bit about the community programs and maybe connecting back to what Chip said, how those programs might be able to help people build those resources that we draw on?
Nicole: Yes. One of the things that we were really conscientious of with GRIT is putting out some easy resources to share. I think one of the wonderful human phenomenons that happens when we experience a community disaster stress is a lot of genuine people do come together and say how can I help? How can I support? Sometimes what ends up holding us back is I don’t know what I would say. I don’t know what I would share. I don’t know how to reach, how to get these people to the next resource.
With GRIT, we really break it down into say these are five exact steps of how do you reach out, how do you make that connection, so we can make it pretty fluid. Then how do you share some resources? There could be some really helpful resources. We encourage people to be aware of what’s in your community. Then we also share national resources like the Crisis Center number. 211 is it a phenomenal resource. Some of those sites and apps and things like that so that you do feel equipped to share some of this out.
One of our favorite stories, and we share this one a lot, is when we first launched GRIT out, which, by the way we launched [unintelligible 00:25:20] the pandemic really rolled around March 14th, March 16th-ish, we rolled our first GRIT class out in April. We were able to really get this out quickly. In the beginning, when we were doing this, we did what we called GRIT together, which is where we welcomed people who took the training to come back and share experiences and feedback.
Somebody said that, I reached out to a friend that I– She was just on my mind. I don’t know why. I hadn’t talked to her in several months, but she was on my mind. I reached out and I checked in and I did the GRIT steps. While they were talking and communicating, the friend revealed that she was actually in a really dark place and having a lot of really hard thoughts and experiences. The GRIT coach, the person who just took our training had literally just went through the module where we talk about some of those resources and had the crisis number right there in her mind because she had just gone through that.
She was able to share the crisis number, get her friend connected to some support. Her friend was really able to get some help that very night. One of the things I’m so proud of is just that ability to share those resources. We hear crisis number, we hear about 211, we hear about some of these things, but we sometimes forget it in the moment when we’re overwhelmed with what we’re going through. For a friend or someone, a loved one to reach out and say, “Hey, here is this resource, here is this thing,” can be really, really helpful and beneficial.
One of the things we were really excited about is we’re releasing our app, GRIT E app in the next month or so, which will be able to push out a lot of those resources in real-time. We’re really excited to be able to share those.
Charles: I also think it’s important for us to think about, if you’re a behavioral health provider, for example, and you’re working in the military, you understand resources, you understand at least some of those resources that you’re typically utilizing for your clients and so forth. I think what we learned from the Support Net project that I mentioned before, what we did with the Army, was that having an interconnection with a peer coach, somebody who is willing to stand by you, around your own sense of wellness and your goals for your own wellness as a way to either help you if you are burned out or prevents you from getting burned out and that the coaching process with that really helped people to be able to make some strides in their lives towards feeling more whole, feeling more efficacious again, you’re making strides in your own health, which can make you feel better at your own work.
I think thinking about how to prioritize those goals for yourself and bring some other people one or more into your goal setting and what you’re trying to accomplish can just really, really be helpful. I think that’s important for service providers in that context to think about as a way to help themselves manage it.
Nicole: Could you share a personal practice that you use to help build your own resilience?
Charles: For me, the fundamental things that keep me going include exercise. I really spend a lot of time outside as much as I can because being out in nature for me and moving is really, really healing for me and it fills me up emotionally, spiritually, and so forth. Having that time outside and to be exercising is really vital for me. I’ve made that a priority in my life for a long time. I know I need that, and I also have very strong social connections.
One person in particular in my life, a man that I’ve known for most of my life now, we’ve been bicycling every Friday afternoon for 30 years and it’s just a routine. It’s a process in my life that I count on every Friday as a way to decompress. It’s a person who knows me extremely well and that’s just a wonderful, wonderful thing to have. I think, again, that’s that combination of some of it’s individual for me just personally to be outside and building myself up physically and then also socially having somebody who loves me and I love him. Just having that social connection is really vital for me. Of course, my family and all of that is vital for my own resilience, that’s for sure.
Nicole: I think similarly, I really like to start and end my day with walks was something I picked up when I worked at a crisis center. Whenever I have worked with someone who was just heavy on my heart, I would immediately go for a walk afterwards. That was my big thing. That really got pretty ingrained in me. I really like to start with similar and then nature being out in light. Then family for me as well, I’ve been with my partner, my husband, for 16 years.
He’s been through his own whirlwind of experiences and so being able to lean on one another. Then I have a two-year-old and just watching her just learn life has been really exciting. One of my former colleagues, one of the questions she would like to ask is what brought you joy today and that’s something that I really try to think about every day too, it’s just what brought a smile to my face, and usually it’s her little goofy self. Those are my two big ones.
Bob: Chip and Nicole, thank you so much for the work you’re doing, and for joining us today on the podcast.
Charles: My pleasure. I’ve enjoyed it very much. Thank you, Jessica. Thank you, Bob.
Nicole: Absolutely, thank you for having us and allowing us to share what gets us excited.
Bob: Please check out the GRIT program. You can find it at grit.uccs.edu and Lyda Hill Institute for Human Resilience website at Cto learn more about the great work that Chip, Nicole and all their colleagues are doing.
Erin: That’s it for this episode, thanks for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, click the share button in your podcast app to share it with a friend.
We’ll be back next week. Until then, keep practicing.
CREDITS: The Practicing Connection Podcast is a production of One-Op and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, US Department of Defense under award number 2 0 2 3 4 8 7 74 3 3.

Prevent Burnout with "Unfocusing"
2026-04-16 06:00 - 17:00
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Join the “Practicing Connection Community” on LinkedIn. The community is designed for people who support military families in a variety of settings both on installations and in our communities. JTNDZGl2JTIwaWQlM0QlMjJidXp6c3Byb3V0LXBsYXllci0xOTAxOTk5MSUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRmRpdiUzRSUzQ3NjcmlwdCUyMHNyYyUzRCUyMmh0dHBzJTNBJTJGJTJGd3d3LmJ1enpzcHJvdXQuY29tJTJGMjA5OTk4MyUyRmVwaXNvZGVzJTJGMTkwMTk5OTEtcHJldmVudC1idXJub3V0LXdpdGgtdW5mb2N1c2luZy5qcyUzRmNvbnRhaW5lcl9pZCUzRGJ1enpzcHJvdXQtcGxheWVyLTE5MDE5OTkxJTI2cGxheWVyJTNEc21hbGwlMjIlMjB0eXBlJTNEJTIydGV4dCUyRmphdmFzY3JpcHQlMjIlMjBjaGFyc2V0JTNEJTIydXRmLTglMjIlM0UlM0MlMkZzY3JpcHQlM0U= (Season 7, Episode 16)
What if the key to getting more done is doing less focusing?
In this episode, Erin introduces the concept of unfocusing – not slacking off, but intentionally giving your brain a chance to rest and recharge.
Drawing from Dr. Srini Pillay’s book Tinker, Dabble, Doodle, Try, we explore why hyperfocusing leads to burnout, mental rigidity, and even impaired decision-making.
Then Erin walks us through a simple, low-pressure practice to help you build a healthier cognitive rhythm — no major schedule overhaul required, just a 10-minute alarm.
Links and resources from this episode:

Tinker, Dabble, Doodle, Try by Dr Srini Pillay : https://drsrinipillay.com/resource/tinker-dabble-doodle-try/
Join our LinkedIn group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/12879756/
Send us a message: practicingconnection@oneop.org

JESSICA BECKENDORF: [00:00:00] Hi, thanks for listening to the Practicing Connection Podcast. I’m Jessica, my co-host, Erin is here as well. And today we’ll be talking about the power of ‘Unfocusing.’ And Erin’s going to be sharing a practice with us. Hi Erin. What’s making you excited right now?
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Wow, that’s such a fun question. I had a bunch of really interesting conversations with coworkers at a professional development conference last week, and so I’m really excited to follow up, and I found some new areas to dig into and really learn about at this conference. So I love learning new things, so that gets me really excited when I get to learn new stuff.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: I have the same kind of bent toward learning new things. I get – I always like to actually joke that, “My hobby is actually learning new things.” When I learned a long time ago, I used to feel guilty about how I, and I think I’ve talked about this on the podcast [00:01:00] before, but how I would like want to get into something, a hobby, and I would buy all the things related to that hobby and I would do it. I would, you can’t really say master it once, but I would feel good enough about what I created one or two times that I would be like, “Cool.”
And it’s almost like my brain was like, “Check. You’ve done that. You don’t have to do it anymore, ever.” And then I just let the stuff sit there for years, all the stuff that I bought, and I used to feel really guilty about that. And that pattern kind of continued. And then I, when I realized that my actual hobby is that I love to learn and try new things, then I stopped buying quite as much when I wanted to get into something, and I would look to see like, where could I borrow it from or what’s the cheapest way that I could get into the hobby without having to get a lot of inventory or put a lot of, you know, outlay out there, cash outlay.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: That is so relatable, but I’m not going to respond anymore because we have to stay on topic.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Right! Let’s [00:02:00] stay on topic.
Well, we’d love to hear what’s going on with you. Please drop us a line at practicingconnection@oneop.org. We’ve actually recently started to do some mailbag episodes, so we’d love to hear any questions you have. We see and respond to every message, and we can’t wait to hear from you.
– break –
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Okay, let’s learn more about unfocusing. Erin, first of all, what is unfocusing? I had not heard this term until you brought it up to me, when we were talking about this while we were producing the episode. It doesn’t really sound like something that could be helpful at work, to be honest.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: I know, my initial response to the word unfocusing was, “Oh, so we should be slacking more.” Which I think tells you a lot about me, I was like, “Oh, that’s an interesting response, self.” Hmm.
But I actually [00:03:00] learned about it in a book by Dr. Srini Pillay: Tinker, Dabble, Doodle, Try.
Dr. Pillay is a psychiatrist and brain researcher. And he was the one who introduced me to the word ‘unfocusing.’ So he describes unfocusing as, “The process for relaxing your brain so that it can be ready, recharged, coordinated, and innovative when you need it to be.”
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Hmm.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Which does actually sound pretty helpful at work. In my experience when I’m trying to be more productive, there’s this voice in me that says, “Oh, you just have to focus harder,” because I have all this experience where when I focus, I can really get a lot of stuff done.
And I think what made me bring this idea to the podcast is, when I started learning about some of the things that can happen when you double down on focusing, or hyperfocus, you’d think, “Oh, well, more focusing is better.”
But actually focusing too [00:04:00] much can be like a major, a major challenge.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: No, this is really interesting because we hear a lot nowadays about how we should not be multitasking. Multitasking is really bad for us, and so this kind of feels like the opposite even though it’s not really the opposite.
I’m not sure how to describe it.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah. Well, we’ll get into it. But before we get into more of that, I want to talk a little bit about what can happen if you hyperfocus too much?
Because when I’m thinking about changing how I use my brain, the cost of switching is really high. So I’ve really got to convince myself, and these were the things that convinced me, “Oh, maybe I should try this.”
So, I have three big things that happen for people when you are only hyper-focusing. One is called selective attention, and the best example of that is, have you seen the Invisible Gorilla video where they play –
JESSICA BECKENDORF: It’s invisible. I haven’t seen it.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah. So there’s this video, and it’s a group of people [00:05:00] and they all have different colored shirts, and they’re passing a ball.
And they did this experiment where they would play this video for people and they would ask, “How many people with red shirts on touched the ball during the video?” And then you would watch it.
And then at the end of the video they would say, “Did you see the gorilla?” And nobody saw the gorilla. And then you rewatch the video and you see there’s a person in a gorilla costume dancing through the video halfway through. But when you’re hyper-focused on seeing who with a red shirt is catching the ball, you miss the gorilla.
And what can happen in our work is if we’re only hyper-focusing, we can miss major warning signs, we can miss major opportunities. We can miss problems that are coming up that we’re unaware of.
And so, unfortunately, once you know what’s happening, you can’t miss the gorilla. So I’m sorry if I made you not have that experience. It is really shocking the [00:06:00] first time that happens to you. I had a teacher show us that and I was like, Ugh.
So the other thing that can happen is loss of caring, which is also a symptom of depression, so that you might have heard that specific phrase before. But essentially when you hyperfocus, it’s the same part of your brain that you use for moral decision making and assessing consequences of your actions, so it fatigues that part of your brain and you have less capacity to assess the consequences of an action.
And so a lot of time when people make choices that later they’re like, “Ooh, why did I do that?” It’s because they lost their ability, or some of their ability, to process consequences of their actions. Which is so fascinating, right? And you’re like, these are not good.
And then the third one is called long-term discounting, or a tendency to minimize the importance of the future. So I see this one a lot on teams that have a huge [00:07:00] workload, and so they’re really focusing super hard to get the workload done, and then they end up not thinking about the cost that they’re going to have in the future.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Or even missing an opportunity to apply for some funding, or missing opportunities because they’re so focused on getting the stuff done.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yes. That’s a great example.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: So how do we avoid the dangers of hyper-focusing? Right? So obviously focusing has got to be helpful sometimes I assume.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yes, actually. Okay. So the best example that I got from this book that I’m reading is they compared focus to a flashlight that has multiple settings. Hopefully you’ve used one of these, so this makes sense.
So focus is when you have a really close, narrow beam that really brightly highlights a specific small area. And this is really useful if it’s nighttime and you need to find something, or you need to fix something in your car.
And unfocused [00:08:00] is the equivalent of a wide diffused beam that reaches far and wide and enables you to have peripheral vision. And so obviously both of those flashlight settings are very useful, but they’re not useful in all circumstances.
And you get the best use of your battery life when you’re able to switch between the two. And the same is true for your brain. You fatigue your brain less when you switch between focus and unfocus, and you use focus in specific situations, and unfocus in other situations. To kind of balance and build a rhythm of focusing in on focusing, and that’s how you can utilize the benefits without landing in these places where you lose capacity.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: All right. Well, I mean, I do have one of those flashlights. I actually have a whole bunch of those flashlights because it’s very helpful for taking your dog out at night.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Mm-hmm.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: But so how do we do this in real life?
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah, [00:09:00] as I said, you know, the sweet spot is training your brain to shift in and out of focus, and Dr. Malay calls this ‘Building a cognitive rhythm.’
So to get brain sciencey about it, and I want to just add a little disclaimer, I am summarizing somebody else’s expertise. I am not a brain expert. But essentially unfocusing is activating what is called the default mode network in your brain.
He described it as the ‘Home of abstract thought,’ which is very fun. And when you activate that part of your brain, it acts as a distraction sponge. It can help with mental flexibility. It connects you more deeply with yourself and others. It helps you integrate your past, your present, and your future, which is really helpful for decision making, pattern recognition and creative problem solving.
And the goal is a lot of time, the rhythm that people have, if they’ve spent a lot of time depending on focusing in order to get done, is they have a focus, focus, focus [00:10:00] fatigue, rhythm, where they just kind of focus until their brain crashes, and they’re really tired or they’re burnt out or they can’t anymore.
And his recommendation is that you pivot to focus, tinker, focus, play, focus, nap, focus. You know, you switch between these different unfocusing strategies, and then you can cut the fatigue crash portion out of your cognitive rhythm, which is exciting. Obviously this is a whole book. I’m not gonna be able to summarize a whole book.
But what we’re going to do is I have a practice that I’ll share in a minute that’s kind of like an an initial first baby step to practice noticing what it feels like to unfocus, and try it out in a low risk, low stakes way, so that you can kind of build your mental muscle for relaxing your brain.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Well, why don’t we get started with that, or did you have something else you wanted to share?
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah, I think I just want to mention before I get into this practice, everybody’s brain’s a little bit different. Everybody has different [00:11:00] experiences, they’re in a different context. People might have different neuro types. And if you’re not familiar with Neurotype, that’s a long conversation that I will get super hyperfocused on, so I won’t get into it.
But essentially, different people’s brains are set up to process information differently, and what works for one person isn’t going to magically work for another person. So this practice is specifically designed to help you explore ‘what is helpful to me.’
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Well, and that’s how we do a lot of our practices, right? We know that sometimes we’re covering a very similar practice than we’ve covered in the past, but we’re doing it in a little bit of a different way. And we do that because of what you just said, Erin, because everyone is a little bit different, and you always need to find what works for you.
So yes, I love this. Let’s get started. Please walk us through the practice.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Okay, step one is to make a list of two to three activities that are undemanding for you. Look for things that physically separate you from a focus task. [00:12:00] Move your body or engage one of your senses, and ideally don’t require you to look at a screen, phone or computer. Sometimes that’s not possible, but try.
So some examples of what that might look like is taking a walk along a familiar route, so you don’t have to think about where you’re going. Listening to a song with your eyes closed and just enjoying it. Coloring a coloring page or doodling, like drawing some sketches, taking a nap, looking out a window while doing the dishes.
Letting your mind wander without trying to make any decisions. Imagining a zany ‘what-if’ scenario. That one I’m going to add a little asterisk of ‘don’t catastrophize.’ Don’t imagine the worst case scenario. Imagine a positive scenario whenever possible.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Can I add one to this list that I love to do? I like to, if I can, sit outside, because it’s not always nice sitting outside weather here, but if I [00:13:00] can sit outside, I love to just close my eyes and listen to all the sounds and just like name the sound.
Like if I hear a bird, I might be like, oh, bird. Bird. And I’ll just keep repeating that until I get to – it’s a mindfulness practice. And then like, I’ll hear a car drive by and I’ll be like, car, car. And I’ll just name the sounds as they come by, and it’s so relaxing
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yes.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: So that’s the whole point, is undemanding. Yes.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Mm-hmm. Okay. So step two is to look at your schedule, hopefully for a whole week, maybe more, and find a time in your day where you can set an unfocus alarm once a day.
It doesn’t have to be the same time every day. There’s no perfect time, but try to look for about 10 minutes where you’re free to do whatever you want. Bonus points if this can be during your workday, but if you don’t have control over your work schedule, after work is fine. But the goal is to just physically, on your phone or your calendar or [00:14:00] however, keep track of time, set an alarm once a day for a week to go unfocus, and find time to do this practice.
And then step three is to stop focusing when the alarm rings.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Stop Unfocusing when the alarm rings? Stop focusing when your alarm rings?
Oh, I see. You’re setting your alarm for a certain time of day, every day.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Okay, yes, so essentially, this is hard because I’m trying to make it open to everybody, but it’s getting confusing. So essentially you’re setting an alarm for unfocused time once a day. It’s helpful for many people if it’s the same time every day, but if that is giving you stress hives, just schedule like 10 minute window and set an alarm.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: You know me so well.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yes. Is that clear?
JESSICA BECKENDORF: You knew where I was going with that. Okay. Yes, yes.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: So when your alarm goes off, stop whatever you’re doing, [00:15:00] even if you’re in the middle of it, even if you’re five words away from finishing your sentence.
This is the part that’s hard, like this is the hard part because if you’re used to focusing and then crashing, your brain is going to tell you that if you stop focusing now, you’re going to lose your momentum and your flow and your productivity, and whatever you’re working on.
And that may be true some of the time. And we’re training our brain to have a new rhythm where we don’t crash. When we stop focusing, we relax. And when you’ve trained your brain to relax, not crash, it means you can come back refreshed and not forgetting everything you were doing. And this is the step that I think is the hardest because it takes the most willpower, discipline, faith, trust.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Well, and this is so interesting too because I think we hear a lot about how interruptions take us [00:16:00] 15 to 20 minutes to get reengaged. Like with some of the information that comes out there, this research sounds really interesting because it kind of is counter to some of the advice we’ve been hearing.
And so I think that might be one of the reasons. It’s hard too, because it feels counterproductive.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yes. And nothing so far has said that that isn’t true. But you’re interrupting yourself and then you’re setting – step four is to set a 10 minute timer where you do one of the activities that you identified in step one.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Mm-hmm.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: And so I think some of what we’re doing here is we’re intentionally stopping and relaxing, and these activities that are undemanding help build capacity.
So you’re pausing and you’re relaxing your brain, and that will help you refocus later. So one of the things that is really interesting that they’re finding is that when you intentionally unfocus, it helps sharpen your ability to [00:17:00] refocus. And so it actually makes some of the transitions and the interruptions a little bit easier if instead of being interrupted, focusing on one thing too hard, focusing on another thing, you have this buffer time of unfocusing to kind of transition and re-relax your brain so it’s not fatigued.
It’s the difference of, you know, if you’re doing reps while you’re lifting weights. and if you just keep going and keep going, that’s where the gains really come. And also if you just keep going and never, ever stop, that’s also how you injure yourself, right? So it’s helpful to a point, and then you’ve got to rest and release your muscles so that you can do your reps again.
That’s kind of the system that I think is being shown.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: This is so interesting. You’ve got this set up as a four step process, but it’s got to be one of the easiest four step processes I’ve ever seen. It’s basically, have a couple of activities in your back pocket that are [00:18:00] really un demanding when your alarm goes off, right?
So then you’re setting an alarm, possibly at the same time every day, maybe at different times, just depending on what your schedule is like, for 10 minutes. You’re doing one of those activities.
And it looks like you might have a secret step five.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yes, I realized that as usual, the secret step five is reflection.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Ha.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: There’s always a reflection on this podcast. And I think what is helpful, especially because this is kind of a baby step, almost a training wheel, to practice these rhythms, you maybe don’t need to do this specific practice forever.
There might be some other rhythm of unfocusing that is a better one for you long term, but this is just a way to practice and train your brain that it’s not a threat, and it’s not scary.
So after you’ve done it for like a week or two weeks, take five minutes to just think about how did it go? What was it like? Did this help me? And as we said, everybody’s brains are different, so if it [00:19:00] didn’t help you, don’t keep doing it.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Right.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Obviously this is why I say do it for a week or two weeks first, because change is hard, and your brain kind of struggles. Do a little bit of pushing through your discomfort
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Mm-hmm.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: As you’re trying it, let yourself be uncomfortable in it for a little bit before you write it off. Don’t try to do this forever if it’s just really messing you up.
So that’s the practice.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Thank you so much for guiding us through that.
We would love to hear how it’s going for you, too. So, if you get a moment, drop us a line at practicingconnection@oneop.org.
Erin, do you have any final words you want to share? About the episode? Not just final words. That would be weird.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: I think what’s so exciting to me about the principles and practices in this book, I’m probably going to talk about more of them in future episodes, is they feel really kind. It feels like a lot of invitations to be kinder to [00:20:00] yourself.
I think often the answer to productivity is to be more disciplined, and that has a really narrow definition. And I think this is a type of discipline. Forcing yourself, like relaxing, takes discipline, which is so funny when you think about it, those ideas feel incompatible.
But I think what’s really lovely is to be disciplined about rest, be disciplined about relaxing. It’s actually important for your brain to function. And I love how it’s a very kind invitation to build rhythms that are healthy, not just productive.
And one of the net results is increased sharpened focus and productivity. But the goal here is not optimizing yourself for output. It’s optimizing yourself for sustainability and longevity.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: “10X your output!”
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah, 10 x your output by lasting 10 more years, right? Like this I think is such an [00:21:00] exciting framework for thinking about burnout prevention, because often burnout has to do with brain fatigue, and so this is specifically a methodology for resting your brain and keeping your brain healthy.
It’s like good brain hygiene. It’s like brushing your teeth. It’s like restarting your computer once a week so it doesn’t melt down. These are the things.
So I think that’s my summary is, if you’re really on the fence of like, “What could this possibly do for me?” This is how you keep yourself from burning out. Here’s an invitation to be kind and be sustainable with your use of your own self and your own brain.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Awesome. Well, that’s it for this episode. Thanks so much for joining us.
If you enjoyed this episode, click the share button in your podcast app and share it with a friend or colleague. We’ll be back next week with a new episode.
Until then, keep practicing.
[00:22:00]
CREDITS: The Practicing Connection Podcast is a production of One-Op and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, US Department of Defense under award number 2 0 2 3 4 8 7 74 3 3.

Practical Strategies for Supporting Preschoolers Through Change
2026-04-14 11:00 - 12:30
Preschool is the perfect time to help children learn flexibility, problem-solving, and self-help skills. These skills can help preschoolers handle moves and changes throughout their lives. This webinar shares ways to prepare young children for changes in caregivers, daily routines, and friends when they move. Professionals will learn how to use adaptive tools and keep things consistent so children—including those with disabilities—feel safe and secure. Real-life examples will show how teaching children to adapt helps create a strong foundation for future readiness.
Learning Objectives:

Identify three practical steps to prepare preschoolers for environmental and routine changes.
Describe two adaptive tools or routines that support children with disabilities in new settings.
Create one problem-solving technique that builds adaptability in young children.

Dr. O’Grady is an assistant professor of early childhood special education at the University of Alabama. She holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in early childhood education, an additional graduate certificate in English as New Language through the Alliance for Catholic Education at the University of Notre Dame, and a Ph.D. in special education from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her research seeks to disrupt deficit narratives about children and families, advance inclusion for young children with disabilities, and support the well-being of the early childhood workforce. Ms. Sullivan is a current practitioner in early childhood education, teaching preschoolers ages 3-5 years at a university laboratory preschool. Amber is also a mentor teacher to undergraduate students completing practicum and internship hours in human development, ECE, elementary education, and special education. Amber is a current Ph.D. student, pursuing a Ph.D. in early childhood special education. Amber’s research interests are in advocacy and teacher training regarding early intervention, as well as trauma-informed care in early childhood.

Certified in Family and Consumer Sciences (CFCS): This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits from the American Association for Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 4/14/2028.
Board Certified Disability Management Specialists: This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) clock hour from The Commission for Case Manager Certification. Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 4/14/2026.
Certified Family Life Educators (CFLE): This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits from the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 4/14/2029.
Certified Health Education Specialist (CHES) and Master Certified Health Education Specialist (MCHES): This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education credit from the National Commission for Health Education Credentialing (NCHEC). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 4/14/2029.
Michigan Certified Teachers: This webinar has been approved for 1.5 SCECH from the Michigan Education Association’s Center for Leadership and Learning. Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 4/14/2029.
Social Workers, Licensed Professional Counselors, and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists: This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits from the University of Texas at Austin School of Social Work. Check with your state licensing agency for reciprocity and/or credit approval if licensed for other professions or in one of the following states: CO, FL, HI, IA, KS, KY, MI, NY, ND, OH, OK. Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close 4/14/2029.
OneOp Certificates of Attendance are available for those interested in additional documentation of professional development activities.

If the button above does not appear, please access the continuing education survey through this link: https://auburn.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_bNQzEXRuaIQkwD4. If you have any questions, email ce@oneop.org. Additional Resources
Webinar Slides Photo Credit: AdobeStock 219108105

How to Get the Most Out of the Practicing Connection Podcast (Listener Q&A)
2026-04-09 06:00 - 17:00
Subscribe to the “Practicing Connection” monthly email to keep up to date on our latest podcasts, blog posts and workshops.
Join the “Practicing Connection Community” on LinkedIn. The community is designed for people who support military families in a variety of settings both on installations and in our communities. JTNDZGl2JTIwaWQlM0QlMjJidXp6c3Byb3V0LXBsYXllci0xODk3Mjc5OCUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRmRpdiUzRSUzQ3NjcmlwdCUyMHNyYyUzRCUyMmh0dHBzJTNBJTJGJTJGd3d3LmJ1enpzcHJvdXQuY29tJTJGMjA5OTk4MyUyRmVwaXNvZGVzJTJGMTg5NzI3OTgtaG93LXRvLWdldC10aGUtbW9zdC1vdXQtb2YtcHJhY3RpY2luZy1jb25uZWN0aW9uLXBvZGNhc3QtbGlzdGVuZXItcS1hLmpzJTNGY29udGFpbmVyX2lkJTNEYnV6enNwcm91dC1wbGF5ZXItMTg5NzI3OTglMjZwbGF5ZXIlM0RzbWFsbCUyMiUyMHR5cGUlM0QlMjJ0ZXh0JTJGamF2YXNjcmlwdCUyMiUyMGNoYXJzZXQlM0QlMjJ1dGYtOCUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRnNjcmlwdCUzRQ== (Season 7, Episode 15)
Have you ever asked, “So what do I do with this?” after listening to a Practicing Connection episode?
Put the pieces together with us on our first Q&A episode!
Join Erin and Jessica as we answer listener questions on how to start actually doing practices, including must-listen episodes and what practices you can combine.
We share some of our favorite episodes and practices, along with suggestions for listeners to take the next steps in their own practicing journey.
There’s lots here, so bookmark this one, these episodes will keep you company for a while!
Episodes referenced in this episode:

Encouragement That Works: How to Give a Real Pep Talk https://oneop.org/learn/how-to-give-a-real-pep-talk/
Beyond Sleep: Four Kinds of Rest We All Need https://oneop.org/learn/beyond-sleep-four-kinds-of-rest-we-all-need/
More than a Meal: Building Community and Resilience with Chef Mary Long https://oneop.org/learn/more-than-a-meal-building-community-and-resilience-with-chef-mary-long/
Collaboration in Action: Serving Military Families through Strengthening Communities https://oneop.org/learn/collaboration-in-action/
Adventure-Ready: Strengthening Military Families Through Teen Camps https://oneop.org/learn/adventure-ready-strengthening-military-families-through-teen-camps/, https://fcs.mgcafe.uky.edu/MTAC
Do Less of What Drains You https://oneop.org/learn/do-less-of-what-drains-you/
Using the Feeling Wheel to Know Your Emotions https://oneop.org/learn/using-the-feeling-wheel-to-know-your-emotions-s-4-ep-11/
Listening for Strengths and Values https://oneop.org/learn/listening-for-strengths-and-values-s-5-ep-2/
An Ecosystem of Military Family Support with Nicola Winkel https://oneop.org/learn/learning-from-each-other-s-5-ep-5/
Notice Offers & See Them as Gifts, with Shannon Hughes https://oneop.org/learn/notice-offers-see-them-as-gifts-s-5-ep-13/
Strengthening Military Community Connections with Amy Rodick https://oneop.org/learn/strengthening-military-community-connections/
Habit Stacking https://oneop.org/learn/habit-stacking/
Ending the Day Strong: A 5-minute Daily Reset https://oneop.org/learn/ending-the-day-strong-a-5-minute-daily-reset/
Reconnecting with Wonder to Spark Creativity https://oneop.org/learn/reconnecting-with-wonder-to-sparl-creativity/

Further links and resources for the podcast:

Join our LinkedIn group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/12879756/
Send us a message: practicingconnection@oneop.org

[00:00:00]
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Hi. Thank you for listening to the Practicing Connection Podcast. I’m Erin. My co-host Jessica is here as well. Today we’ll be answering listener questions in our first ever mailbag episode.
Hi Jessica. How are you feeling about answering questions today?
JESSICA BECKENDORF: I am so excited for this episode. ‘Cause as you know, I got a peek at the questions, and I’m just really excited. I hope that my voice holds out, as you might be able to tell, I have a little bit of a cold. But I am super stoked about this episode. We’ve been planning this for a while.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: How are you feeling about it?
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: I’m feeling really excited. I think it’s fun to have actual interaction with some questions from others, which is fun.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: And you got to collect these too. So that must have been fun.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: I did get to collect these. It was really fun, and I got to, I kind of selected which ones we’re doing, and I think it’ll be [00:01:00] really fun because you’ve been doing this podcast for a while. You’ve been here since the beginning of the podcast.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Since the beginning of time.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: And I’m new, so I think it’ll be really fun to see how different our answers are to questions. Are you ready to dive in?
JESSICA BECKENDORF: I am, and I’ll try not to be long-winded. As you said, I’ve been here since the beginning of time.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: I did not say you have been here since the beginning of time! You just helped found it. You’re a founder. It’s very exciting.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Okay. Let’s do it.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Okay. First question.
“Hi, I’m new to listening to the podcast. I love that you have interviews and Practicasts. The practices all seem super useful when I’m listening, but I can never manage to get myself to actually do one. Do you have any suggestions on how to get unstuck and actually try something?”
JESSICA BECKENDORF: I do. And actually, the suggestions that I have come from some of the foundational work [00:02:00] that Bob and I were doing when we first started this podcast.
So, the first one is, touch the treadmill. And what I mean by that, you were about to ask what I mean by that,right?
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: I was. You read my eyebrow perfectly.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: So what that means is, you’ve got a treadmill, and you’ve got the will potentially to use it. But also it’s very difficult somehow to use. And the idea here is that if you promise yourself that all you have to do is go downstairs or go to wherever the treadmill is and just touch it, chances are you’re going to get up on the thing and go for a couple minutes. And you might negotiate with yourself and say, “I only need to do five minutes, and I’m gonna consider that a win for today,” right?
So the chances of when you go and touch the treadmill of you getting on it are greater.
And then if you get on it, the chances of you going for five minutes, or maybe, you know, you get to five minutes and you’re like, “Oh, I can go five more minutes,” the [00:03:00] chances of you doing something with it are greater.
And so the idea here is getting unstuck. You don’t have to try the whole thing. You can just say, “You know what, I’m going to consider it a win if I just do a piece of this practice, or if I just do a piece of this thing.”
Or if I start by, for example, I know that I want to get up out of bed – my goal is to get up out of bed by 6:30 in the morning. That is really hard for me. And so right now I am happy if I’m getting out of bed before 7:00 AM. It can be one minute before 7:00 AM. It can be 30 seconds before 7:00 AM. I don’t care. I’m happy if I’m getting up before 7:00 AM.
My goal, I know, is eventually I’m going to keep walking that back 10 minutes at a time. But as soon as I start to very consistently get up before 7:00 AM, then I’ll set it back to 6:50. So I want to get up before 6:50 AM. So eventually my goal will be to be getting up [00:04:00] before or at 6:30 AM.
And so to me, touching the treadmill is 6:59 and 59 seconds. If I get up, right, then that is still a win.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: I love this. We call this breaking inertia. That’s what we talk about at our house, where it’s like once you get started, it’s easier to keep going, but finding the momentum to get going is the hardest thing. So you can come up with the most laughably easy success.
You know, we do this thing where we’ll do walks every day in the winter, and sometimes before we like fully went into it, I was, I did a lot of saying, “Okay, I just have to stand outside. I just have to get dressed and put shoes on and go outside.” And then once I was out there, I was like, “Wait, actually it’s nice out here.”
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yep.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: So that’s me retelling the thing you just told [00:05:00] again,
But –
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Well, and these are both physical examples. I want to give also like a maybe non-physical example. So I really value and enjoy creative writing, and yet I hardly ever do it, but I’ve been doing it lately because I had to touch the treadmill of attitude about it.
And I’m like, all I have to do is open Scrivener, click through a few of my chapters, maybe read a couple things. I don’t have to even do any of that. All I have to do is open Scrivener and just like look at the project for a second. That’s the touch the treadmill.
And then once I’m in it, I do tend to read through what I’ve got and maybe I’ll add a few words here or there. Maybe I don’t. Sometimes I don’t, but I still feel like I won, because I did something in that space.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Awesome.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: And the other thing that I would say of getting unstuck and actually trying something is to remember that you don’t have to do anything perfectly the first time, or ever. You don’t ever have to do anything perfectly.
There are [00:06:00] systems that I have followed, what is that, David Allen’s Getting Things Done system. I tried that so many times. It doesn’t work for me, but you know what, there are little pieces of it that work for me really well. And so I stole those few little pieces and I started assembling my own thing.
And so one of the things I always say comes from this yoga teacher that I had once, that it’s yoga practice people, not yoga perfect. It’s yoga practice, not yoga perfect.
And so remember that anything that you’re doing is practice, and you can just take from it what you want. You don’t have to do the whole thing in its perfection, the whole in its entirety, just because someone else developed this thing for you to follow.
You don’t have to follow everything. Just take the little pieces that mean something to you.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: I love that. Okay, so my initial thought when I read this question was about “switch [00:07:00] costs.” Have you heard of this term?
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Is this sort of like context switching, or is it something else?
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Kind of. Essentially it’s: brains kind of default to what they’re familiar with, what routines and what you’ve done before. And that’s kind of your default.
And so when you make a change, there’s a cost to it, and sometimes your brain is just resistant to it. Even if you think it’ll be a good change, your brain is trying to protect you from wasting time, energy, resources, danger.
Because sometimes change can read as danger, and so your brain is just like, “Oh, it’s not worth doing.” And a lot of times, I heard about this first in creative spaces where people had been working for a long time, or also in entrepreneurship, which is funny. People will work on something for a long time, and right before they’re about to go public with it, they just have the major energy slump crisis of, “Am I able to pull this off?”
And it’s this kind of “switch [00:08:00] cost” place. The best advice I’ve gotten for navigating switch cost, when suddenly your brain’s telling you, “Oh, this is gonna cost too much to try,” is something called spread of alternatives, where basically you imagine, “Okay, what will it be like if I stay the same?”
And then you also imagine, “What could be different in a good way if I tried the new thing?” It’s a lot like visualization.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Or I always like to say, “What could this make possible?”
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yes. And that helps your brain freak out less about change to imagine. You can kind of see, okay, what will it cost me to keep doing it the way that I’m doing it, and what could benefit me from doing it a new way?
And that kind of helps shift the balance in your brain into a new thing. So I don’t know if that’s what’s happening for the person asking this question, but to me it sounds like often I hear a similar question from people [00:09:00] who are maybe overwhelmed, or have a huge workload on their plate. And so adding one more thing feels impossible.
My response to that would be that your workload is never going to change unless you start trying something.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Mm-hmm.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: So change isn’t the enemy necessarily, and here’s a way to help you decide if a change is worth doing.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Oh, I love that.
Well, what’s our next question? Let’s, I’m, we’re warming up here. I appreciate that first one. I like the order you put this in.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Oh, thank you. Okay, so question two: “I just started listening to the podcast. What are your top must-listen-to episodes from past seasons? There are too many to listen to them all.”
JESSICA BECKENDORF: So the, my first thought when I saw this question is, “You think I’m going to be able to narrow this down very much?
I mean, yes, I can narrow it down for sure, but as we’ve [00:10:00] established, I’ve been here since the beginning of time on this podcast. And so, I did make a few notes. It’s certainly not all-inclusive because if I had been all inclusive, It would’ve just been too long of a list, but I’m going to start with one of our most recent episodes.
I really loved the conversation I had with the mayor of Havelock, Will Lewis. That was published in February,
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah, last episode of February.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. And frankly, I love a lot of our interview episodes. Bringing other voices on the podcast, but also just learning from others.
So I loved talking with the mayor of Havelock. Havelock has done some amazing things and created some really strong partnerships, and collaborations across disciplines, public and private, the installation nearby, and the city officials. And I just think they’ve done a tremendous job there.
Another one that comes to [00:11:00] mind really strongly is the More Than a Meal with Chef Mary Long. Her work is at the US Army North Vogel Resilience Center in San Antonio. She has these really innovative cooking classes, and she talked a lot about how the community that’s built up around this center has been really important for the service members who have been taking advantage of that in their families.
And some of our Practicasts that have come to mind: this is one I told you I was going to mention it, even though it has not been super popular with the listeners. I love this practice and it has helped me tremendously.
There’s an episode we have called Energy and Engagement Tracking. I don’t know, maybe it’s the name of the episode that isn’t playing very well, but it is not as well-loved as I thought it was going- it’s not like the hit I thought it was going to be. But I love that episode, and I love the practice that we shared during that. It’s [00:12:00] something that I literally have used – all of our practices we have used – but this is one that I keep coming back to and using.
Another one using the Feeling Wheel to Understand Emotions. This one is well-loved among our listeners. Any of our strengths-based ones, so like the Via Character Strengths, as you know, I talk about them all the time. I’ve had a lot of training in them, and I speak about them way too annoyingly often.
So really any of our strengths-based episodes. But one in particular is Listening for Strengths. I think our Ecosystem of Military Family Support with Nicola Winkle was one of my personal favorites.
And then we did three episodes that were based on improv, and I bring it up here and there, I try not to mention it too much, but I did used to perform improv, and really have learned a lot about the application of theater and improvisational theater tools [00:13:00] in life. And I’ve brought a lot of that to my work. And so we have three episodes on that that we did with a tremendous guest, Shannon Hughes from Enlivened Studios.
I just loved doing these episodes. There were three of them. They are: Yes, And vs. Yeah, But, Make Your Partner Look Good, and Notice Offers & See Them as Gifts.
And all of those ones I just mentioned, they’re all some of my personal favorites.
I have many personal favorites on the podcast, and I’m not trying to sound like, I don’t know, I really do feel like I’ve created something that I would listen to. And so it’s very genuine love for this podcast when I say that I could have gone on and listed more, so I could keep going.
And the last thing I’ll say is that any of our interviews really are such a joy for me, and I think that any of our interviews are a must-listen. And we’ve even spoken with Amy Roddick, the Director of Military Family and Readiness policy a couple of times, [00:14:00] those have been really great conversations and I look forward hopefully to more.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Wow. Okay. So I think that’s a great list. I’ll keep mine super short because I don’t want to overwhelm people with 20 episodes.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Like I just did.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Um, yes. Also, because I have to go hunt all of these down so we can put links in the show notes.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yes.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Do not despair. Every episode we mention in this episode will be linked in the show notes, even if it ends up being 20. Just so that you don’t have to go find them, they’re going to be right there.
I think one of the first episodes I ever listened to was Adventure Ready, Strengthening Military Families Through Teen Camps. That was last year. And it was this really cool episode where our colleague Kristen came on with some of her coworkers from Kentucky to talk about these really cool 4-H adventure camps that they do for military youth and their parents, where they can [00:15:00] go with their parent.
And I think what I loved about that is, camp is familiar to me, both my mother and one of my best friends have done the running summer camp thing. And so it was very familiar. It was a context I understood, but I hadn’t really understood the military layer until I listened to that episode.
And they were talking about how they do all of the normal camp things, but there was one major difference, which was, military parents were expressing, “We don’t want to be separated from our kid. We’re already separated so much. We want time to do things together. We want experiences together so we can have quality time with our teens.”
And then they developed these camps out of that idea. And I, first of all, loved it. The camp sounded super cool, super fun, and it’s clear that they’re really being intentional. And it was just a delight to hear this group. You should definitely all go listen to that episode. They’re still running the camps. I think [00:16:00] registration for this year opens like next week sometime.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: I was going to say, it’s got to be coming soon because we did this last April.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah, that would make sense. I think April is the Month of the Military Child, so definitely a season in which we do it. I’ll put the links to that episode and to the camp also in our show notes.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: That’s also any branch too, right?
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yes. There’s a registration fee of like $60 for this camp. But otherwise, the camps are completely free and include equipment, lodging, and meals. So it’s a very exciting opportunity.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: And you don’t have to be in Kentucky, right. You can be from anywhere.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah, that’s what I thought.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. That was a great conversation, and I saw that you listed it, so I didn’t put it in my list, but it is one of the interviews that I loved last year.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah. So much like deep thought was put into what people were doing, and it was clear they were so passionate about what they were doing and so it was just pleasant, and [00:17:00] everybody had really lovely sounding voices. You know, every once in a while someone’s voice just like hits the perfect spot.
Anyway, I really enjoyed that episode. And one episode I really loved that I did, I was kind of like the lead writer for it, was Beyond Sleep: Four Kinds of Rest We All Need, where we walk people through how to do an inventory of different types of rest that you need.
And part of why I love it is because after we recorded it, I kept having conversations with all of these people where they were just saying, “Oh, I had all this time off, and I’m so exhausted.” I was like, “Hey, it’s possible you’re not getting the rest you need.”
So then I ended up referring a bunch of people to it and having that conversation, and actually doing that inventory with a couple of people to help them come up with new ways of resting
And getting to actually see people have these transformative experiences [00:18:00] because of a practice that I was the lead writer on was really invigorating. Selfishly, I loved it because it really helps motivate me to write specific and thorough episodes. You know, we think pretty deeply about what we’re sharing, and it’s really encouraging to see, ‘Oh yeah, this is actually helpful. It’s not just helpful to me personally. It is helpful to a broad audience.”
So those are kind of my top two.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: I love that. I really loved that episode. Also that Practicast you mentioned. And it makes me want to actually go back and listen to it because, I mean, yes, I know I need physical rest right now because I’m getting over a little bit of a virus. But, I’m reminded that there’s other kinds of rest that I could use right now too.
So I kind of want to go back and listen to that.
Our next question?
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yes. Okay.
“Thanks for introducing me to habit stacking as a productivity tool. Do you have any [00:19:00] recommendations for how we could stack practices? Is that a thing you can even do? What practices could we combine for greater impact?
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Okay. So, Erin, you might suspect I’m going to mention something about character strengths.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Okay, sure. Sure.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: So, I mean, I would say I will always answer questions like this with telling people to lean into, learn about and practice anything to do with building your character strengths.
And then I would say combine that with emotional intelligence. Things like knowing and regulating your emotions. And we do have some episodes using the feeling wheel to help you know your emotions. We have some other episodes about regulating your emotions as well, if I recall.
So anyway, combine character strengths with emotional intelligence, and then if you can mix in a little like “yes, and…” or, any of those, you know, making your partner look [00:20:00] good or the idea of seeing everything in front of you as an offer, including the environment, what people are saying to you. Those are all offers that you can build with.
So those kinds of things combined I think will help you be present with others, will help you just be present period. Not just present with others, but just be present, period.
They will help you improve your relationships and help you build your adaptability and confidence. Adaptability in particular is really important. Things are constantly changing, and I think for some reason we keep denying that that’s what’s happening.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Okay. That makes sense. Hilariously, a lot of the episodes we recommended as must-listens are ones that would be pretty compatible with each other.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. I think so too.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah.
Let’s see what else. I had like a few specific ones. Oh, so one of our most recent episodes, I think it’s [00:21:00] published, yeah, was about How to Give Pep Talks, or, Encouragement That Works. And shortly before that, we had one about social awareness, Turning Conflict into Collaboration.
And I think you can take the practice for observing people on your team and imagining them more complexly from the turning conflict into collaboration. So combine that kind of social intelligence, observing other people and learning about them, with how to give a pep talk to give a really, really good pep talk.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Or if you’re like going through the practice of trying to write a pep talk and you keep getting stuck, ’cause you don’t know what people need to hear or you can’t quite figure out what’s happening, using that practice from Turning Conflict Into Collaboration to really figure out what is it that’s going on with people, what do they value, what’s important to them? And then figuring out, okay, how does that connect to my pep talk?
And then maybe even rewriting your pep talk, because I think once you figure out people’s values, it’s way easier to [00:22:00] write a pep talk.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Mm-hmm.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: So that’s one combination I recommend. And I think one other thing is we had an episode last year about ending the day strong with a daily reflection.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Mm-hmm. We have maybe a lot of those, but that’s okay. Right? You pick the daily reflection that works for you.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yes. Basically any of our reflection practices combine well with other ones because a lot of them are about noticing. So if you’re trying a new thing, the daily reflection practice, I think is specifically really useful if you’re trying a new practice, and you want to see what impact it’s having on your experience.
So like start doing that daily reflection before you start another practice, and then keep doing it after to help you kind of notice the impact of it, and if it’s worth continuing.
If it’s really hitting what you need it to hit, or if you need to pivot and try something new, I also like the Ending the Day Strong daily reflection practice, as like burnout [00:23:00] prevention, and I think it’s a useful way to identify if you’re missing something. So it could help you decide what kind of rest you need.
Last fall we also had some episodes about awe and wonder, which are other things that really help with burnout prevention. So I think those are also potentially practices you could combine.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah, I love that. That kind of reminds me of, I’ve just recently started doing something called Interstitial Journaling, and it’s basically where you just take like 30 seconds to maybe three minutes, when you have a moment. So it’s just in between things and you just quickly say, “Here’s what I just worked on. Here’s what I’m about to work on, here’s how I’m feeling.”
And you just kind of like write a couple things. It’s not meant to be a long journaling session, it’s just sort of in-between things. You record the time that you’re doing it and you say a little bit about what you did, a little bit about what you’re going to do. You can probably say whatever you want in there really.
But maybe a little bit about how you’re feeling. And [00:24:00] it’s been super, super helpful. It may not be like an end of the day reflection, but it’s been sort of a day long reflection. It’s been kind of interesting. It’s still an experiment I’m trying, and maybe we’ll have an episode about it sometime.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: I love that. All right. Any other final thoughts before we wrap it up?
JESSICA BECKENDORF: No, I just had so much fun with our first mailbag session.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah, me too. I hope that people send us more questions and maybe like harder questions!
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yes.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: These are very friendly questions that people have been sending us. You know, it’s like, hit us with some hard ones!
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Well, how are they gonna do that? Let’s tell ’em!
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yes. All right. If you have a question or a hot take to share, please email us at practicingconnection@oneop.org. You can look at the show notes if you want to see that spelled out. We want to hear from you.
We do see and respond to every message, and we promise we will ask your permission [00:25:00] before including any of your questions in a future episode.
That’s it. Thank you for joining us. We’ll be back next week. Until then, keep practicing.
CREDITS: The Practicing Connection Podcast is a production of One-Op and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, US Department of Defense under award number 2 0 2 3 4 8 7 74 3 3.

Child Development: Knowledge, Behavior, and Healthy Boundaries
2026-04-08 11:00 - 12:30
Sexual development begins before birth and continues throughout the lifespan. This development is a normal, expected, and essential part of childhood. It is shaped by other aspects of growth, including social, emotional, cognitive, and moral developmental domains. Sexual development includes not only physical changes, anatomical knowledge, and sexual behaviors, but also boundaries, social skills, friendships, and attachments.
This webinar provides an overview of developmental domains in both preschoolers (ages 6 and under) and school-age children (ages 7-12). Participants will learn how these domains relate to children’s sexual knowledge and behaviors. The session will review typical sexual development across these age ranges and protective and supportive strategies to promote healthy sexual development. The webinar also covers factors behind problematic sexual behavior (PSB) and evidence-based methods to return to healthy development.
Learning Objectives:

Recognize typical social, emotional, and cognitive development in preschoolers (ages 6 and under) and school-age children (ages 7 to 12).
Describe how developmental processes influence children’s sexual knowledge and sexual behavior.
Identify factors linked to the development of problematic sexual behavior (PSB) and outline steps to prevent or respond to these concerns.
Explain evidence-based strategies that promote healthy sexual development and effectively address concerning sexual behaviors.

Benjamin Sigel, PhD, is a Licensed Psychologist and Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry, College of Medicine, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS). His areas of expertise include the assessment and treatment of children with a history of experiencing trauma and exhibiting problematic sexual behavior. Dr. Sigel is a Trauma-Focused Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) and Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) trainer as well as a trainer for the National Center on the Sexual Behavior of Youth.

Certified in Family and Consumer Sciences (CFCS): This webinar is approved for 1.5 continuing education (CE) credits from the American Association for Family and Consumer Sciences (AAFCS). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close on April 8, 2028.
Board Certified Patient Advocates (BCPA): This webinar is approved for 1.5 CE contact hours by The Patient Advocate Certification Board. Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close on April 8, 2028.
Board Certified Case Managers: This webinar is approved for 1.5 CE clock hours from the Commission for Case Manager Certification (CCMC). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close April 8, 2027.
Certified Family Life Educators (CFLE): This webinar is approved for 1.5 CE credits from the National Council on Family Relations (NCFR). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close on April 8, 2029.
Certified Health Education Specialist (CHES) and Master Certified Health Education Specialist (MCHES): This webinar is approved for 1.5 CE credits from the National Commission for Health Education Credentialing (NCHEC). Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close on April 8, 2028.
Social Workers, Licensed Professional Counselors, and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists: This webinar is approved for 1.5 CE credits from the University of Texas at Austin School of Social Work. Check with your state licensing agency for reciprocity and/or credit approval if licensed for other professions or in one of the following states: CO, FL, HI, IA, KS, KY, MI, NY, ND, OH, OK. Note: Eligibility for CE credit will close on April 8, 2028.
OneOp Certificates of Attendance are available for those interested in additional documentation of professional development activities.

If the button above does not appear, please access the continuing education survey through this link: https://auburn.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_2h6URVWneY2sDdk. If you have any questions, email ce@oneop.org. Webinar Slides
Webinar Resources Photo Credit: Adobe Stock by Studio Romantic, file #404443582

This webinar is part of the Sexual Behavior in Children & Youth (SBCY) Series. For more information on other professional development opportunities on this topic, visit the series homepage!
SBCY Series – Homepage

Strong Starts, Steady Bonds: Helping Young Children Thrive Through Change
2026-04-02 11:00 - 12:30
Early experiences shape a child’s ability to adapt, trust, and thrive—making these years critical for long-term resilience. This session explores how to support caregivers in building secure attachments through responsive caregiving, even during deployments or training absences. We’ll share practical ways to integrate early intervention services into daily life across duty stations and maintain developmental progress during transitions. Participants will leave with tools to equip caregivers to support emotional regulation, trust, and early independence in infants and toddlers.
Learning Objectives:

Identify two strategies for sustaining caregiver–child attachment during separations.
Explain one method for maintaining early intervention support before a relocation and after.
Recognize at least two responsive caregiving techniques to promote early development.

Dr. Kimberly Hile is an associate professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), where she coordinates the early childhood education/early childhood special education and child, family, and community development undergraduate degree programs. Her research interests focus on the inclusion of young children with disabilities, Part C early intervention, implementing family-centered practices, and personnel preparation.

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Why Unspoken Expectations Erode Trust (and How to Fix It)
2026-04-02 06:00 - 17:00
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Join the “Practicing Connection Community” on LinkedIn. The community is designed for people who support military families in a variety of settings both on installations and in our communities. JTNDZGl2JTIwaWQlM0QlMjJidXp6c3Byb3V0LXBsYXllci0xODkwNjg4MSUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRmRpdiUzRSUzQ3NjcmlwdCUyMHNyYyUzRCUyMmh0dHBzJTNBJTJGJTJGd3d3LmJ1enpzcHJvdXQuY29tJTJGMjA5OTk4MyUyRmVwaXNvZGVzJTJGMTg5MDY4ODEtd2h5LXVuc3Bva2VuLWV4cGVjdGF0aW9ucy1lcm9kZS10cnVzdC1hbmQtaG93LXRvLWZpeC1pdC5qcyUzRmNvbnRhaW5lcl9pZCUzRGJ1enpzcHJvdXQtcGxheWVyLTE4OTA2ODgxJTI2cGxheWVyJTNEc21hbGwlMjIlMjB0eXBlJTNEJTIydGV4dCUyRmphdmFzY3JpcHQlMjIlMjBjaGFyc2V0JTNEJTIydXRmLTglMjIlM0UlM0MlMkZzY3JpcHQlM0U= (Season 7, Episode 13)
You’re frustrated with someone you’re collaborating with, but you can’t quite explain why.
Chances are, the problem isn’t their performance – it’s the unspoken expectations neither of you knew the other had.
Most of us walk into collaborative relationships with an unwritten rulebook, and then feel quietly frustrated when others don’t follow it.
The problem? We never handed them the book.
In this episode of Practicing Connection, Jessica introduces the Expectation Audit, a simple but powerful practice rooted in organizational psychology. Drawing on research about unspoken workplace expectations, and what Brené Brown calls “stealth expectations,” Jessica and Erin explore why crossed wires at work are rarely about performance or personality.
More often, they’re about invisible norms we’ve never made visible.
You’ll walk away with a practice you can use on your own or with your team to turn frustration into honest, productive conversation.
Links and resources from this episode:

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[00:00:00]
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Hi, and welcome to the Practicing Connection Podcast. I’m Erin. Today we’re talking about a tool to help with those relationships where you feel like you’re constantly dealing with crossed wires. You know that feeling, where you’re a little let down, but you can’t quite put your finger on what’s missing. Jessica’s going to share a practice we’re calling the “Expectation audit.”
Hi, Jessica. I think we’ve all had those moments where we’ve felt let down by a colleague, but can’t quite put our finger on why.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Hi, Erin. Yeah, exactly. We can fall into the trap of thinking that these frustrations are about the other person’s performance or their personality, but more often than not, they’re about unspoken expectations that we’re placing on the person.
And I want to be really clear too, this isn’t about creating a long list of demands for your coworkers or for your collaborators. It’s about making those unwritten rules of your partnership [00:01:00] visible so that you can both actually succeed. And so the project, or the issue you’re trying to address, can actually move forward and you can start making impacts In that issue.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah. Okay, that makes sense. It’s like you want to make sure you’re both playing the same game with the same rule book.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. Right. Not using two different rule books, yeah.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Okay. So let’s get into the why behind this. Where does this idea come from?
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah, and I wanted to say, I love that you framed it as, “We want to make sure we’re playing the same game.” Because when I teach about building trust, I often tell people that when we don’t share what builds or breaks our trust, we’re unknowingly playing games with each other. And it really erodes our ability to build good working relationships.
So, back to your question, where is this coming from? This is grounded in a concept from organizational psychology called the psychological contract. Researchers define this as, “The set of unwritten, informal expectations between people in a [00:02:00] working relationship, or commonly between an employer and employee.”
I’ve seen a lot of descriptions of this psychological contract describing a relationship between an employer and an employee. It’s sort of like an internal contract. When you think interpersonally, it’s like an internal contract that we have. Things like, how fast you expect an email reply versus how fast the other person thinks emails can and should be replied to.
Or, how much detail you want to see or hear about in project updates versus how much detail the other person might feel like they’re willing to share, or is necessary to share.
Are there any examples you would care to share with us right now?
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yes, so I used to have this one colleague who would, their main priority was replying to things as quickly as possible, and it would drive me insane because then they would reply, and then they would have four or five more ideas, and so I would get five rapid fire emails in a row that were all conflicting and [00:03:00] different.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: This sounds like me.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: This was not you. I promise, I would directly tell you about it if it was you!
And so it was always just overwhelming. And then I would miss things because I wouldn’t see that there were new emails, and I just always would be like, “Oh my gosh, can you just stop and think before you press send, ‘Is there anything else I want to say?’”
And it used to drive me insane. And unfortunately, like we never quite resolved that before we ended up working on a project.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: And did you feel like when you got that many messages, or when you would send a message and they got back to you immediately, did you feel like, “Oh crap, this person expects me to respond as quickly.” Did that ever cross your mind?
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yes, it did all the time.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: So it’s a lot of pressure, yeah.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: It is a lot of pressure, and I think there was also just this sense of, “Oh, I also have to make sure that I follow up on everything.” You know, like there was this unspoken thing of like, “Oh, I’m getting everything out at you, and then I have to carry it and move it forward and make sure it’s passed back.”
And you [00:04:00] know, we really probably could have talked about that, but I think we were both pretty swamped at the time, so we never stopped to talk about it.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: And then with all the extra information they were sending you right in between those messages that were really important for you to actually answer, I would imagine that the message that you needed to respond to, it just, everything got muddier and muddier. And it was harder for you to like pick out what you actually needed to do versus not. Is that right?
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah, I think too, you know, I often would then pause, read all of the things, send kind of like one comprehensive message.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: And I’d really stop and pause and go, “Okay, wait, am I saying everything I want to say?” I’d maybe condense it so it wasn’t as long, because I know it’s hard to read long emails, and I try, I’m like a, ‘say all the things’ person.
So I was like, “Okay, how do I make this easier for other people?” And so I think I had this expectation of, “Oh, this is how everybody communicates, right?”
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. Oh, we’re gonna get to that. Not to your expectation. We’re gonna get to [00:05:00] talking about that.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah. And I’m realizing that it really felt like there were all these unwritten rules that both she had and I had, and then we never talked about them. And we were just perpetually irritated with each other. I think a couple of times we had some conversations about, “What works really well for you isn’t necessarily what works best for me, and we can respond to things differently.”
And like we never got past that. So, I’m really excited if you have – yeah, I would love to hear more about this. So are you also kind of talking about that idea of unwritten rules, and like breaching trust with unwritten rules?
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah, it can really feel like a breach of trust. Sometimes when we have an expectation on someone that, whether we’ve communicated that expectation or not, if they don’t meet that it actually erodes our trust as well. So when these informal, unwritten, unspoken contracts are breached, it can also lead to real burnout [00:06:00] and lower engagement too.
So, I have read almost all of Brene Brown’s books, and I like her description of this. So she calls these stealth expectations. So, things we expect from others but haven’t actually asked for. And honestly, Erin, half the time we don’t even realize that we have these expectations on other people until they fail to meet them.
So we’re walking around with a secret rule book in our back pocket, and we’re frustrated that no one else is reading from it.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yes. Oh man, this is so true. I’m having so many thoughts. I often am in a place of, like, “I can tell that I’ve upset somebody, but I don’t know why.”
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah, me too.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Often everybody else is playing with the same rule book and I’m just like, “What is happening here?” So it’s nice to know that it’s not just me.
But it can really feel like you’re trying to build something together, but one of you is using Imperial and one of you is using metric. You’re cutting the pieces but they don’t fit together. And [00:07:00] you know, you both think you’re completely right , because you measured three times before you cut anything and then it still doesn’t work.
And that really is sometimes how teams feel.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah, and that’s also the trap. I mean, we think that our way of working is just the way it’s done. It’s our normal, but your normal is likely very different from your colleague’s normal.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yes, This is exactly it. I think a good example is, my normal might be when I need something, I send a quick Slack message to get the answer. But my teammate’s normal is to gather all of the data and send one big email at the end of the day with all of the things.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Oh gosh, that sounds overwhelming.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Right. I could see that and, you know, if I’m sitting there waiting for someone to get back to me immediately, and they’re waiting to have enough information to feel really prepared and comprehensive and strategic, we’re both going to be super stressed out, even though neither [00:08:00] one of us is doing something wrong.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah. And that’s it. I mean, that’s why this audit is so important. It’s not about correcting someone else’s behavior. It’s about making your normal visible, right? What’s normal for you now becomes visible to everyone.
So when we don’t articulate our preferences, we’re essentially asking people to be mind readers, which nobody likes, right? By doing this audit, you’re saying, “Hey, this is how I’m wired. Does this work for you?” And it can shift the conversation from blame to coordination.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: I love this. So often I see people getting stuck fighting about ‘the right way to do something,’ rather than deciding together from many helpful ways how to do it. So often people just get stuck on, ‘There’s only one correct optimal way,’ and you know, this is my particular axe that I have to grind because I think you limit yourself and you drive yourself crazy when everybody has to be exactly the same.
And really it’s so much more [00:09:00] open, and there’s so much more possibility to what works for us. So I love that we’re talking about this, but walk us through the practice. How do we actually do this?
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Well, just like any practice we share, this is just one of many ways that you could build it. So you can do this on your own at first, and if you like, you can bring it into conversations with your team or your collaborators.
So step one is for you to identify what I’ve been calling a crossed wires relationship. So, bring to mind a situation where working with a team member or a collaborator is feeling heavy or frustrating, or it feels like you’re always crossing wires, right. You’re not quite making the connection.
So once you have a relationship in mind, then do a little bit of a brain dump of your unspoken expectations. So you might ask yourself, “What am I assuming here?” And then you might write down a few things that you expect from this person, but you’ve never actually said out [00:10:00] loud. Or maybe some things that if you’re having a hard time identifying what you’ve said out loud and what you haven’t, you could just write down the things that you’re not getting from that person that you expected.
And then you can ask yourself, “Did I ask for this out loud?” And if I haven’t, or if I think I have in the past, maybe it’s time to just have a gentle reminder, or maybe it’s time for me to verbalize this. So, just start out by finding some things that you’ve been expecting from the person, and then identify whether you’ve asked for it out loud or not.
And then step three is checking your certainty. Look at those expectations and ask yourself, “Well, how would they actually know that this is your expectation? Have you vocalized it?” I know I already said that you should identify that, but I think going this step further and asking, “How would they have known it?”
So if you asked about it and maybe the last time you asked was seven months ago or longer, maybe that’s a [00:11:00] clue for, they don’t actually know that that’s your expectation, that that was something communicated months ago. Possibly in passing, possibly in the middle of a long email.
So keep vocalizing it. You might ask yourself, have you really clearly vocalized it or have you just hinted? And if the answer is that, ‘They should just know,’ right, that, “Oh, well, we have a list of things that the team is supposed to work on, they should just know.” Well, that’s a stealth expectation then. You have an expectation on them that has not been clearly identified or clearly shared.
And then the last step is to ensure that you are vocalizing it. And I say vocalize, it could be written, that’s fine. I do think that a lot of connection happens through discussion.
And so if you’re vocalizing in person, here’s what I would recommend. So admit to the person out loud that you might have been [00:12:00] unclear, you might say, “I realized that I might have some internal quote/unquote “rules” for how I like to receive updates that I’ve never actually shared with you. Can we check in on what would work best for both of us?” That’s why I recommend that you do this verbally if you can, because then it invites conversation, right?
If you’re just sharing it in writing, here’s my expectation. “I realize that I have been unclear about this.” You know, “Please do this in the future.” There’s no opening for the other person to say, “Hey, I didn’t realize that you needed that. I need to do it this way because I have these other three things that I have to do that are attached to it. Can we talk about this?”
When you do it in writing it’s more of a one-sided thing, and that’s why I recommend that you verbalize. So admit to the person out loud that you might’ve been unclear. And then check in with them on what would work best for both of you. Make the offer a very genuine offer.
I would like to add, make the offer that you want [00:13:00] to find a way where it’ll work for both of you. So this can sound a little bit formal, but it is often a really big relief for both people.
Like when you say, “Hey, I realize I never told you that I prefer text for urgent messages.” The other person will often respond with something like, “Oh, thank goodness. I’ve been emailing and wondering why I didn’t hear back.”
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah, I can imagine that even just saying, you know, “I realized I wasn’t clear about this,” or, “I realize I never told you immediately,” might decrease the temperature or the pressure in a room, and it stops being about a communication failure and starts being more about process. More about, “Oh, how do we build a system that works for us? How do we make sure we’re operating with the same instruction manual?”
I think what I really love about step four is it also gives an opportunity and an invitation from you to the other person to share what they need. It’s a way to [00:14:00] kindly ask for what your needs are, but also invite the other person into expressing their needs.
And then you can have this kind of, you know, when they – I’m sorry, I’m immediately thinking about couples counseling where you’re saying, ‘it’s not me versus them. It’s us versus a problem.’ And I think while you maybe work with your partner, most likely don’t, a lot of people don’t, you still have a working relationship with a person.
And then this framing really is, “How do we have us against the problem of our miscommunication?” Not, “You are doing it wrong, and I’m right about everything,” which I think that’s sometimes the fear of, “I can’t express this expectation because then I’m being bossy or I’m being overbearing,” or I don’t know, that they’re capable of meeting my needs.
And then it takes all of the pressure off of forcing another person to do what you want, and more inviting a conversation. So I really appreciate how you framed this audit.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Well, thank you so much. And you know, the final step of inviting their [00:15:00] perspective, because it’s not just about you, but it’s about finding a pathway that fits both of you. You might even ask them, “Take this opportunity.”
This is sort of a little hidden step five. Or you could call it a ‘stealth step five.’
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Stealth mode.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah, if I use this opportunity to maybe ask them like, “Do you have some unspoken rules for a good workflow? Like, things that maybe I haven’t been meeting, or ways that you like to operate?”
Now I’m not saying just because someone says, “Oh yeah, I want to operate this way, this way, and this way,” it doesn’t mean that you have to do what they say because they’re the person who spoke up and said what their needs were.
I really want to be clear, this is about both of you finding something that will work for the two of you, or for the many team members – I say two because that’s been sort of the context of our examples here – but you could ask them like, “What am I missing that might make things easier for you?”
It’s about meeting your needs, while also co-creating a better process together, so [00:16:00] really meeting each other’s needs.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Yeah. And that’s what makes a good team.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: Yeah.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: Thanks so much for sharing this practice with us, Jessica. I love it, and it’s such a great way to turn that ‘crossed wires’ feeling into a moment of connection, and building community with each other.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: You are so welcome. I love talking about interpersonal relationships.
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: That’s good. We talk about them a lot.
JESSICA BECKENDORF: I know, right!
ERIN CARLSON RIVERA: All right, well that’s it everybody, that’s the episode. If you liked it, please share with a friend or a colleague.
We will be back next week with a new episode. And until then, keep practicing.
[00:17:00]
CREDITS: The Practicing Connection Podcast is a production of One-Op and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US Department of Agriculture and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, US Department of Defense under award number 2 0 2 3 4 8 7 74 3 3.
