Jun 15, 2020
Mission Driven Work
Curt and Katie chat about walking your talk, sticking to your mission, and being strategic in how you incorporate new initiatives and perspectives into your work. We look at the tendency to take action without thinking about where you fit into the conversation and without tying those actions back to your mission and why you do what you do.
It’s time to reimagine therapy and what it means to be a therapist. To support you as a whole person and a therapist, your hosts, Curt Widhalm and Katie Vernoy talk about how to approach the role of therapist in the modern age.
In this episode we talk about:
- The importance of focusing on your mission when making decisions in your business
- Looking at why you do what you do
- Implementing your mission within your business
- Practical applications and systems to support new initiatives aligned with mission-driven work
- Times when following your personal mission may be hard to do as a therapist
- The importance of staying true to yourself and aligned with your mission and expertise
- The difference between branding, marketing, and mission
- What are you putting out into the world?
- The danger of putting out something quickly in response to the zeitgeist versus aligning with your mission and your expertise
- What is a mission and how do you develop one?
- Getting strategic in how you incorporate new information into mission-driven work
- The need for thinking and analysis before taking action
- Sitting with discomfort and avoiding reacting too quickly
- Intentional pathway guided by thought and strategy
- Mission is not just a goal, it is how you work, who you want to work with, how you want to work, the guiding principles, how you make decisions
- Broad, vague missions that are just “help people” or “do good things” do not support making a decision on how you respond to crises
- Tying your actions to your mission will allow it to sustain momentum past the news cycle
- How to incorporate antiracism into a business that is focused on addressing something else
- The assessment of how you can leverage your resources to help something change
- The ability to add antiracism practices internally that have a bigger impact than having an externally focused product or service
- The importance to staying within your purview and yield the floor to those whose work and mission should be central
- Ineffective ways to do ally work, burning out and arguing with people who will not change
- Tweet Thread from Ijeoma Oluo
- Our mission and how we are recommitting to each of the changes we see needed in therapy and therapist education
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Resources mentioned:
We’ve pulled together resources mentioned in this episode and put together some handy-dandy links. Please note that some of the links below might be affiliate links, so if you purchase after clicking below, we may get a little bit of cash in our pockets. We thank you in advance!
Rachel Rodgers, Hello Seven Town Hall
Ericka Hines, DEI with Every Level Leads
Liberatory Consciousness from Barbara J Love
Ijeoma Oluo, Author of So You Want to Talk About Race
Therapy Reimagined 2020:
Therapy Reimagined 2020 Conference
Therapy Reimagined 2020 Call for Sponsors
Relevant Episodes:
Therapy as a Political Act (interview with Dr. Travis Heath)
Let’s Talk About Race (interview with Stevon Lewis, LMFT)
Connect with us!
Our Facebook Group – The Modern Therapists Group
Get Notified About Therapy Reimagined 2020 (and TR2019 Virtual Conference)
Our consultation services:
Who we are:
Curt Widhalm is in private practice in the Los Angeles area. He is the cofounder of the Therapy Reimagined conference, the CFO of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, an Adjunct Professor at Pepperdine University, a former Subject Matter Expert for the California Board of Behavioral Sciences, and a loving husband and father. He is 1/2 great person, 1/2 provocateur, and 1/2 geek, in that order. He dabbles in the dark art of making "dad jokes" and usually has a half-empty cup of coffee somewhere nearby. Learn more at: www.curtwidhalm.com
Katie Vernoy is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, coach, and consultant supporting leaders, visionaries, executives, and helping professionals to create sustainable careers. Katie, with Curt, has developed workshops and a conference, Therapy Reimagined, to support therapists navigating through the modern challenges of this profession. Katie is also President of the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists. In her spare time, Katie is secretly siphoning off Curt's youthful energy, so that she can take over the world. Learn more at: www.katievernoy.com
A Quick Note:
Our opinions are our own. We are only speaking for ourselves – except when we speak for each other, or over each other. We’re working on it.
Our guests are also only speaking for themselves and have their own opinions. We aren’t trying to take their voice, and no one speaks for us either. Mostly because they don’t want to, but hey.
Stay in Touch:
Our Facebook Group – The Modern Therapist’s Group
https://www.facebook.com/therapyreimagined/
https://twitter.com/therapymovement
https://www.instagram.com/therapyreimagined/
Credits:
Voice Over by DW McCann https://www.facebook.com/McCannDW/
Music by Crystal Grooms Mangano http://www.crystalmangano.com/