The Power of Mentors with Annalisa Holcombe

In today's episode, I'm talking to Annalisa Holcombe, the founder of Connection Collaborative. Annalisa is dedicated to providing safe and brave spaces for human beings to connect and discover who they are and what they want out of life. She founded the coaching and mentoring center at Westminster College, establishing and scaling a suite of programs aimed at providing every student with access to a mentor. These programs significantly increased student retention among participating students thanks to effective student-alumni, mentoring relationships, and monthly group coaching sessions. She has completed her coach training through the Coach Training Institute, and she is currently training for an International Coaching Federation certificate. She holds a law degree. She holds a degree in business management, and she's currently pursuing her PhD in leadership and change. I can't wait for you to hear this conversation with Annalisa Holcombe.

Hi, I'm Lindsay Lyons and I love helping school communities envision bold possibilities, take brave action to make those dreams a reality and sustain an inclusive anti-racist culture where all students thrive. I'm a former teacher leader, turned instructional coach, educational consultant and leadership scholar. If you're a leader in the education world, whether you're a principal, superintendent, instructional coach, or a classroom teacher, excited about school-wide change  like I was, you are a leader. And if you enjoy nerding out about the latest educational books and podcasts, if you're committed to a lifelong journey of learning and growth, being the best version of yourself, you're going to love the Time for Teachership podcast. Let's dive in.

Lindsay Lyons
Welcome Annalisa Holcombe to the podcast. I am so excited that you are here to talk with us today. I am a huge fan of your podcast, 92,000 hours, which I highly recommend that everyone listening goes and listens to. It is like the best part of my day when I listen to it. And normally at this point, at the beginning of this podcast, I would ask you to introduce yourself, however you would like, but I am so incredibly fascinated by how you ask people on your podcast to introduce themselves. If you could talk to our listeners a little bit about that question that you typically ask them, and then answer yourself to introduce yourself here. I would love that.

Annalisa Holcombe
Oh, that's so exciting and scary because I get to ask that question rather than answer it for myself. And so the big question that I ask people that really does go to how I think of us as you know, I want to know, I want, I don't want to know what you do. I want to know who you are. And so I asked the question that sets it up in a, in a it's kind of a negative space, but I don't mean it to be that way. So I set it up with, if you remove all of the things in our lives that we usually list when we're saying this is who I am. So you take away school, all of your education, your work, not your job title or what you do, sports or volunteerism, or any of those types of things that we usually list.

You can't count what I say. So not counting any of those things. What is your greatest accomplishment or what are you most proud of as yourself as a human being? And so thinking about that question, I am particularly proud of the both safe and brave space that I was able to create for a period of 15 years in a college setting, in which we brought students from all different majors and different areas. They were all of course at the same institution, but we brought students who wouldn't normally know each other, put them all in a room and said, we're going to talk about hard things like, fear, real fear, your existential stuff that you're not comfortable talking about to other people. Or priorities, what do you actually prioritize? And are you living it, and how do you self-reflect on that? Or, empathy or vulnerability and courage.

And how do we make sure we know that the fact that courage that we highlight all the time, the antecedent to courage is vulnerability? And we have to actually understand that we are vulnerable humans. And let's think about what those vulnerabilities are so that we can act with courage when, when we feel that vulnerability. And so having had the experience of 15 years of those types of conversations is—I'm really proud of it—but I'm also very selfishly sad that those particular times are over because it created these really fulfilling, purposeful, meaningful moments for me, that created my deep belief in humanity and in people who are different, being able to talk to each other. And if I could just say, like, there were some moments that watching peers educate each other about their own humanity was some of the best, like the, the most joyful, best moments of my life.

And they came in difficult times. So for example, there was a time in which we met monthly and we are halfway through a year and I was in a group. Usually the groups had about 12 students in them. And one student, they were really like talking honestly and openly with each other one student who was, you know, a business finance major who played sports at the university, spoke to a mathematics/performance art major who was, very outwardly gay. And this, this one guy asked his peer. He said, you know, I am so sad that I've never been friends with a person who is gay and I don't know how to do it. And I feel really awkward. Can you educate me on how to do it? Like, what do I do? How do I do this? I want to know you better.

And I want to be a friend, but I don't even know how so I avoid it. And then they had this conversation. The one guy was like, first of all, don't think we all want to be with you. That's answer number one second. We're still human. So don't think of me as different from you. And so like having them have that honest conversation with each other that was scary and vulnerable and brave, changed how they're now going out in the world and talking to each other, but it takes a long time to create those spaces. And so I'm really proud. That's a long answer, but I'm really proud of having been a part—with a bunch of other people who facilitated with me—to create those spaces for people to have those conversations. That I think are, I think they come back to you years later, maybe even decades later where the learning is still real.

Lindsay Lyons
Oh my gosh. I love that answer because I think it speaks to all of the people in education who  are listening to this podcast and thinking about creating those spaces. One of the first questions that I usually follow this up with is what is kind of your big dream for educators or for education generally. And I don't know if at all your answer is connected to that, but I, I almost see connections to that just in my own thinking of being able to create those spaces for people and have that space for education, that's going to hold everything kind of that holding environment to be able to have those tough conversations and real conversations.

Annalisa Holcombe
I think that's right. But I also, I mean, those types of tough and real conversations, I don't think our systems are built for, right. They weren't at my, at the, at the higher ed institution that I was at. It wasn't built for it. We created this out of whole cloth and then, did it ourselves with volunteers like and I then went out to people and said, by the way, I want you to know that these students are showing up at 8:30 on a Saturday morning for four hours, and I'm not giving them college credit, and I'm not paying them they're coming because they are getting something intrinsically that we need as human beings that they are finding valuable. And, and they show up at the beginning, not knowing what they're in for just knowing that there's some kind of mystery about it, because over time that that program ended up having like this, this, you know, this kind of, you know, the Vegas thing, right?

Like, I can't tell you what happens there, but it's really kind of cool and you should probably go. And so students had this, it was this mystery about, Oh, I want to be part of that program. What they got out of, it was just, it was only what they put into it. But I do think that what I really want for educators that they don't have is the ability to do—which I didn't have either. I had to create that at a separate time on a Saturday morning, not during course time, not with giving them college credit, because it didn't fit the structure that the system wanted me to fit. And it was a scary piece of learning that was about learning about ourselves and how we connect to each other as humans. Rather than, you know, a specific thing that we say that we can do, I wasn't even in the student life office, which, however, later I brought in people from student life, our Dean of students ended up doing it as well.

But what I wish people were able to do is because I think teachers clearly have a calling, right? I mean, if you are, if you are doing this work, you care deeply about the learning and about the people that you are engaging with every day. And to be able to provide those teachers with the freedom, to truly educate, to truly teach to the student in front of them and to make sure that person is learning, rather than having to respond to the system that is requiring them to do certain things that may not even be the, the learning that, that the students right in front of them are asking for. That's the, my dream would be that we could do that, that we could actually provide that, that learning that I know inherently, the teachers were called to do and have specific understanding of the needs of the people right in front of them, that we may not be allowing them as a society to connect appropriately and to give our students and our children, and like all of us as humans, what we need to fulfill our own purpose. That's a long answer.

Lindsay Lyons
I love that answer though, because I think it speaks to my experience personally, as a teacher, I was never actually a teaching major. And then I did a program kind of like Teach for America. It was called New York City Teaching Fellows. And immediately after I graduated with degrees in Sociology and Women's and Gender Studies that I was like, okay, this is going to be great because I'm going to teach for that purpose. I'm going to teach for those conversations and that real learning that kids are going to be running to my class. And then two years later, looking back on those first two years of my teaching, it was, I'm going to teach this test. I'm going to remove all emotion and joy from the classroom, because I have to teach this test. And it took a couple of years to actually hit that moment where I was just like, this is not what I signed up for and find my way back to it. So that's super interesting that you say that.

Annalisa Holcombe
I think that that also can happen to us in all of our lives. It's one of the reasons that I talk so much about mentorship, which, and the reason I talk about that so much is because I find that when, so I've, you know, I've run a mentoring program for so long that I automatically can tell the good mentors. And they are the people who asked me if they're good mentors, right? Like, it's that simple? It's the, it's the person who says that they care so deeply about making sure that their mentee is getting the, what they need, that they come to me as the, as the organizer of the, environment and say, I hope I'm doing a good enough job. I'm really, I really want them to get something. And I think then I don't have to worry about you because it's those people who are striving, who are the people who continue to strive in all of the different areas of their lives.

Like those are the people who do, who, you know, you can count on, and it's not necessarily the people who are at the top of their game and have the, have the best title or making the most money or drive the best car. It's the people who you meet, who are curious and striving, who are the best mentors. And I think that those, that, that opportunity for mentorship is another way that we can also, however, find joy, be brought back to the joy that you said that, you know, for two years it was gone, but when you have to be a mentor and talk to somebody who's coming into whatever it was that you were, you know, in some ways called to do it can remind you of what your why. And it can remind you of the joy that you found originally in doing the work. Because sometimes we just all get into the, you know, the spinning wheel of our lives and forget that actually, I really love this. Let me stop for a minute. And remember that I actually really love what I'm doing. And so I think mentorship can help us remember why we are doing what we do.

Lindsay Lyons
Let's maybe dive in a little bit more to that because you have so much experience with mentorship. And I know you're passionate about people having mentors and being mentors. Could you talk a little bit more about if a teacher or a school principal is listening to this right now, thinking that sounds great. How do I set that up? We don't currently have anything, either a mentoring program for their student or for themselves as adults. How did you get that started? Or what would you suggest for them to have those conversations?

Annalisa Holcombe
I think we have to, so I have to tell you that the very first time I tried to set up a mentoring program, it fell flat. It was a failure. In fact, I even had this like, you know, get together at the end. It was a pilot program for a summer. And at the end we were going to have a little party and we'll, I mean, I even had wine at my party. I was like, we're going to have wine, we'll have a little party and talk about how we did. And only one other person showed up. I was like, wow, that did not go well. And what was great about that, however, is that we did have to create some, some structure to it. And what I have learned, I have to tell you the most important thing that I've learned over time with regard to mentoring programs is that we have to be, we as human beings get so busy that we set up our lives.

And, and we're so nice to each other, like in many ways, kind of fake, nice to each other that we, that we say, Oh, it's okay. I know, I know you're busy. And so when we, later, when I set up the mentoring program, I particularly told all of the students and all of the mentors don't do this. If you can't commit, I'm going to give you the exact requirements of what we want from you, how long it will be, what here's, what we want you to do. And it's not like, you know, do this many things, but it is this much time commitment, et cetera, here are the days. And particularly for the students, here are the days. And I have to tell you a kind of a story that might be interesting is that we set it up with the students at the beginning, where they come up with what their own, you know, rules, ground rules are, or however you want to phrase that, which I'm sure teachers do in their classrooms.

You know, that's like, and you have the, the individuals who are participating, create what those are and provide the opportunity for feedback. And everybody has to agree that those are the, those are the rules. But then somebody has to actually enforce them. And I know that probably teachers are better at this than most people. Because once you get into the workplace, we're terrible at it. We tell each other that's okay, no big deal. I understand. But we, in our mentoring program, we would literally tell the students, so here's the deal. You signed up for this. And without judgment, if you cannot do it, then you cannot do it. And you're going to be asked to leave because you can't, you can't opt in and out. You have to either be in or out. And, and it's, it's okay, because we all have to, you know, make our choices and have our priorities.

And so we won't judge you if you leave. And I think that's part of why we say we'll do stuff when we really can't do it, because we feel like we're being judged. But the truth is if we take away the judgment, allow people to really truly say their truth about whether they can do something or whether they want to even do it and let them be there without judgment. Then you can have those conversations. And, and honestly, every single year we ended up, you know, voting someone out who couldn't be there and it could be for all sorts of reasons, but the truth is we'd have, we'd have the people in the program talk honestly and openly truly about when we say it's okay, that somebody isn't here, is it actually, okay, you were here. This person, you know, rescheduled their jobs so that they could be here.

This person, you know, didn't go to their great grandma's funeral or something like people would make sacrifices to be there. Let's honor those and make sure that we are doing that hard work. I think in society, we say it's okay when we don't mean it, because we're afraid of conflict and having those difficult conversations. But that's what we learned with our mentoring program. And every time when I didn't run one of those programs and I had other facilitators, and they'd say, we have a bunch of students who seem to be dropping out. And I would say, how often are you reinforcing that this is important and that you committed to this, and it's not okay if you make a commitment and then you don't show up for it. So, but it is okay to say, I don't, I no longer have time for this commitment, but let's just be honest about who we are and where we are in our lives.

So I would say if I was a teacher, that's a long way of speaking. If I was a teacher or a principal, and I wanted to create a mentoring program, several things, one create the structure and the system of what the expectations are, and then stick to them. If you don't stick to them, it'll fall apart. And to look to the people who are automatically mentoring anyway, because there are people who are—every single school knows the teachers who are always the teachers that everybody goes to. Every single university knows the professors who every student goes to for advising. Those are the people that we are putting so much extra work on, in an unfair way, because it's real work. And it is incredibly emotional labor that we're putting on people who are automatically good at it, but we're not compensating them for it. We're acting as if, because you're good at this, you must love it. Not understanding that the reason they're good at it is probably because they are, they have one, the ability to do it well, which comes from the ability to truly listen, which means they can actually empathize with the people in front of them. And that is hard work that takes time for recovery. And we don't give people that. So that's what I tell a principal, give people that.

Lindsay Lyons
The structure piece I'm using is very similarly structured and linear. And so I think that makes a lot of sense. I love that there's a voice in that too, of the participants. So it's not something that you're just mandating, top-down, it sounds like that's something that's generated bottom up, which I think just leads to a lot more buy-in and commitment. Right. And like, I'm going to come back because this is where I want to be. And I think ultimately, as you were talking about earlier, right? I think this is where we want education to be in a place like I'm coming, because this is really helpful for me. I am deriving joy from it. I'm feeling good, mentoring others, I'm feeling good, being mentored. And I think for students and adults, that's like, that's what we want to connect with. Where is that joy coming from? And how do we create spaces where people, it sounds like you're saying, like they can really opt into it. Like it's a voluntary thing. It's not like everyone has to do it.

Annalisa Holcombe
I think that, required mentoring programs can be very, they can be actually detrimental for people because, and for both the, the person who is being mentored and for the mentor, because people are, if you, if you're required to be there, that doesn't mean that you bought in. It doesn't mean that you're ready to be part of it. And I think that over time, just like the program that I started, it became something that ended up, you know, we had to set up more, more courses, even though they weren't real courses with lots of people in it, because it became popular and more people wanted to opt in because the, you know, the results were appropriate, but at the beginning it was who wants to do this? And then we kept it that way because you want to serve the people who are ready for it and not tell people they have to have it and have them become jaded about what mentoring actually means. And I think also, I have to say during that process, one of the groups that I had the most difficult time recruiting to have to be in the mentoring program, where student teachers,

Lindsay Lyons
Wow. That's surprising to me actually,

Annalisa Holcombe
Well, in some ways it isn't right, because all of the business students were on it. Give me a mentor. I want that. And how can I put that on my LinkedIn page? The teachers were not interested in their LinkedIn pages in any sense of the word, but what, what they would tell me is I'm a, I'm a student teacher. So it means I already have a mentor. And so I would say to people—here's something that I think is a takeaway for all of us, which is to get yourself a mentor. Or, as one of my friends described to me, in fact, get your own personal board of directors, right? If you are a leader of a corporation, you're going to have several people, whom\ you have asked to be on your board because they have different areas of expertise.

One mentor cannot be the, be all and end all for you. They don't know everything, but if you get somebody that you can go to for interpersonal relationship advice, or somebody else that you can go to for, how am I going to get to the next phase of my career? Because you've been there before, or somebody else who you can just go to for educational opportunities, what school should I go to? Why did you choose that one? Like if you could, if you could get a handful of people who you can ask honest questions, and they're not either your boss or could be your boss so that you can really be vulnerable with them. I think that's a, I think that's a really good way for us to build our own independent mentoring programs that we do for ourselves is by finding our own personal board of directors. And I think that there are people out there in the world who would feel honored if you ask them to be, would you be willing to be on my own personal board of directors?

Lindsay Lyons
I love that idea of the board of directors thinking from even just a student lens, you know, I could pinpoint some different teachers that I gravitated to as a student myself, but certainly like the ones that I look back and say that that was my favorite teacher or one of my favorite teachers. They have not taught me the things that I now really value and totally learned from someone who was not a teacher or was a teacher much later. And so I think it speaks to that, like people are contributing in these various ways and, and that you don't have to put so much pressure on each individual teacher to be everything for every student. Maybe part of our work is helping students to find those people for themselves, perhaps by modeling how we do it in our own lives. Right?

Annalisa Holcombe
I think that's absolutely right. The best way that we can, that we can teach is to model, right? To say, this is what I've learned. This is how I'm using this. This is what's good. And this is what's bad. And this is how I am iterating as I go, because everything needs iteration. And it's going to be okay if you fail with your first mentor, right? Like it's, it's going to be okay, because there are other people out there that have something to offer you.

Lindsay Lyons
Yeah. And in the spirit of that, I hate to put you on the spot here, but would you mind modeling for us a little bit about your own? Do you have your own board of directors? And could you talk a little bit about what that looks like, like the process of finding them, but also kind of what they provide for you?

Annalisa Holcombe
I have a different board of directors for different purposes. Here's an example: one person who's on my board of directors, I don't talk to all the time. It is, but you know what, he, he actually, I actually ended up having him speak at my wedding about what friendship really looks like. Because friendship is important in relationships, right? But this person, he models for me how to prioritize. And the reason I picked him on my board of directors is because I struggle with my ability to say no. And I know that about myself. I go, wow, that looks cool. I want to do it. Oh, that looks cool. I want to do it. And then I have way too many things on my plate. I worked with volunteers in my old work and, and he was a person that I wanted to volunteer because he's a leader.

Annalisa Holcombe
And I spoke with him and asked him if he would be willing to volunteer. And he said, not this year, but you can talk to me next year because I only have time for three things in my life. And here's the order of their importance. First, my family, they come first always, and I need to dedicate time to them second, my career. And that's really important to me. And third, one way that I volunteer and I've already committed to one act of volunteerism this year. So come to me next year. And it was just so clear the way he said that to me, that I had no reason to tell him, “Oh, come on,” which I would do with people otherwise. When he was so clear with here are my priorities and I'm sticking to them and I expect you to honor them as well.

I go to him now as my, he helps me with my prioritization because it's a struggle for me and he has real clarity about it. So, I picked him because I found someone that I think I'm going to be like in this area. I don't want to be like him in other areas. In fact, he would know I would tease him that he prioritizes money far more than I do. And I think it's hilarious. But I do want to learn from him with regard to priorities, other people for different reasons. And I think the first aspect of me finding my own personal board of directors first comes with self-reflection on who I am and what is it that I need, because I should not pick someone just because they have a cool title. I shouldn't pick someone just because they look, you know, something about their lives is attractive to me, I would need to understand really what it is that I need and who it is, who I am and where I'm trying to go to see how they might be able to fit into what I need. So, the act of self-reflection first is really important.

Lindsay Lyons
I love that. And thank you for sharing that personal story. I think what's interesting about that particular example is I think it speaks to a lot of people generally, but teachers that I work with specifically about that idea, right? Like saying, no, it is so difficult. Cause you're just like, yep, sure. I'm serving, I'm serving, right? I'm doing all this stuff for the kids. I can't say no to that. And then it just leads to teacher burnout, which looking at the statistics, it's unlikely for someone who jumps into teaching five years later to still be teaching, which is nuts, you know, with no support system, no PD for how to say no and how to prioritize. Of course, that's going to be really difficult. So I know you talk on your podcast a lot about work-life integration and I'm not sure that I have a full handle on what exactly work-life integration is, but I would love for you to talk a little bit if you'd like, just about what that is and what it means to you and, and how that connects really, to not feeling burnt out and feeling excited about it.

Annalisa Holcombe
I think it has to do with a lot of the things I talk about. So it's of, for me, work-life integration in some ways, it's my reaction to people telling me that I needed to have a work-life balance. Right? People would tell me, you need to have a work-life balance. And then I think I work so much. Why is that something different than my life, right? Like how, why are you separating my work from my life? Because, we all know, and that's why I call my podcast. 92,000 hours is that out of everything we do in our life, the only thing we do more than work is sleep. And it is, we have less screen time, by far spending less time with our family and our loved ones than we do at work. So let's tell the truth about the fact that our work is in fact, our life.

So how, like how do we make sure that we integrate it in a way that honors its place in our life and honors that it is part of who we are. It isn't everything we are. We shouldn't, that's why I don't, you know, I don't start my podcast with, what do you do? I start it with who are you? And what really matters to you? Because in fact, I want to bring that piece of me. And I think that's why we talk about it differently. I want to bring that piece of me, that part of what matters to me and who I am as a human being. I want to bring that to my work. I don't want my work and particularly my role as a leader to be, some performative idea of what a leader is supposed to be. I want to be me and know that I'm also a leader and I don't have to look or act or say or speak the way that somebody tells me a leader is supposed to be.

I want to be myself and integrate what makes me special to my children and my husband and my friends into my work, because that's a part of my being. And it's a part of my humanity. And it's really like the only way that I'm going to actually find joy and purpose in my 92,000 hours is if I get to know people in that way as well, I don't want to be somebody different at my house and somebody different at my office. I want to be this. I just want to be me. And I want to be honored. And given, like, I want other people to see me as me and know that I get to be that person and be a professional. That's what it means to me.

Lindsay Lyons
That is so powerful because I've resisted this idea of work-life integration, because I thought that it meant that you had to be just “on” all the time. I thought it was, you never have a time where you could turn off work and just like be gone from work and you just have to be “on.” So that makes a ton of sense because I love what you said honoring that it's part of who we are. Like, I always joke about this with my partner, about our priorities. He is very clear. He's like family is his number one priority, work is way down that list. And I'm like, work is a very high priority for me because it's who I am. It's part of my identity. I don't want to give that up. And I always felt like that may be wrong. Like that was—so something was wrong with me that I loved work that much, but I also feel like I do have a tendency to go kind of too much in that direction of like I'm in the work zone, no time for family, no time for anything else. And so I feel like part of what you're saying too, is that there is that ability to say no to prioritize, to be clear on that.

Annalisa Holcombe
Your boundaries. Absolutely. This is my time for this. And, and my work is not coming into it and you get to do that, but you also get to be Lindsay who is fun, and who's funny at your job, right? Like you, you don't have to be two different things. And I, the reason it's important to me is because I struggled so much with it. I had, before I went into higher ed, I was a lawyer. And the pressure that I had, which I don't know if society put on me or if I on myself or, you know, how that worked. But I had this pressure that I was going to be, you know, tough as nails. I had to be like, I had to work all the time and I had to be tough and I had to negotiate. And, and I was really unhappy.

And as part of why I started my mentoring program, because, you know, I'm 10 years into my law career and I hated it. And I think that, and I was so confused about why do I hate this when I thought it was supposed to be me, and underneath it, I learned that one of my, one of my biggest strengths is that I am inherently nurturing. And I struggled with finding a way to be a strong leader with being a nurturing human. And I didn't know what to do with that. And it felt really uncomfortable until I allowed myself to integrate those together and I can be a nurturing leader and that's okay because that's how I bring my whole self and how I integrate who I am as a whole person into all the things that I do. And at home, when I'm nurturing, I'm also a leader. And, you know, like I'm, it's like both of those are important parts of my identity, and I don't want to give up one or the other in who I am as a, and how I bring myself and show up for people in my life.

Lindsay Lyons
That actually brings me to what we were talking about before we started recording about this idea of teacher neutrality, of this idea of when we're teaching for justice. And we're talking about justice, I think for me, that's why I got into the classroom. And then having two years in realized, I'm not bringing that part of myself to the classroom. And also I think that pressure of not being tenured and teachers wondering, you know, can I bring that part of myself? What does it look like to bring a justice-focused sense of leadership and teaching into the classroom without getting fired? And, and sometimes I definitely butted up against that, “I'm going to get fired today.” But I think like that's so powerful to frame it in that way as this is who I am. It's who I am at home. Of course, it's going to be who I am in the workplace. It has to be, if it's going to be sustainable, at least that's what I'm hearing you say.

Annalisa Holcombe
Absolutely. And if you're going to continue to find joy, if you take away those pieces of you that bring you joy, because they're part of your identity, then of course the joy is going to go out of your work. It's going to go out of your teaching because you didn't allow yourself to bring those pieces. But I think it's also important that you talked about the worry that you would have about, am I going to lose my job if I do these things? And I think it's important to acknowledge when we have the privilege of being able to bring our full selves. And also if we do have the privilege, how important it is that we do it. So that we do—we start to change the conversation about how people can bring their whole selves to their work, to their classroom, et cetera. It does take the people who already are in a position of privilege to start to do that work so that people who are not can, because it's, if we expect people to do that. And I think we might often do that in our society—we look at people and in some ways like other them and say like, well, you're the other. So we'd like you to bring that to this classroom rather than being courageous ourselves, as leaders and bringing our whole selves to our classroom first.

Lindsay Lyons
Absolutely. I think about that in all of the racial justice work that I'm learning about trying to be part of this idea of this is a person who is Brown or Black or Indigenous, and they are a teacher. That means this is something they should tackle, right? Or this is something that they should be taking the risks on when in reality teachers who are Black, Brown and Indigenous are most likely to be fired for speaking out and things like that. Right? And that's something where if we take, I've been thinking a lot about language and like, if we take that idea of “issues of race,” right? Or racism, and we flip it to be, we're talking about white supremacy here, right? This is like a white person's like we are embedded in this problem. This is our responsibility to step up and take that risk and speak out and say these things. And to no other—that, just when you said that, I'm like, I see that every day and this example, right?

Annalisa Holcombe
I find myself worrying about this a lot in my work now. Because in addition to the work I do with 92,000 hours, which I have to tell you is part of my own, like you talk about my own professional development. In my other work, I am a fundraiser and I'm asking people for money all the time, but I know that what I'm doing and I feel really good about it. People will ask me questions like, don't you feel uncomfortable asking people for money? And I say, no, because I, in fact, believe in what I'm working on. If I didn't, I shouldn't be doing this work. And I'm asking people to invest in changing society through this investment. And I will provide them with information about the impact that they're making in society through it. And if it fits their values, which is, you know, what we do with our money is we express our values. However, we're spending it, whether it's, you know, restaurants or education or social justice, we're expressing our value, what we value in the world. And I'm happy to help direct some people to express their values.

Lindsay Lyons
Wow. That is powerful. Especially transitioning from a teacher role to a business owner now where I'm like selling, you know, courses and things. And I'm like, I feel very uncomfortable asking people for money, but I'm like, if you are where I was, this type of stuff is going to change your life. And I know that, and I believe in that. And I think that's such a great reframe of, let me introduce you to something that could be life-changing versus I'm going to ask you for money.

Annalisa Holcombe
That's right. And no judgment. If you choose not to do it, I need to choose it. I think you should. I like, it's great, like, it's a great way to be able to express your values. And that's when I reframed, I read this great book is called The Soul of Money. It's a great book about how our money—money has a soul and that it just flows through us. None of us get to keep it forever. It's just going to flow through us. What's the direction that you want that flow to go. Like, how are you going to make that money flow through you? And so what are you going to do with it? and when you look at your budget, how are you spending it? That'll tell you what you value. That goes only if we have additional funding, right? If we have only enough to cover our basic needs, then it is completely unfair for us to say, what do you value? So it's only when you have additional funding that you can do something with it.

Lindsay Lyons
That makes a lot of sense. And I was even thinking from the school perspective, right? Of a principal or a superintendent, like we have X amount of money. If you can cover like basic student needs, everybody's fed, everyone has a teacher, right. Where's that extra money going? Is it investing in mentorship programs or coaching programs or things like this, or is it going to, you know, I don't know, like a hundred textbooks that we may or may not use, right? I think about that. 

Annalisa Holcombe
I say that all the time. Look, if you, if you wonder what people value, whether it's an individual, a school, a business, a society, a government, look where they spend their money. That's how, like where you spend your money, shows what you value.

Lindsay Lyons
I love it. I hate to cut this conversation short, because I think this has been amazing in our kind of wrap up. I'd love to know of all the things that we've talked about. We've talked about so many things, I'm just going to tie it up. Recap some of the amazing things that we have talked about. We talked about how, when we set up these mentorship programs, we want to make sure that students or participants are creating those norms. We're making sure it's voluntary and people have that commitment. We’re talking about how we create our own personal board of directors and model how to do that with students? Priorities and how to make sure that when we are saying yes to something we're actually fully saying yes to it, and we're making sure that the nos have their own category for now, based on those three priorities, perhaps honoring that work is a part of who we are. And so that work-life integration is really critical. And I love this last point, too, right of expressing what we value through money. I think through, through so many things, right through our actions, through how we spend our time. 

Annalisa Holcombe
Time is our most precious resource. Far more than money. And so how you spend your time. I think that priority list is the most important thing, because it's the thing you can't get back. You can always make more money, but you can never get your time back. So really like really being very serious about your time and thinking critically about it and not allowing other people to take it from you because, because it really it's just fleeting and it will go away. And so how are you spending it and how do you make sure that, as we say, at Connection Collaborative, how do you make sure that the, that the time you have is spent well, rather than just spent? Because it's going away regardless. So how are you going to spend it that you look back and say, I expressed my values through that. I was true to myself through that. I had some purpose or some meaning in the time that I had.

Lindsay Lyons

Absolutely. I love that idea. And, and I think about too, you know, some of those shifts that are required to free up some of that time is big. Like that's a big shift that we have to make from how we have been doing things maybe for a decade, right? And like, this is what it takes to get that time back. Sometimes that can feel really scary to kind of jump into that abyss of what does this new life look like for me? But it's totally worth it, right? Because that time is something that we don't get back. And I, I love that, that you just said that it is more valuable than money.

Annalisa Holcombe
It's absolutely more valuable than money. Absolutely. I do want to also say that maybe like the last thing to talk about would be that I talk a lot about vulnerability. It's a, it's a real thing for me, it's really important to be able to acknowledge what our vulnerabilities are before we can be courageous or brave. And I also think that what I learned during the course of all of these years of mentoring is that some of the best gifts that we can give each other is to see each other, like really, truly see each other in our whole humanity. And to know that my act of courage might be different than your act of courage. And that we, as a society often see courage in those great grand, expectations of, that person was courageous. They jumped into the water, or they ran into the building, but acts of courage can be the small thing that nobody else would know is courageous.

Annalisa Holcombe
Like, and I use examples, like I called my mom today. And so for some, one person that might be an incredible act of courage for them. And if you can have a person in your life that notices or knows you well enough to acknowledge those small acts of courage, those are so important. And I think that if we want to make big systemic change in, in terms of how students learn and how teachers are allowed for that to happen, I think a big act of forward momentum would be to acknowledge the small acts of courage that teachers are doing in their classroom every single day. My youngest daughter is currently, you know, learning online, via Zoom every day. She is six years old. If I could acknowledge the incredible small act of courage that her teacher does every single day by showing up for those six year olds, I see that bravery and I am in awe of what she is doing every single day.

Annalisa Holcombe
I think that if more people reached out to their teachers and say, I see what you’re doing showing up for these students, particularly right now, I think it’s incredibly important. I think that because our systems have failed us, so that the decision-making about what we're doing in the time of COVID for our learners has gone from, you know, not our federal government, not our state government, it's down to every single school district so that those people have to make these decisions in vacuums, where they can, they're never going to make enough people happy, for us to just acknowledge for those people, regardless of the decision that they're making right now, that they are, they're engaging in courageous aspect, continuing to just show up is, is important to us particularly right now. And sometimes the biggest act of courage we have is to just keep showing up when it's hard.

Lindsay Lyons
That was so good. Thank you for sharing that. I think that is a perfect kind of wrap-up for our call to action. Like how do we really think about living out our values that we have, and that, that is a perfect one that encompasses so many different values. We might hold in terms of, you know, connection and collaboration and all of that good stuff. Oh, amazing. So as we close, we know that leaders are constantly learning and growing. Folx who listened to this podcast, love learning. I am curious, Annalisa, what is something that you are currently learning about or kind of diving into lately? It could be, you know, a book you're reading something that you're working on in your free time. What would you want to share for us that you've been learning about or that you would direct people to learn about if you're, if you're jazzed about it?

Annalisa Holcombe
Oh goodness. I have—I'm jazzed about so many things. Here's one, if you, if people are wondering about like, how do I even know what my values are? If you go to my website, in my blog, we have core value cards, which can help you identify those. And I think the most important thing to do with that is here's your core values. It helps you, there's some directions on how to get to them and how to like limit them. But then also how to define them for yourselves, because every single person's idea of what, you know, justice is, is different. And so how do you, how do you, how do you get clarity on what those are? The second would be to define your priorities, take some time to do that, do the act of self reflection and then notice and give yourself credit for your own small acts of courage, right? Because if you don't have time or you haven't figured out what those are if you could, first of all, define them. And second, after having gotten your own personal board of directors and you had the courage to share with them, what some of those vulnerabilities are, then share with other people who have your back, what you're doing so that they can give you that credit that you need to keep showing up.

Lindsay Lyons
Amazing. I love that you just linked all the different things that you've been talking about throughout the episode. Perfect close. And as people are curious about you and Connection Collaborative and your podcast, could you just tell us how they could find you, in either a social media, your website, where could they learn more about you?

Annalisa Holcombe
Yeah, sure. So connectioncollaborative.com is our website. If you go there, you can also find the links to the 92,000 hours podcast. New episodes come out every Tuesday and they are related to big picture issues that we talk about. So we have priorities, and coming up, we just did fear. And how, like how to handle fear in your professional life. We're doing one on vulnerability right now. So, that's, all of those I think are, are helpful and they're, they're fun to talk about, even though they're hard. So there's even an episode on failure and we have one coming out right before the holiday season, which is about love and how we can actually acknowledge that love is okay to talk about at work.

Lindsay Lyons
Wow. Those sound amazing. And thank you so much for doing that work. Like this is important stuff. And every time I listen, I take away so much and I feel it in my gut, like, I'm like, this is the stuff that I wish people were talking about. So it is really nice.

Annalisa Holcombe
Nice. That's really nice of you to say. And I'm so thrilled with what you're working on. I'm already taking away all of your work on PD and how I talk about it with the people that I work with so that we can make that a bigger lesson for people who are not necessarily teachers, but people who work and, and what that might mean. Awesome.

Lindsay Lyons
Thanks Annalisa. And thanks for being on the podcast.

Annalisa Holcombe
Thanks for inviting me.

Lindsay Lyons
Thanks for listening amazing educators. If you loved this episode, you can share it on social media and tag me at Lindsay Beth Lyons, or leave a review of the show. So leaders like you will be more likely to find it, to continue the conversation you can head over to our Time for Teachership Facebook group and join our community of educational visionaries until next time leaders, continue to think big, act brave, and be your best self.

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Episode Freebie: Core Values Activity