Prodigy EMS: Hey folks, Ginger Lock from the Medic Mindset podcast with a Mindset Minute as you dive into this episode. Our guest is Chris Kroboth, and he is a friend of mine and a person, a leader, an educator in EMS that I've trusted and admired for years. He packs into this episode a ton of his philosophies about what leadership and education can look like. And Maya's in the room as well. And she does this phenomenal job of steering the conversation to a concept called radical candor, which is a concept that if I could push a button and every single leader or educator in EMS could learn about, it would be this one. So when she starts talking about that, lean in, hit pause, grab your journal, reflect, and see where you land in this in this area. I hope you enjoy the episode. It was such a delight to listen to because they talked about one of my favorite things. I'm gonna listen again. Let's dig in. Hello and welcome back to a live edition of the EMS Educator podcast. I'm one of your hosts, Rob Lawrence, and today we have a full house of of our best friends in the house. And to introduce our topic and to introduce our co-host and to introduce our guest is the one and only Hillary Gates. Hi Rob, how are you? I am great. Well, we are in Orlando. We are at EMS World Expo. And we are dominating the halls with the with our camera crews and our folk and we're having an amazing time. And also, congratulations to the one and only Ginger Lock Educator of the Year. So once again, we were there. We had a great time and Ginger is really celebrating and as we are too. But over to you, Hilary. Yeah, we have been here for a couple of days and we've had Kevin Hazard at the booth signing his books. We've had Jimmy Apple at the booth. We've had you at the booth, we've had me in a drone, we've had Maya and all places. Okay. It was a small cockpit, so that makes sense. We'll put that in the after 9 p.m. show. Okay, geez. And yeah, and now we get to be in this great suite overlooking Orlando and we are here with Chris Kroboff, Lifeline EMS Training and Consulting. does a lot of work with simulation and the clinical challenge at EMS World Expo. And most importantly, he's a very good friend to us at Prodigy. Hi Chris. Hi. I was actually introduced to Chris by Gingerlock. Tell that true. Tell that story. Well it was through actually coming together to teach a class here, the EMS Educators Huddle, a bazillion, what feels like a bazillion years ago, where she introduced me to Chris to teach the simulation portion of the class. And then Ginger bailed on us and then I got to meet Katie O'Connor, who is also an amazing educator. And then you got to yes, and then you got to meet that is the origin story. Do we expose our daily lives to you in the most possible? It's true. And I was part of the EMS Educator Huddle because we also did that virtually when I was working at EMS World Expo during the pandemic, and that was incredible. Yes. Yeah. Yes. So what are we going to talk about, H? Well, today is a topic that Chris and I explored together on the phone a few weeks ago. And it's about finding joy in your own work and especially as a leader and a mentor that Chris is in all the roles that he takes, especially helping your people and your crews and your interns and your new employees all find joy on the job. And Chris is coming to the end of his career, which is hard to believe since he's only twenty eight, twenty nine? Twenty seven and twenty seven, yeah. And you do it five by seven. And and so he's been talking a lot about what is important to not only impart to his crews when they come work with him, but also really s just sustain throughout the job that we do on a day-to-day basis. So that's a big topic, Chris. But talk about talk about what what it is about joy that's so important for you when you're doing a job that isn't always joyful. I think when we say the job isn't always joyful, I think it's because a lot of times we anchor on the things in the moment that kind of pull us away mentally or emotionally from the positivity of what we can find. And people will we have a lot of people in this industry that use this as an opportunity for the right to rebrand. Right. If you come into a profession where the society loves you, you have a positive output, outlook, influence. I mean, what other what other profession in today's world, not even a plumber that somebody calls for help, do they open up the door and say, hurry in, here's my child, or hurry in, here's my family member, right? There's like that. you're the you know, you're the this, you're the that. Most trusted profession. Most trusted profession. So you can you can reset your life outlook and your your current trajectory just by changing your career. And that's probably one of the best like recruitment things that we don't exploit. And so when we find those people that come here from all different backgrounds, which was what makes this job awesome, also, a lot of times they they can't find the joy in things because they've, you know. So I find We get hung up about the calls and the calls are really like decimal percents in terms of the totality of what we do. We always test, we promote based on calls, right? We write this robust promotional process on I'm gonna have you run an MCI of hemophiliacs with a razor blade factory. They're all hypocalcemic, it's very cold outside, so none of them are gonna coagulate. What are you gonna do? And you're like, Well, that's never not real. What am I gonna do when my employee is on their second child finishing up medical school and sleeps through the clock? How are you gonna help? Through that. Or what are you gonna do when the 20-something who struggles to verbally communicate with somebody can't actually figure out besides a swipe or text or TikTok or I'm not a social media person, they are and this 87-year-old World War II vet doesn't talk like that. They don't know what business is, they don't know what Chugi is. I don't know any of the okay, go ahead. I don't really know what that stuff is. Okay. Bussing is really cool. And so as to find the fun in the world, right? Teaching them or mentoring them on how to communicate or how to do little things. Like my MO has always been, how my name's Chris. What's your name? Hillary. Hillary, where you from? I'm from Edmonds, Washington. Perfect. I can tell you right now you're stable because you grimaced, you looked over to the side, you actually tried to answer the question appropriately. You played along with me, you acknowledge. If I were to do that to you on a patient and you were like, or you were like, What? You're sick, right? Right. Frontal lobe. You're not worried about the conversation, the social aspect, your brain's deprioritizing perfusion of that area. You're sick. Yeah. I don't have that second I wanted. I got time with you. So you're good. You're comfortable. Now I've broken the ice. I've broken your loop. You're not sitting there hyperfixated on your chest pain or your arm numbness. You got it, you roll in and you have a crew that's jovial. And now that's gonna ease you. Patch Adams is a real thing. We don't spend a lot of time talking. There's no ICD 10 code for making people smile. There should be. The endorphins are free and positive. But doing that I'll just say there are what fifteen thousand ICD ten codes. You know, there's man versus duck and man versus spaceship. There's got to be man smiling. Surely. Come on then. Complimenting. It has to be smile accidental. Yeah. Smile unintentional. Yeah. And it's very clear. Smile triggered by joke. Yeah. Right there. Is it a villable event? There we go. It should be one dollar. So like that kind of stuff is is is really what I find right off the jump is teaching them that. And everything is a is a tug of war or two way street or a give and get. And so at the same time, when you want to establish ownership, and you see this in the education community, we've talked about this a number of times, instructors, and I'm going to circle back, my ADHD will kick out here for a second. But instructors want to stand in traditionally want to stand in front of the room and tell them what what you need to know, right? Or I'm going to tell you my war story. I'm going tell you. And it's not a two way street. So then student students just Theoretically absorbing probably 20% of your hours worth of junk, right? But if you flip the classroom or you flip the sim and you have the students go off and build the scenarios and do the teachbacks, grand round style, they own it. So that's a two-way street. I've I've worked you through to this point. I want you to do the things, take these objectives and run with it. If you translate that back onto the street where I'm giving you this life skill, really, because that's what it's become. At the same time, I want to. learn from them because I don't speak that anymore. And I the silver is not real. I didn't dye my hair for this podcast. That is it is true scoop silver all over. So that's why I did my hair today. Asking them to do a word of the day. So we do a word of the day. Nice. On the dry erase board and they love they love it because I'm like, I don't know what the hell that means. Okay. And why how what does that have to do with the job? Why are you doing a word of the like so we're a team, right? It's a team sport. It's contact sport. And if the team and which is another thing most people We get a lot of people that have never played on a team before. What a better place to if Rob Lawrence never played on a team, so he's like a p competitive chess player. I could see that, right? Yeah, that checks out, check in. Look at me. I was a rugby player until I was thirty seven. Bloody hell, that's me. you get that person that's never played on a team and by nature you're done with recruit school, your hiring process, your acclamation period, your internship, you're immediately put on a team that you have no experience with. And so depending on how you are comfortable, upright The environment you lived in, you may not understand the task dilution across a a group of individuals and how if he's not feeling right, I need to pick up his slack today. Or vice versa. If he's not good at this, I need to keep my eye on that, but I'm not good at this. And so allowing the team model to participate and to build build the team better. And it's just the little things like that, I want to cook my mom's recipe. Okay, that's awesome. So I know just based on that statement. You have maternal influence in your life, which is huge. You want to own that. So it's probably positive. It's either positive in that you have a positive impact from her, or you have a positive drive from that and you want to take that and send it to the rest of the group. So you're in, you're cooking tonight, you do whatever you need to do. A cap, I want to go through this cool, you know, word of the day or whatever. We then as often as that's how we make it more just a quick trick. Don't mark up on the radio business. 'Cause if it's only heard bus, it can so but we do it with radio reports to yeah, to do it. That's tricky. Yeah. Yeah. So some of them apply. We'll also do how many times do you use it? And then and then the other thing we'll do is it's an icebreaker for some of our introverts, which will get kind of prime the patient. They're jovial and and and stable, asking them, Do you know what this is or do you not know? Wow. And we'll see how many times we can use it. And then it gets them engaged because it's like bringing their language in. So that's probably that is by far one of the the things is teaching people how to talk. Nobody knows how to talk. We don't text at the table, there's no phones at dinner at the station. There's also no gossip. Gossip's the devil. It's usually full of crap and it's well an EMS and five a rumor will beat you to the end of the point. It will be and everybody's everybody's the the best storyteller until it's their story and somebody else is telling it and then they get pissed. So stop reciprocating the same thing. And the other rule is if it ever starts out with did you hear about it's like What's the person's name? Do you have first hand from them? And it's usually no. Here's so right. Here's that. Let me take you back. What's something that you said was fascinating to me there. Of course, I hadn't thought about the concept of people coming through never being a part of a team. Sure. So how do we prepare someone to be two strangers to be locked in a box for 12 hours? Yeah. Going around when and and how do you monitor that? How do you debrief that? And how do you then, you know, provide coaching tips to cope with that? Well, so In that environment. So if you're doing like system status management, like you're your old, old, old, old, old employer. yeah. I thought you were going somewhere else with the word old multiple times, but you said employer at the end. Yeah. Wow. Good. I got you. Okay. Go ahead. Go ahead. So how do you train that? You have well, the aviation community figured this out years ago, right? We just started figuring this out probably five years ago when we said, Hey, stop evaluating the team lead. The team lead thing is stupid. Stupid. It's a team, right? Nobody wears a captain band that says, Hey, like I'm gonna take the red card if you get it. I'll pick which side at the toin cock coin toss. We have to evaluate them as teams. The aviation community figure this out. Even though there is rank in the cockpit, like you're the captain, you're the lieutenant. At the end of the day, when the alarm goes off, that sh stuff doesn't matter. Thank you. Yeah, it doesn't matter. And we have got to start evaluating on at the station level. You have got to condition that. By rank, I am a captain. That doesn't mean anything. It just means I took a couple more tests than somebody else. I firmly believe and I do not. So I'm the medic on the fire truck and the captain. I do not do the assessments. My crew does the assessments. And out of respect to them, when they're doing the assessments, like, hey, if you're cool with it, I'll start an IB and get fluid. Is that fine? Yep. Cabin fit. Yep. They're never going to get better if they don't own it. They're never going to get better if they know that they can trip and fall, skin their knees, but they're not going to bust their face and drop a tooth, right? I'm not going to let that happen. But as a team, they need to learn how, where, and why they integrate in or meld into that mission model. And that comes with the certification doesn't matter. Certifications are a couple more tests, a little more knowledge. Rank doesn't matter in that, and I don't mean that out of respect. If if you have rank and that's how you define yourself, go for it. That's all that is you. Go for it. I think rank is a couple more tests and has a position of responsibility. And part of that responsibility is creating ownership and the people under you. And we don't do that well. And we have traditionally not done that well. And part of the issue in the education community is we've all been brought up in the doc, choose me out as the team lead, and she was my partner. And she's like, That sucks. And you got lit up. That's exactly not how we should do it. We should come back as the crew and debrief as the crew because we're we're a package deal. And if you think about it this way, we talk about like, well, that you're the AIC or whatever acronym or moniker or whatever you use. That's true. But if you don't show up to work today. Boss boss, yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. But if she doesn't show up to work today, we the ring doesn't go out the door. So no matter what her rank is, her certification is, her zodiac sign is, her shoe size is, we're we have to be here to go out the door. And we don't do that. So we went on this journey and I kind of want to come back to the very beginning because I've been just to give you the ADHD listening, listening to the journey that we've gone through. And the original concept was how do you find where do you find the joy in this profession? And if I think I followed all the concepts right, at the very beginning it's teaching people how to engage with humans and calm people down and talk to them. How as a leader you get people to own what they're doing, how you get to kind of know the people, right? Because I think when you analyze this example of both the patient interacting to you, which is an assessment, but also when you say, share with me what you want to do today and talk about your mom's recipe, I think a lot of the joy comes from realizing that we work with humans and bringing in this, right? We're humans, taking care of human beings and as a leader, a lot of your joy comes in to allowing them to kind of make those connections with people. And I think the same thing is true. Like, I mean, in the world of emergency medicine or even in what I do in EMS, like, you know, emergency medicine, I'm just a clinician. I'm not a boss. I just go to work. And people are like, how do you actually still like working in the emergency department? Yeah, when you can't, it's like, it's like it's pretty easy. I got the privilege of just taking care of people and it's my job. I just Go in there and I take care of them one at a time. And it's not like, I saved this person, but I was just like, being nice is free. And it feels free dollars and making people like chuckle, right? Like they actually say, like, there's a a value to making that. But then in the EMS world, there is nothing more joyful than seeing somebody that you had a small part in training or do something. Do something, even if it's small and remarkable. It doesn't have to be. Right. It doesn't have to be a big thing. So I'm interested in your philosophy because you have this well-ingrained philosophy, right? Where and I think it comes, I mean, you're just a good human, but it comes from being an educator where you spend a lot of time trying to cultivate the good humanness of how do I get people to build connection with their patients so they find the joy? How do I get them to think through a problem? And so when you come in and you're the captain on a fire truck and you're You still have this educator mindset where you're constantly thinking of like, how do I promote the growth of these people underneath me? That is not a shared philosophy. A lot of what I encounter, one of the things that was interesting coming to EMS as somebody who came from medicine. Medicine is pretty hierarchical. I chose and I came from research before, which is even was just less hierarchical, but I like chose emergency medicine because. It is the least hierarchical of any specialty. I hated standing like attending fellow this and I give the report and I do that and you ask. And emergency medicine, it's like the nurse, the tech, the physician. We all work, right? Like we all work together. And there's like a little bit, there's a little bit, but there's not like if emergency went works well. There is very little hierarchy, right? Like the nurse can b walk in and be like, get your ass in there. Right? And I'm like, Thank you. Not like because they are, you are, a well oiled team that has your drills, your skills and we don't have drills like the what all of that does is breed familiarity. Familiarity breeds confidence and the confidence in that team And safety. And safety. But that then that then removes all rank and Higher. You wish it would, but it's I think it's because the way that emergency medicine built, right? Like if you think I mean they called it the pit on the show, but it's called the pit we are the basement dwellers of the hospital. Literally emergency departments are the front door, the basin dwellers. I you you don't there isn't in the structure of the time of the way, the flow, the system of care for years in emergency medicine. And then when I, you know, guide medical students, I'm like, you will choose your specialty by where you find your people. And so that there is this culture. But in EMS, one of the things that drives me insane is that people are obsessed with their ranks. I am a lieutenant. I'm a chief. I'm a training officer. I'm this. I'm so and so. And when you think about how improvement, it's like there are so many egos to take into account. And people's obsession with those ranks is often not of it's about the authority to make the decision rather than the privilege of lifting other people up. And there's a bit of an, you know, and there's definitely some educators who have that for sure. Not very good educators, but educators who have that. But I think how do you like make this transition? Because this to me is such a barrier. Like I want that the chief shows up on scene and somebody's like, thank God they're here to help me. and they're there. And they those people exist and they're amazing. But there's also like I find so much like I'm a lieutenant or I'm this or it's my you can't do that without my permission or you have to go, or even as a medical director, I'm like, I am separate from this whole thing, right? Like, as far as I'm a medical director, if somebody has a clinical issue, it drives me nuts that people are like, no, I need to talk to this person, this person, this person. Then they think it's important enough to talk to you, they will talk to you. And I'm like, Why go through all that road when what you actually want to get to is my opinion. You should be pe anybody should feel free to bring a concern directly to the medical director without actually having to go through this whole thing. But there's this rank and ego there. So how do we translate those skills of an educator? Which is how do I think about how to get you to be the best? Evaluate right your behaviors and say, what are the Do my needs assessment, watching you interact with the patient and saying, what I really need to do work in is on this person. And then so leaders are constantly thinking about improvement for their crews and support for their crews rather than compliance. Yeah, that's a I so there's two things I'll say. Two two little cool catchphrases. leadership is not a rank, it's an ability. And we have gotta get we have gotta break that. I'm tired of hearing organizational members that have taken a handful of Morse tests. Call themselves leaders. They're not. That is an ability. You are management. Flat off the bat. I don't care what my rank is. The ability, the best leader on your shift might be the 50-year young employee who just career changed but has so much freaking life experience that they come in. And the novice officer who's still trying to figure out life and is maybe just on their first child and has no clue about anything. The 50-year young person is coaching the rest of the crew, like, Just so you know, I have seven kids and one's 20 or whatever. And they're the person taking somebody on the weights. So that's the first thing. What I will say is if you're taking tests and you think that that test makes you anything more tomorrow when you get promoted than the day before you took the test, you're wrong. All it does is change your pay grade and put something new on your collar if you wear one of those shirts or change your email signature. Your ability to influence somebody and to take them under their wing, your wing, and to make them better is just that. It's an ability. And that That is not promotable. That is not testable. That is a human thing. If you don't have that, and and I think that's a one other thing to your human point earlier. And then I'll get to my next little catch thing. You're entitled to bad days. What you're not entitled to is a bad career. If you're struggling in this, it's probably not the right one for you. If you're having a bad day, I don't care what rank you are. You could say, Look, gangsters, I'm like I'm done. I got two family members, one has whatever's going on. I'm gonna step back, I'm gonna let you guys run the boat today. You need anything, holler at me. That like it's vulnerability, it's truth, it's communication, and it's team ma team management, right? You're you're going in and saying, like team, I'm gonna need you to pick pick up. And you can't do that unless you've already established that they can pick it up, right? That's exactly right. Knowledge and we have got to stop treating people like they're stupid because they don't know. If you haven't invested in the energy, this is my next I'm gonna I'm gonna tee this one up for you. If you have not invested in the individuals to become better. And they don't perform in the moment. It is your fault. Because if you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem. And so if you're saying, like, man, Maya sucks, I am the problem because I have recognized Maya has deficits or gaps, and I have not tried to make her better. That's my fault. That's not your fault. The kid having the temper tantrum in the grocery store, it is not the child's fault. It is the lack of parental oversight and the cessation of that behavior. Or maybe that person has, you know, some other condition where they that's different. In this environment, I once directed traffic. Setting up carts around their I'm just like She's like, this is on sale, we'll get that. When you're done. As when you're done, let me know. So we we have a world where we always take the easy path out. And the easy path is like, you're stupid. That's so shallow and like stupid to say. And it's not she's not stupid. Some of the best team members I've had are the ones that were pushed aside by other packs. And when you get them in and you find out like their backstory, I don't know. And I know if you won't watch this, maybe he moved over to the United States at nine years of age from another country and spoke zero English and was put into an ESL program in school and was picked on for it. And maybe that's why he's introverted. And then you look at that person and when you get them comfortable and they understand they're in a I'm not a big fan of the word safe space, how it's traditionally used, but a place where they can be themselves. Then they flourish and you find out all this backstory and you're like, shit. This guy has got like so much more to bring to the table than he was ever given credit for. And it's not because he was dumb. It's because he didn't feel comfortable being himself around a bunch of great A asses. Have you read the book Radical Candor? I have not. Okay. Is it a coloring book? I'm a pretty good coloring book. You you can color in it if you would like. it's really a book about feedback. And there's this great example. So radical candor is essentially giving direct feedback in the way that people know that you're you care. Right. Which is it's like unkind not to give the feedback. And the author's Kim Scott and she gives my favorite example of this, I think, that describes like the the different ways that you can go about doing things is she describes like somebody walking out of a at a party. They walk out of the bathroom and they got toilet paper on their shoe. And there's kind of like four different quadrants, right? On one side that there's how much you care, and the other is how direct you are. and what you really want, right? If you Chris cares about me, he sees me walking out of the bathroom with the toilet paper on my shoe, and he comes over and he's like, Hey Maya, you got toilet paper on your shoe. And I'm like, okay. So I'm not like walking around. And that's actually like the goal is that if you see somebody Who's struggling, right? As you want them to not announce to everybody. but there's other there's you can be direct and uncaring, which is like, Yo, Maya, you got toilet paper on your shoe, right? Like a across the the room. Yeah, I don't know what you're talking about, which is which is obnoxious aggression. And we see that all the time in a way to kind of like put people down and like make them anxious. And then there's I forgot the exact name, sh but it's ruinous empathy, which is like I wanna be like nice. I don't wanna hurt her feelings. So I'm just I'm actually being nice to her and I'm not gonna let her know because it's gonna make her feel bad that she has toilet paper on her shoe. So she's like, just like let me walk around the party with the toilet paper on my shoe. And then there's the worst, which is I think what we see most commonly in EMS and a lot of things is manipulative insincerity, which is you see the toilet paper on my shoe, and then you go to Hillary and you're like, and then a rock, like, hey, hey. Did you did you hear that Maya walked out of the bathroom with toilet paper on her shoe? And clutching the microphone. And I think I I like that example because it takes it like out of that context. But it's the the question is like, how do you get to point where you're giving feedback to each other with radical candor? Which is like, I care about you. I care about your success. So I'm gonna approach things in a way that you know care. And there's a lot more to that to like build a culture where we can kind of say things directly. But sometimes people and sometimes it's like legitimately ruinous empathy comes because people don't actually know how to give feedback in that circumstance. But I think it's like a few people kind of changing the the course of this is the culture. It's if I see, hey, when you said that to the patient, I I observe, right? I observe that You say that to the patient and they seem to react well, didn't react well. And then you give them an opportunity to kind of let it go. Cause the reality is I'm a generally pretty anxious person. and sometimes I'm like running like a million scenarios and anxiety things and perseverating on stuff that's in my head. And I think people think I have a lot going on in my head, but mostly it's just anxiety thoughts thinking about it. And all it takes is for one person to say, like, hey, how'd you think that go? And gives me an out to like talk through that because There's no feedback for what's going on in my head. There are definitely things that I have thought were such a big deal that people were like, yeah, didn't even notice. Like, didn't even notice that that happened. And things that were a big deal that I didn't pick on and pick up on. And so like letting me continue to like repeat a behavior or do a thing that is making other people talk about me. But yeah, this totally happens like You know, you come in, I come in as a medical director and people talk about each other and like so-and-so is not a strong medic, or so and so is this, or so and so is that. And what I find is that those external assessments of people when I like directly observe people are about like 20% accurate. Yeah. They can pick up that somebody's clinical outcomes might be struggling, but people usually have no sense of how that person. underneath the surface operates or acts person or gets to know them. So since we're celebrating ginger, right? Ginger's unconditional positive regard is like I try and get people to when you see something, you have to like assume that people are actually trying to do their best and have I think it's like this curiosity about like what is like what is the issue there? And they might have like a completely j legitimate reason, but I just think we're not direct enough to each other in a way that cares. And we tend to there's just so much manipulative insincerity. And it becomes a learned behavior because people chat to each other and then it becomes the learned behavior and people think that's the culture. But it's like, how do you shift a culture so that we call each other out and we can call each other out and it's like, yeah. Thanks, Chris, for telling me that I have the broccoli in my teeth or the paper, or I keep putting all the cords away in the monitor, a way that everybody hates, but nobody tells me. Yeah. So I just keep annoying everybody. Yeah. I yes. I would say that if we did a survey, which nobody does surveys honestly anymore, because they're usually yeah, five minutes and it's like 37 minutes later. And they're like, You lied to me. If we did a survey And we tried to poll how many people in management roles had their lunch money stolen in school. I bet you we would be s plus ninety percent. Wow. And I mean that in the nicest way. Right. Like I'm not saying I was I like kids picked on me growing up. My parents were like, okay, don't reciprocate. Right? Like that was kind of like the thing is like don't reciprocate, stick up for the underdog. Okay. If you look at the amount of people we have, and this and and going back to the medical community. The doctors do it too, right? Like how many is long shifts in the hospital, sleeping in a junky and getting paged every two minutes, is that like healthy? But we still do it because well, they did it to me, so I'm gonna do it to you. That doesn't mean it's right. So we have we have lost the ability to recognize what's b best for the person. And we just want to play like the shenanigans. And I think part of that also plays into a role where if every day is a different day, and that's why I love what we do, because my ADHD is like satisfied by doing different stuff. I feel like at on the home front at the station, when you have that common, the station, the crew, the things, the things you can control, I think that's where you see that that kind of domineering attitude come out. And that's you I don't know. You just lose the the way things should be. And and In line with that is we if if you have an like an office, like a captain's office, Lieutenant, whatever. Don't don't sit in the damn office. Right. Right. We're not paramilitary, news flash Walter Cronkite. We say we are because we have a rank structure. We are not. We do not have a non-commissioned officer rank. We do not have non-judicial punishment. We do not have all the things the military has. I went to a military school in college and all my buddies are in the military. I mean, we we bounce ideas back and forth. We're like one of the paramilitary. but we're not. No, we can go to tactical.com and buy tactical stuff, but we're not. Tactical. So when we try and do the things, when we do things to to model something else, but we don't do them correctly, it just makes the problem worse. And if you're hiding in an office because the captain on the military would do that, that's because of a totally different culture that's been around since like seventeen seventy six. Ours has been around since like seventy four. Night nineteen some back in the nineteen hundreds when we were all born. So that that's one big thing is don't don't be away from the people. You need to be it's a contact sport. You gotta be with your people. Don't you need to find the comfort and humility in your life to recognize that when you mess up, like I say this whole time, like man, I dropped the ball on that one. My bad. Right. And then if they caught it, reward them. Like, man, good job. I did not see the fact that capnography was twenty six. Thanks for hollering at me. Because then they're like, okay. Right. The other part to like this whole thing is, and we've only kind of worked on the front on like how do we interact with the patient? How do we interact after the lady in the ceiling yells at us to go do this call? The other part that brings joy really lets the people know that you do care if you care, which you should care, is I'm trying to think how to eloquently say this, but there's different parenting styles and there's different parents that are involved with people. Some have none, some have one. Right. For whatever reason, I the reason does matter, but that's not the point of this this party. The part that breaks my heart the most is the people that have never experienced the joy of a grandparent. There's you learn so much from them. But as a manager and as a leader, you need to recognize and understand what makes them tick. And that's part of what makes them tick, is how their book was written on the front first couple chapters of the preface. And you need to help guide them through life if nobody's there to truly help them. And I've I've found This is anecdotal. This is Chris's opinion, not the opinion of anybody else that Hillary mentioned in the beginning. You gotta parent them and not like like spank them or yell and like that. But like teach them how equity works, teach them how to buy a house, teach them how to manage their money, teach them how to save, encourage them to invest this, stop eating whatever fast food every day because it costs you this much dollars. Get a napkin out, show them the math that applies to their life. Because when you write down Chipotle for a meal every day. For eleven twenty-four hour shifts a month is over three hundred dollars. Well, that's an 12 overtime shift. You're working overtime for a burrito. What are you doing? Well, what does that mean? Well, that could be your car payment. And if we drop the Chipotle and you wouldn't go to the where I don't get any money from ADS companies. Costco, you meal plan for the week. You could pay off your car five years. You could pay off your car in a year. Maybe we could start a Roth IRA. Maybe you could start. Also not paid for that, yeah. But if you're interested. And so like To back to your point, I've been doing this since I was 16. I love going and meeting the people. Like I love the patience with my crew. The calls, like if I see another person wrapped up on it, I prefer not to. Fire. Okay, if I run another, I'm fine, not running another fire. That kind of stuff is it it's kind of the task we're sent to. I like the backstory of the people. I like to know how that person changed the world. I like to watch the crew. Get better. Where I find the most joy now is when we're back at the station and they're like, Hey Cap. Which by the way, if you're ever in a room and they walk in the door and they Hey Cap, you got a second? The answer is yes. The answer is yes. And please plan for at least one hour. Something something drastic is about to come out. There's gonna be lots of seconds that they need in that one burst. So just recognize that's no different than the the inquisitive two-year-old asking, Hey daddy, why? That's a that's a probably gonna be a long time. I actually did a hey take when it got a second STM. So that took a while. Max ST So I love the how to buy a house. Nothing I like puzzles. I like being told no, because then I turn turn it into how. The one of the last crew members I had that was like, guys, no way I can buy a house. Paper towel, 10, let's go through it. Two years in a townhouse, end unit with his with his wife, and now I'm gonna have a baby, so that's awesome. So that kind of stuff is like the joy. Of like how to teach them what nobody else has sat down pro and it's un it's it's nobody's fault. It's probably because their parents were working nine jobs just to keep the roof from leaking and over their head. Yeah. And that is probably the coolest part. And Dr. Dorset and Maya, to your point earlier, if people know you actually care about them and you want to put them on a positive trajectory through life, they're gonna know at two o'clock in the morning when shit hits the fan that you're there for them and you care about them because it's like a full investment. And And I do see that deficit in a lot of people. It's like the officer who took the test because they needed the rank, because they needed the rebranding, because now I've made it. I'm a lieutenant or I'm a captain. Whatever whatever, right? When you define yourself based on a performance on a one day assessment battery that gave you this new name or title, you got a lot of work we can talk about. Let's let's learn about your backstory, right? And they'll go they'll on the call, they'll work with them. But back at the station, they go hide away because they're the officer and they can't possibly work with the worker beast. It's like you got you gotta flip the script. You gotta be there. Like let them vent. Yeah, they gotta have their time too, right? Because they gotta complain about you. That's only fair. But if you're not with them and you're not by their side when they trip and fall, you're not there to help them. For instance, we had a not great call the other night, and our newest member on the crew, the call part, you know, the person's no longer with us, but that part got them rattled. But the other part that got him rattled is some of the other crew members from another area, while engaging with some citizens that were involved, did not have great empathy. And this person we've been working on creating extroversion from introversion and and swagger. And he's gotten very good at it, actually, really good at it. And the part that bothered him most, it was in the moment of all that kind of totality, was the lack of empathy by the others. And he he did a really good job of acclimating into the communication. kind of migrating and and and steering it, but then the brush off of the other of the other individuals really what sank wrong with him. And so the whole way back, we got hit out again on the way back. So in the time it took for the lady to yell at us to go to another call, we were talking about, you know, people's ability or their cup, you know, that's another whole they might not have that man. Right. And they might have a lot going on at home. And this is just enough emotion that their pictures pouring over. Mm-hmm. And he's like I don't think about it like that. Yeah, people don't usually set their alarm clock for asshole mode, right? And or butthole mode. And I feel like asshole is better than butthole. I mean, if you watch if you watch T V, I'm not a big T V person, but what they get away with on some shows, you're like the person's ninety percent naked, but somebody says ass, it's like being that one's fornicating and the other one's like ass, which is donkey and so just getting them to appreciate also kind of everybody's Everybody's ecosystem is on that kind of stuff is also positive or reflective. But yeah, for for like kind of the I think Rob's trying to tell me shut up. I'll just I get it. I can translate that. Did agree the STF you sign, by the way? So Yeah DF. Yes. Yeah. I can't spell. So for we the people are what make the world go round. And if you have trouble appreciating that, go look at your staffing model. There's nobody to fill the slot. There's a bell. The bell says the unit can't go out the door. So if you think you're that great, try and do it by yourself. And if you can't, you're not. And if you have bells, your unit ain't going out the door. And so if you need the whole team to make the unit go out the door, be part of a team, empower the team and ensure that everybody on the team gets the opportunity to learn. I used a little funny, funny thing. I used to have a salty old captain who used to put our gear in the middle of the bay and it was fun. And it was like when the tones dropped, you get to whatever position you're in. He got in trouble for doing that. Whatever. And but what it taught everybody to a degree is fun. It was a race, right? But it taught everybody how to kind of know everybody else's role. And he would never like if it was something catastrophic, he would take that, the role in the front seat. But what it did was it let everybody kind of experience the different things, which I think is cool. And that might not be an opportunity for many people, but if you put yourself in their shoes and you actually understand somebody's backstory, if you don't, you're not a good team member, right? If I don't know your backstory and that you recently moved to the west side, we miss you on the east side, but I understand. Then I don't I'm not able to help you the best I can. Right. Because if I know some backstory piece of your backstory and we run something that is very similar to the backstory, probably wanna tap you out and take over versus go, man, I don't know why she's being a stoic ass. That's our beep. It's probably because she got trained, right? Yeah, exactly. So yeah. The fun is the people. That's what this is about. Stop making this about you. Well, that's amazing. And so so so many thoughts. But let's go around and get some final thoughts on on the topic. So put on the spot. I just there we go. I just like having talks about what brings joy in this profession. right, we just spent an hour and we talked about some of the issues, but I think very often we spent a lot of time complaining about stuff and we definitely did that here. I did my share. but I think we also spent a little bit of time on kind of like reflecting what brings you joy. And I think if everybody listening Thinks for a moment, like what brings me joy in this profession? if I'm an educator, right? Like think about the last time your student succeeded and you had joy. Or if you're a clinician, you know, the last time I had joy is I had a patient who was 101 years old and I interviewed her in the hallway. And honestly, every time grandma holds my hand and gives me a little squeeze, I get that. It feels good. And I'm just like, my God, I just love her. And that brings me joy. And that's why I still like going to work because it's pretty much guaranteed that Granny's going to squeeze my hand at work today. So I and I think if you're an educator or you're on a team, the next shift, ask people what brings them joy. Love that. because I think maybe you'll get to know them a little bit better. It'll strengthen your team and maybe we can have a little bit of gratitude because I do think that what we do is kind of amazing. That's fantastic. Hello take a sign. You know, this really dovetails with things I've been studying in my life lately and trying to slow down and here I am at this show, very sped up, very on fire, lots of interactions and everything, and it's not like my life is anymore. I used used to be this was a lot for me and and very brought me a lot of joy and I find joy in a different way now and part of it is to reflect and listen and to be this is gonna be hard for a lot of people to believe, to be quiet. I love to talk. I love being among people who talk. I love that I am people I am with people who who really want to share their feelings and I want to hear it. But what I love about what Chris is saying is this intuitive and genuine and empathetic behavior that focuses on the right speech and speech that is for a reason and not just to hear yourself talk, but but things that will help. Everyone, the patients included, feel seen. And I I think that's part of the privilege of our job and holding grandma's hand and making other people feel seen and safe and healthy is one of the greatest joys in our lives. That was amazing. So out there, just have a think about what brings you joy both personally, what brings you joy within your work environment. Make sure you check for paper and broccoli, of course. And make sure you tell other people in the nicest possible way that's the case. But seriously What an amazing EMS Educator podcast. Thank you to our primary guest, Chris Crayworth. Also, thank you to Hillary. Thank you to Maya. I've been Rob Lawrence. Please make sure that you like and subscribe. Remember, we're on YouTube or wherever you get your podcast from. That's it for this month. See you next time. And until next time, bye for now. And as Maya would say, have a nice life.