New Year, New Co-host

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Kalin Goble: Welcome to Practicing Connection, a podcast exploring the personal stories and collective practices that empower us to work together to improve our resilience and readiness in a rapidly changing world.

Jessica Beckendorf: Happy New Year. Thanks so much for listening to the Practicing Connection podcast. I’m Jessica. I’m super excited to introduce you all to Coral Owen, who has been doing incredible work behind the scenes on the podcast for a while. Now you all get to finally hear her voice as my new co-host. Coral, welcome.

Coral Owen: Hey, Jessica. Thanks so much for the warm welcome. It’s a little wild to be here talking with you rather than being behind the scenes, but I am certainly welcoming the change in scenery and really looking forward to being on this side of things.

Jessica: One of the things that’s gone through my mind a little bit is, when we first approached you about this, you’ve been behind the scenes for a while, and you’ve been doing wonderful work there. When we approached you about being in front of the scenes, what made you say yes?

Coral: Like you said, I have been in a production role here with the podcast, a lot of the webinars that we do on other side of the house in OneOp, but after rolling it around for a little while, the offer to join you as co-host going forward, the thing that really did hook me in is this opportunity to have a front row seat, to really intentionally dig into great practices with you. This is something that you and I have done for quite some time, just one-to-one. Just the intentionality to have these– This is sounding very self-serving going through this response. I am really looking forward to just having those conversations with you more regularly. Hopefully it also benefits our listeners as we go through and dig into these great practices and stories and conversations.

Jessica: I’m really looking forward to that too. Just in our planning meetings, as we get together and we brainstorm some future episodes and guests and things like that, it’s been the energy between us has been really fun. We’ve been able to play off of each other really well. Really, that should have been apparent to us from the first time we met because I met you before I was– probably a good– it was about six months before I became a member, a full-on, fully-fledged member of the OneOp team, which at the time was called Military Families Learning Network, because it was a long time ago that we met, and it was such a fun interaction.

Coral: It was. Yes. I remember there are a few folks, every so often, that I clearly remember meeting for the first time, and you’re one of those people. I think we were at a e-extension conference in San Antonio. I had just joined OneOp. This was almost 10 years ago. That’s wild. I just remember having just a really– Mixers to me have always been a little uncomfortable, but I remember I was like, “This guy looks so cool.” We got to chatting. I just felt so at ease and really enjoyed our conversation and learning more about you and the work that you’ve been doing. I remember being so thrilled when you joined the project. We’ve just continued to have really great conversations over the years that we’ve worked together. Here we are.

Jessica: I forgot it was a mixer that we met at. That’s fun. That was a great conference. Likewise, Coral, I never have forgotten meeting you, and then we ended up collaborating right away on a couple of articles. What are you most excited about for our work or for the podcast as we move into 2025 and beyond?

Coral: I think I already alluded to this a little bit that being in front of the mic is somewhat of a growth space for me. That’s one of the things that I’m trying to lean into a bit more intentionally this year. Getting into those growth spaces that can feel a little bit uncomfortable at first. That is not a bad thing in any sense. That is something that, just that understanding, is something that I would like to carry forward into our conversations.

The practices and stories that we’re telling throughout this year is just encouraging everyone who’s joining us in these conversations to inhabit spaces that may feel a little bit frictiony, a little uncomfortable, because that is what enables us to evolve into that next most awesome version of ourselves. Hopefully that can help foster that adventure for some other folks that are tuning in. This time of year tends to be a lot of momentum and sparking new ideas and practices. I’ve also found it to be a really beautiful time to reflect.

Something I was curious, Jessica, are there any reflections about your journey with the podcast so far? Because you all have been up to this for quite some time. As we embark on this next new season, are there any reflections or anything that you could share that you’re looking forward to in 2025?

Jessica: Yes, lots of reflections. Oh my goodness, we put so much thought before we started this podcast. We put so much thought into it. We talked to colleagues in our, at the time, Military Families Learning Network. Now it’s OneOp. We talked to all of our colleagues. We got input on like, what did they want this podcast to feel like? What kinds of things did they want the podcast to talk about? What kinds of professional development areas did they want it to focus on?

It wasn’t like we got specific topics from everyone. It was really more like the big picture. What big picture things do you want it to tackle? We started with only– I can’t remember if it was six or eight a year. Our first few seasons, there’s only six or eight episodes in a year. They were put out monthly, and then we would take a break. It was really a evolution that was interesting to me because at first we started with tackling those topics, those big picture areas that our colleagues had said might be really important for professional development.

Then we started to evolve based on other input that we were getting. For me, I’m really excited about how we’ve evolved into we have a bit of a long form episode at the top of the month. That’s a strong word to use because they’re typically only maybe 40 minutes at the longest. We have a little bit of a longer form where we try to do an interview based on input or stories that we’ve heard about that we want to highlight and lift up to show examples of the military family readiness system in action.

Then we have these little practices that we’re trying to put out there. I don’t expect that there’s anyone out there who’s listening to all of our short practicasts and practicing every single thing. It’s really about finding the thing that sparks you or that you feel like you could incorporate into your daily work and leaving the rest behind, if you’re like, “No, that’s not for me. I know that’s not for me.” What I’m excited about is that we’re giving people those options, and we’re hopefully helping them show up a little differently in the directions that they want to show up in, in their daily life and work.

Coral: One of my current favorite podcasts they talk about– it’s called Mentor Buffet. This is reminding me that this is like a practice buffet.

Jessica: Totally. Oh my gosh, I love that.

Coral: It’s been such a great journey both to listen in but also to support along the way. Thanks for sharing those reflections and also a prospective look. Jess, thanks.

Jessica: No, you’re so welcome. Along with all these practices we’ve been sharing, I know you and I are going to be sharing many practices in the year to come. Yet I’m wondering if you have something that’s supporting your development and growth right now that you can share with us all. You know it’s a tradition on this podcast with our interviewees, and you are the interviewee today, to try to share a practice, if they have one, that’s supporting them right in this moment right now.

Coral: I’m laughing because you can probably see this as we’re recording, Jessica, and all of my colleagues are probably familiar with. I’m just going to air quotes here. The big donkey calendar, it hangs right to the left of my desk. Essentially, since y’all are just listening to this and can’t see what I’m talking about, it’s a year at a glance. It’s something that I began using this past year, 2024, just to get a really quick hit look at the year as a whole, just for planning and whatnot.

That’s the original intent that I purchased and installed it with. Really, what I didn’t anticipate is that it would help me develop consistency on a couple of small practices throughout this past year. Again, this prompted, unexpectedly, a mindset shift away from executing with perfection to executing sometimes imperfectly, but on a more regular and consistent basis. What I found, now that closing out 2024, is that those small wins consistently have really added up to a much greater sum than shooting for big days less frequently and less consistently. I’ve just now installed my 2025 calendar and look forward to cultivating a couple of smaller consistent practices going forward in the new year. That’s mine. What about you? Is there something that you’re looking to leverage this coming year?

Jessica: Yes. First I want to just quick mention that if you try looking at big donkey calendar to try to emulate what Coral is practicing, you won’t find it. Just think of another word for donkey, and you’ll get there.

Coral: We’ve got to keep it professional here, Jess.

Jessica: I love that practice so much that actually I’ve got one of those calendars in my cart right now. Hopefully you’ll see one hanging next to my desk sometime soon. For me, the one that I wanted to share with you all is my team a while back has started to institute what we’re calling a five in five. It’s basically like, what are the five most important things coming up this week or next short enough to be delivered in five minutes so that we can get through our updates in a short amount of time, and then we can get on to some other things that we need to collaborate on.

It sounds like, you guys have heard me talking before, and I think I often am like, “Hey, connection before content,” which is a phrase that I enjoy from another facilitator. I really think these five in five updates have actually been really helpful to all of us as a team in how we’re able to share just a quick update so that we can get to the content with each other, and we can get to connecting with each other. I think I’m going to probably refine my five in five process because I do write a little too much about it. I’d like to shorten it to a few short bullets.

Coral: I love that. I look forward to hearing how that evolves for you over the year. Maybe we even share that as a practice sometime in the year.

Jessica: I’d be happy to put a little more sort of structure around it and share how it’s working for our team too. We have a distributed team across the state. It’s really helpful to have these short little shared pieces that anyone can go and look at. That is it for this episode. Thanks so much for joining us. Coral, welcome one more time. I’m so excited that you decided to take this on as part of your journey. If you enjoyed this episode, click the share button in your podcast app and share it with a friend. We’ll be back next week with a practice for easy priority setting with the Wheel of Life. Until then, keep practicing.

Kalin Goble: The Practicing Connection podcast is a production of OneOp and is supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Office of Military Family Readiness Policy, U.S. Department of Defense, under award numbers 2019-48770-30366 and 2023-48770-41333.

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