podcast

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.

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.

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.

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.

This month’s listener Q&A dives into 3 areas: 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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

Everyone needs encouragement – but great encouragement does more than make people feel good. It helps them believe in their ability to meet challenges, connect to purpose, and keep going when things get difficult. In this episode of Practicing Connection, Jessica and Erin dig into the science behind effective pep talks, inspired by research from Harvard Business Review and Motivating Language Theory.