What’s Shaping Our World? Leadership in Youth Development with Chris Tompkins

Chris Tompkins:
Organizations that will thrive in the future are the ones that are willing to learn from the next generation and not just try to fit them into the molds that have worked previously, and so I think having a real curiosity of what makes the next generation tick and how we can assimilate and utilize them in our organizations is a real key.

Mathieu Yuill:
Good day, and welcome to the Leading With Nice interview series podcast. My name is Mathieu Yuill, and we want to help you inspire others, build loyalty and get results today. I am very, well I’m not sure if excited is the right word. My guest today is Chris Tompkins, who does a lot of things. I came to know him through my work at Muskoka Woods, but actually he’s a youth development expert and Leading With Nice helps him with his podcast that’s going to be coming out soon. We’ll talk about that a bit later, but just to caveat, we have a fun relationship. So if it starts to go off the rails, I’m going to give you permission to do that 15-second skip ahead button and hopefully, we’ll get it back on track by the time we’ve done that. So Chris, welcome to the show.

Chris Tompkins:
Thanks. It’s great to be here. I’ll give them permission to actually use the 15 second rewind button because the line, the joke would be that great that they’ll want to listen to it again, and probably not from me, coming from you. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been barreled over as you’ve walked past the office and said something witty in a random interaction so it’s a privilege for me to be on here and you’ll probably throw a curve ball at me at some stage.

Mathieu Yuill:
If you’re listening to this and you ever have the opportunity to visit the Muskoka Woods office, first of all, if you’re thinking, “Yeah, I could visit Muskoka Woods office.” You are listening to this much later than we recorded it because of course we’re in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re still in lockdown.

Chris Tompkins:
Right.

Mathieu Yuill:
I’m in the basement, but if you are ever in the Muskoka Woods office and you walk by Chris Tompkins office, he usually keeps a bowl of these things called Bretzels on his desk, and they’re like pretzels with peanut butter inside, and quite frankly, I’m like a Roman soldier. They pay me a third in salary, in Bretzels. If they don’t pay me, I take a third in salary of Bretzels.

Chris Tompkins:
That’s true. We used to, we used to.

Mathieu Yuill:
It’s true, good times. Available at Costco and Loblaws, if you’re on, anyhow, this is not what we’re here to talk about today.

Chris Tompkins:
We’re not giving food advice.

Mathieu Yuill:
No, not at all.

Chris Tompkins:
Great snacks by Matt and Chris.

Mathieu Yuill:
Not at all, but what we’re going to be talking about today, Chris has had a long career in youth development and that age group, ’cause we’re probably talking like 11, 12, 13 right through like 25, 28. So if you fall to one of these categories, I would recommend you listen up, take some notes. If you’re driving, wait till you get home. If you are a parent, you’re going to pick up some nuggets today, no doubt. If you are a youth worker or work with youth in a capacity outside of the education system, for sure. If you are a teacher or an educator, I know Chris interacts quite often with people in your profession, so a lot of what he’ll be speaking about is influenced from there. Chris, remind me of the exact post-grad degree you did at Clemson, it was in youth development leadership?

Chris Tompkins:
Yeah, that’s what it was, but before that, I actually have my Bachelor of Ed., From UofT as well, so I spent a little time in the teaching world before I went into different kinds of youth work and yeah, youth development leadership from Clemson University.

Mathieu Yuill:
On this podcast, we like to bring on guests who are experts in a certain area, and that can give you like practical, real tips and also speak a bit esoterically as well about it. So you’re going to get that in spades today. So I’m just curious, Chris, over your 20 plus year career in the youth development field, in various areas, I’m just curious what, when you look back, what has not changed, like what’s the same from 20 years ago, that’s same today, but then also, conversely, what is radically changed? What is something that you’re dealing with that’s brand new?

Chris Tompkins:
Yeah, it’s an interesting question, Matt. I think it’s easy when we look at generational stuff, to look at what happens in time and space in different generations and what are just stages of life changes? Like it’s easy to look back and to go, “Oh man, kids always do this,” but that was probably true when we were that age and because we’re in a different stage, we look back, we forget some of the things. I think there are a lot of key developmental things that young people go through, from physical development to cognitive development, to social and emotional development that actually don’t change. There’s some things and if you want to research them, you can look at Piaget’s cognitive development or Erickson, social-emotional development stages, and when you read about where these transitions happen and what things happen for young people, they pretty much stay the same.

Chris Tompkins:
So one of the things, just as a quick insight, is young people around 13 to 14, through puberty, they go through a lot of changes, but one of the things that a lot of social science will tell you is, here’s just one, developmentally, it was the same when I was a kid, as it is today. At this age group, 14 year olds think that everyone is watching them and their life is on the stage. I remember reading that, and this in textbooks that are written years ago and then I’ll be driving in the car with my daughter, and they’re like, “Dad, don’t do that. Everyone’s watching you.” And I’m like, “Nobody’s watching me, nobody cares.”

Chris Tompkins:
So there’s just a whole bunch of like Rite of passage, age and stage things that happen in young people that no matter what the world is doing around us, they typically stay the same. We don’t have enough time to go into all of those, but there were just some plain old, like puberty, it may start earlier or younger, but there’s some changes that happen that you see and you’ll see them in your home and you’ll see them with the kids that you know and care about, that are no different than when like centuries ago. Yeah, environmental factors change it, but we still grow in some pretty consequential similar steps. As far as change, and this is really a cop-out answer for a lot of people who pay attention to the world around us, but it’s going to be technology, and that is the easy thing to put your finger on but let me give you three reasons how technology has changed for young people.

Chris Tompkins:
Number one, the access to information. Matt, when we were kids and you had to do homework, you had to go to the library. You had to like, maybe have some encyclopedias and because of where we were, you could maybe start using the internet right now. Now young people have access to information and not just school stuff, what’s happening in the news, what’s happening around them, at a rapid pace, and that impacts development. It impacts how they think about the world and they think about themselves.

Chris Tompkins:
The other thing that’s connected to that is the changing role of an expert. When we were growing up, you used to have like your teachers or people who had done all the hard work and had gone to school and got all those degrees and they would be your trusted sources of information or you might know an uncle who once went and did something and they could give you this. Now, because of the way technology and social media particularly is shaped, there are a million experts in every category and you can get that information, you can listen to them and they can shape how you think about the world, just by where you go to your source of news or media or whatever, and for young people today, a lot of it’s around the social media things like TikTok. A lot of young people now get their news from TikTok.

Chris Tompkins:
So somebody posting something in their basement is now the source of information when before, it was people who had long initials behind their name and shaped a lot of the thinking. So I think that would change. Then the third one is technology, we all know this, it’s changed the nature of how young people relate to peers and how they build relationships. I’m not a big person in good or bad. I think in all things in life, what we’re called to do is affirm the virtue and discern the vulnerability in them. So to me, the relational nature of social media today is not necessarily good or bad. It has its good and bad components to it. So I would say it isn’t that technology and social media has made relationships worse for young people. It’s changed the way young people engage and it has positive and negative.

Chris Tompkins:
You can now celebrate birthdays with your cousins in Zimbabwe or South Korea, through FaceTime, where before you never could do that. I have relationships with a lot of my nieces in Austin, Texas, and Dallas that I would never have had before today, and so does my daughter. It’s just changed the way we relate to one another. You can now text, you can have all the things that used to happen at the playground for young people, now happened in your bedroom at all hours of the night. So again, there’s virtue in that, but there’s also vulnerability.

Mathieu Yuill:
Just a reflection on that, you’ve put it away and like I’m in this space a lot, you are as well and I haven’t heard of this way so this is a new one, and I’m going to extrapolate what it meant to me is around the technology, I have three kids aged 10 to 15. What I found is that technology is like a language to them. They’ve learned it. They’ve grown up with it, but they’re not necessarily tech experts. So when a printer needs to be added to the OS, I still have to go and add the printer, like they’re like, “How do I add a printer?” I’m like, “Are you kidding me? Didn’t you just have a group chat with 25 people?”

Chris Tompkins:
Yeah.

Mathieu Yuill:
So I think the difference is they speak the language, but they don’t have their Masters in English. They don’t know the technical, and that’s an important distinction of what you just raised, which that really resonated with me.

Chris Tompkins:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Mathieu Yuill:
The other thing that I was thinking of is, as you were talking about how they get their news from a kid in their basement on TikTok explaining Bitcoin or explaining like-

Chris Tompkins:
Well, Trump, Biden, like the entire TikTok world has redefined US politics, at least for my 14 year old.

Mathieu Yuill:
Right? So a lot of, when I work with clients, a lot of them will say, “Oh, we want to be on social, we want to do TikTok.” And I’m like, “Well, this will be a lot of work. It’s not like you can just sit at your desk and make a TikTok,” and they go, “Well, these kids are doing it and they’re all over the.” I’m like, “Yes, but for them it’s like speaking a language.”

Chris Tompkins:
It is.

Mathieu Yuill:
So they just do it as part of their thing, but if you ask them to put together a TPS report and fax it to the head office, they’d be lost.

Chris Tompkins:
No, they’d have no idea. I will just add one piece. We’re recording this in the middle of a global pandemic when entire school systems have gone virtual, your commentary on both of those things, I think is also going to change a little bit because now my daughter, not only can she figure out how to TikTok, but she now actually knows how to use Google slides and PowerPoint better than I can, and I have to do presentations all across the board and she in a, you know, “Oh dad, you just go to Canva and you pull this thing down and you do,” and I’m like, “Whoa, where are you getting?”

Chris Tompkins:
So you’re right in a lot of ways but I do think that will start to change, that pretty soon your sons will go, “Dad, I know how to fix the printer now, like don’t even bother anymore.” Right? Because their interest and their need to use technology for their lives will accelerate for them the need to learn it and that’s no different than, she doesn’t know how to fax, but you could probably put as good at presentation as half the people that work for me together on whatever platform they do slides on, so.

Mathieu Yuill:
Well, listen, if you’ve become an expert in Google Slides, you have a wasted life. I hate Google slides.

Chris Tompkins:
I don’t like it either.

Mathieu Yuill:
It’s the worst product. In the early stages of the pandemic, one of our children’s teachers sent out math homework on Google Slides. Oh, I don’t have enough hair left to tear out but anyhow, nonetheless.

Chris Tompkins:
But just quickly, I know we’re digressing but this goes back to the expert piece because Google Slides, so I tried to show my daughter how to use PowerPoint. She’s like, “Dad, this PowerPoint is lame. It doesn’t work. It’s not effective.” And all of a sudden, she has greater knowledge in the efficiency of presentation decks than I do, who have been doing it for 20 years. And I hate to be honest, she might not be wrong, like in some of the usability and stuff that she uses, I was like, “Oh yeah, that actually is better than the tool that I use.” So all of a sudden expertise is changing because of access to information, frequency in using things, and again, we’ll talk about this maybe a little bit later, a redefining of what success looks like in some of these arenas.

Mathieu Yuill:
If I were to end the podcast episode right now, the title would be Mum and Dad, you’re becoming irrelevant. So anyhow, but listen, a lot of listeners, they’re hiring though, 21 to 28 we’ll say, and I know you hire like through Muskoka Woods, 350 staff every summer and a lot of full-time staff, usually it’s their first job or they’re in that age group. So I want you to help pass the baton here. What do you do through your work, to help develop young people that if it’s the next job they have, or if it’s somebody that maybe worked part-time in the summer and they’re now at your friend’s company and they say, “Well, what do I focus on? How do I help them be their best?” What are some tips or some things they should focus on, or even if you have practical exercises, what would you tell that other leader to do, to help these people in this age group?

Chris Tompkins:
Well, I think we’re probably going to get into a bit of a theme in this podcast, but I think one of the things is really easy and I kind of experienced this early on is we have a whole bunch of assumptions and set expectations about what success looks like, how people progress in their career, what things they want, what does great employee engagement initiatives look like, because they worked for us and we saw how we moved through a company or how we grew or developed or how we were rewarded or recognized for our service or our contribution and we can be really easily set in, this is how this should work.

Chris Tompkins:
I think one of the things I’m learning and maybe too late in my life is to be a bit more open-handed with what actually works. Organizations that will thrive in the future are the ones that are willing to learn from the next generation and not just try to fit them into the molds that have worked previously, and so I would say right off the bat, a huge thing for employers who want to take the baton from the next generation is first develop a real position of empathy and listening. That’s where it all starts. I think if we have organizations that are so rigid in what works and what we d-, you need norms, you need standards, you need principles and procedures and values. I’m not saying that. What I’m saying is, that when we get young people in, to be able to listen to them and to hear where they’re coming from, what success looks like, the entitlement is a bad, I think, a bad way of cast piping young people, they want and expect certain things and we sometimes attribute a value to those or a motivation that actually isn’t there.

Chris Tompkins:
They want a lot of the same things that we do. Their world has just told them to get them, you need to go through a different set of steps or stages. I think by listening to them and helping redefine what they’re actually looking for from success in work, what does it look like for them to feel like they’re contributing every day? What motivates them every day to come to work and for us to have the things that we want to hold true to in our organization, that we have to bring people onto, but then having some places where there actually is room for switching it up, changing it, having a different way of looking at it. I think coupling the listening and a willingness to learn and adapt from what we’re hearing back from younger staff, you and I have talked about this occasionally, I have this paradigm that certain type of people make certain types of good employees from their experience or their education.

Chris Tompkins:
Then all of a sudden you come across other people that have a different perspective and they’ve lived their world online and they’ve done marketing initiatives a different way than the marketing companies we’ve used in the past and all of a sudden, you’re like, wait a sec, it’s working for them. Like something they’re doing is different than what we’ve done in the past. I think having a real curiosity of what makes the next generation tick and how we can assimilate and utilize them in our organizations is a real key. I think this goes back to retaining staff, like asking ourselves the question of what would it look like for us to have these people who are young and keen and are willing to take on the world, coming into our organization, how do we keep them with that level of engagement five years down the road, 10 years down the road, because one of the things that’s prevalent now, and it’s not just with the younger generation, it’s woven into society, is our loyalties have changed.

Chris Tompkins:
Back in the day, my grandma bought the same soap all the time. She bought the same toothpaste. If there was a sale on Colgate, if she was a Crest lady, it wouldn’t matter. Loyalty to brands and to companies was really important. Well, that’s changed. That’s eroded over time and so if we want to have young people stick with us for longer than the period we might hear that they typically stay in an organization, we have to figure out ways to engage them, to keep them, to keep them motivated and to enable them to continue to grow with the organization.

Mathieu Yuill:
So I’m going to ask for an example of where this has actually happened with you. For two reasons, one, I want to just quote Molly Fletcher, who check her out, Molly Fletcher. She was a sports agent, became a consultant, but she has this line that really impacted me, that I try to live by and she says, “Trade defensiveness for curiosity.” So when that person walks into your office, sits down and says, “I think we should do this thing totally different.”

Mathieu Yuill:
The response might have been in the past, “Well, how?” but, I trade that for, “Wow. Tell me more.” I don’t have to follow that up with it, “Oh, well, we’re going to do that now,” but I just love that as a great way to live out what you were just speaking about. What I want to hear from you is because people are probably right now thinking like, “Oh, I don’t want to do that. That means like letting them run the show.” But I know that Muskoka Woods, there’s some pretty strict guidelines on how things like, even like how meetings are run.

Chris Tompkins:
100%.

Mathieu Yuill:
So what does it look like? Like what do you actually talk, give us an example of where this played out in real life.

Chris Tompkins:
I’ll give you a very practical, real life example that is unfolding right now and should be in most companies. If, and when the world adjusts back, what will the virtual in-person work-life look like? And I think it’s easy, as an organizational leader to look at data, to look at research, to say, okay, you read reports that say, “Okay, productivity is increased in a lot of areas because people aren’t home, they have less distractions,” and in other areas we’re recognizing, like for someone like me, who doesn’t need to get my social interactions from a workplace situation, I’m just as happy to work at home every day. So there’s different ways of thinking about it personally, but then organizationally going, what’s the best for the organization? Well, we have a lot of young people that work for us and it’s easy to read reports. It’s easy to make assumptions to say, “Oh, young people want to be more virtual, they’re digital natives. They use technology really well.”

Chris Tompkins:
So if I went in with that assumption in an organization, I would assume that coming back from this, most of my younger employees would want a more flexible virtual type experience. When you actually listen to them, at least the people that work for us, one of the reasons they work for us is community. One of the things that has been an advantage for Muskoka Woods is the relationships that are formed around the lunch table. You walking back from the office and stealing my pretzels and believe it or not, for a lot of our young employees, that is a huge part of what makes them want to work at Muskoka Woods. So by actually listening to them on that, I can hear that and not just make assumptions to say, “Well, listen, we can go back. We don’t need an office. Get rid of the overhead. I don’t need to pay the money on this. People are productive at home and our young people who are digital natives, that’s what they want,” But what they want more than anything, if you listen, is flexibility.

Chris Tompkins:
They want to be trusted enough to take their laptop for a few hours to the coffee shop and get their work done. But to just go like, “Well, that means let’s just forget it. We don’t need an office. They can just go.” We’ll miss the point that they actually are, at least the ones that work for us, are looking for that sense of community and relational friction, not in a bad way, but interaction that happens through the ebb and flow of the day at the water cooler, the front, the lunch table or whatever. So that’s just an example of how it’d be easy to make assumptions based on what I think the organizational needs are, even from a fiscal standpoint, and then from my personality to be like, “Man, I could care less about going back into an office,” and then making assumptions about what young people want before you actually have listened to them and then let them shape part of the strategy as you come back.

Mathieu Yuill:
All right, home listener, rewind that and listen to it five more times because that… Those are the droids you’re looking for, in this conversation. That was amazing. That was a great illustration. And also for clarity, I don’t steal the pretzels. It’s like a payday loan situation.

Chris Tompkins:
That’s true, you don’t steal them.

Mathieu Yuill:
If I take five after he turned seven by weeks end, that’s how it works. But so I know because our company and myself personally are fortunate to work with you on your podcast, Shaping Our World, which is launching in just a few weeks and on it, you’re speaking with experts in youth development. So as a dad of kids aged 10 to 15, what am I going to get out of what you’re doing?

Chris Tompkins:
So there’s a couple of things. The first would be, like we’ve kind of talked about and alluded to it at the beginning, youth culture changes so rapidly. What’s cool today is not cool tomorrow. And as a parent who’s interested and beyond just the cool and the trends, that’s the one thing we do know. Change is always happened. It seems to be happening at a much more rapid rate now than it ever has before. So the things that are important to our kids, what is shaping them is not only changing rapidly, but it’s hard for us who aren’t in it to actually understand and go, like half the time I’m like, “What is this? Like, what are you talking about? Where’s this coming from?” And if we care about our young people, part of, and exactly what I was talking about in the last thing is if we want to come alongside them, support them, help them to grow into healthy thriving adults, part of the journey is actually discerning the world they live in.

Chris Tompkins:
So we have experts who live in this world, who help us create meaning out of some things we’re like, “Okay, I felt this. I’m seeing this. Is this actually a thing?” ‘Cause you know, as a parent, a lot of the things we experience with our own kids, as soon as we hear some other parent is gone through it, that it’s actually a thing and it’s just not my bad parenting skills or something my child’s doing, you’re like, “Oh my goodness, your child too? Your child too?” And then you hear someone with their PhD in family and relationships and child development say, “Well, this is a thing. This isn’t just your.” You’re like, “Oh, okay. So I’m not alone in this.”

Chris Tompkins:
So there’s encouragement in that. There’s help in understanding what’s going on, and then we have people come through and give practical advice, not just help us interpret or translate the world, but give us advice on how we can come alongside and help and support young people. That’s probably the thing that I love the most. It’s one thing to talk about all the issues and what’s great and the opportunities we see that young people have and what are some of the challenges. But when we get into like, what do we do as a parent or someone who cares about these young people, who comes alongside them or encounters them at work or their life, how can we help? What can we do? How can we be supportive?

Chris Tompkins:
That’s what I find is really good. Then we offer relevant resources, if the topic interests you, to dive a little bit deeper, and it’s a chance to hear from people who are living, breathing, working in this space and lean into their expertise, kind of like what we’re doing today, but in some really specific areas of child and youth development and just youth issues that are going around in the world around us.

Mathieu Yuill:
It’s on every platform, Shaping Our World, so definitely, if you’re at home on your computer, open a window, where you get your podcast from, check it out. So that leads me to this next question, because we’ve all heard the cliches and I can’t actually say this line without singing the song in my head. Don’t you know the children are our future. Treat them well, anyhow. Now I owe copyright to somebody or like we’re building the next generation of leaders.

Mathieu Yuill:
My wife and I made this conscious decision when our kids were young, after a semester of activities, we have three kids and each kid was doing like two, maybe one was doing three things outside of school. We sat down around the Christmas break and we’re like, “We are done. We are so exhausted.” And we said, “Why are we doing this? Are we trying to make our kid the next prime minister?” And we’re like, “Well, probably not, if that happens, I don’t know, does it matter if we have them in like four organized events?” You probably don’t have the answer to this, if you do, bottle it and sell it. But like, what is the right amount of this intentional investment in our child? I don’t know how hard, should we be pushing them? It’s almost like an adult peer pressure to put your kids in as many things as you can.

Chris Tompkins:
Yup.

Mathieu Yuill:
I don’t know. Tell me, what do you think?

Chris Tompkins:
Okay. So let me start with something that I believe to be true and that’s number one, all of us are wired to excel at certain things in life. There are things that we are really born to do, and there’s this emerging of our passions and our gifts, and when we find that, that’s really where we thrive in life. I’ll get to this in a minute, but one of the challenges is, I’m still on that journey in my mid-forties. So that’s just a fundamental belief that I have that, that there’s something in us that really makes us come alive and part of adolescence and part of the journey that kids, children and adolescents go through, is discovering what that thing is. What is it? And there’s things that build to that, just because you love dance, doesn’t mean you’re born to be a dancer one day.

Chris Tompkins:
There are things about music and body movement that just can come alive for a kid when they get into a dance class and so they discovered that thing. So I would say, one of the things that we’ve always navigated in our home and in my conversations when I work with young people is the tension that you mentioned between exploring things and one of the things with developmental stages is that young people through high school age, they try on a bunch of rules, like the ideas you actually try it on. Think about going into a store and picking out a suit jacket, or a coat or something that you put it on and you’re like, “How does this feel?” And you’ve got to spend a little time in it. You’ve seen people walk around stores in their running shoes, ’cause it’s one thing to put it on, it’s another thing to actually walk in them.

Chris Tompkins:
So through adolescence, part of the natural discovery of identity is trying on these roles and they can be more than just things we do. It can be the style that we have, the music we’re into, the friend group [inaudible 00:28:26], and we’re working out who we’re becoming. I would say, as a parent, I want to encourage my child to try on a lot of roles. Like experiment with things. If you’re good at something, try it for a season. So that’s the tension we get in is what’s the difference between exploring things and then not letting your kids off the hook when something gets hard and they want to stop doing it. That honestly is the real tension and the one thing that we decided to do is have some boundaries in place but then really like I’ve said earlier, is really try to listen to where our daughter is wanting to go and being able to discern their voice in it.

Chris Tompkins:
So we have some things like if you start something, you finish it, whatever the season is. If it’s piano lessons, it’s a school year. If it’s a sports team, it’s whenever the sport team starts and finishes, and try so-, if you want to play soccer, that’s great, but you’re going to go to it and you’re going to go through the whole season. At the end of the season, you don’t like soccer anymore, don’t need to do soccer. So our daughter got into pretty competitive dance growing up and we wanted to encourage her to stick with it when it was hard but every season we had this, do you want to continue? And there were some times where we knew as a parent, like this is just hard and it’s overwhelming. We need to give this a few weeks before we have the conversation again.

Chris Tompkins:
But there was a time when Sloan, our daughter said, “Listen, I don’t think I want to do dance anymore and here are the reasons why,” and she rationally went through and because we know her and ’cause we know how we’re wired, we’re like, “That’s the right choice for her.” So we were able to assess it because we know her and help her with that decision but I find, let your kids have a voice into it, and if you’re, where to push, where to back off, where is it like, “Man, if I just encourage you to stick with it, what’s the role of encouragement?” And social pressure and mental health is a big thing right now and so when your kid starts coming apart and you feel like you’re pushing, there could be the temptation to be like, “If I make them stick with this, this is going to crack them and crumble them.”

Chris Tompkins:
In some cases that might be true but in other cases, it might just be about resilience and pushing through and learning perseverance and you can do hard things. But I always found it’s great to have it work within some boundaries that you’ve already preset and some norms in your family or your classroom, that kids actually know where you can explore and where you need to stick with stuff.

Mathieu Yuill:
Okay. That makes perfect sense. If you listened to these, this podcast in order, as they come out, I just, as I was thinking of it, it’s odd because the most recent podcast is with the founder of Collective Arts Brewing and I see a common theme. He spoke a lot about being intentional around having a diverse workforce. So you might’ve heard a theme of like when is the pursuit of diversity, not good for the pure sake of diversity.

Chris Tompkins:
Right.

Mathieu Yuill:
And I’m seeing this as like, where is the pursuit of this thing? If it’s just for the pursuit of it, then maybe it’s not a good thing. So definitely some cross-pollination there between the two wildly different topics, but in the same arena.

Chris Tompkins:
Well, and connect it to something I said earlier, I was like, I think a lot of life is about taking the pulse of the people you’re working with or the organization you’re working with. Sometimes pushing a little harder on diversity is good for the organization. It’ll overcome barriers and humps but to your point, sometimes in a different organization, that same push beyond a certain level might create more barriers and problems than knowing when to just not pursue diversity for the sake of diversity, right?

Mathieu Yuill:
Right.

Chris Tompkins:
That’s the same with our kids and I think it’s about listening and taking a pulse. The more we get to know the people and a lot of questions you’ve asked are about how to handle strategies and I think that’s really great, but I hope people are grasping, it’s actually listening and having curiosity and knowledge of the people that you’re working with that actually allows you how to problem solve when it’s not just a black or white issue. Quitting dance or sticking with dance is not black or white. It’s about knowing my daughter, knowing the seasons of her life and being able to listen well and put my, honestly, finger on her pulse and go, “Okay, I see where this is going because I know you well enough.” And it’s having a different lens as we look at things and being able to see things differently, have patience, have empathy and then be able to make difficult decisions after you’ve done the hard work of actually listening.

Mathieu Yuill:
You gave me a great tip. Don’t talk in the car or just wait for them to talk.

Chris Tompkins:
Yeah.

Mathieu Yuill:
Where did that come from or do you remember?

Chris Tompkins:
Kevin Leman in Planet Middle School, when he’s talking about how to navigate your kids in that middle school ages and he talks about how, when you’re with your kids and you want to know how their day is and everything, and there’s a time where they’re forging independence so they don’t always want to talk about all the things that are going on. They don’t even know how to process and digest it all so they’re not always willing to give up information. And as parents, we always want to go and pursue and be like, “There’s something wrong. We’ve got to find out, we’ve got to find out.” It’s almost like playing hard to get, so to speak. It’s creating the fertile environment, the safe place, where when they’re ready to talk, they actually offer it up. The tip that I was giving you that I had heard was, don’t ask your kids a lot of questions.

Chris Tompkins:
And so I was like, “Okay.” So I picked my daughter up and the first thing I want to say is, “How’s your day at school? What’d you learn? Who’d you talk to? How’d you do on that test?” I had a whole bunch of questions in your mind. And I was like, “Oh my goodness. I’m not going to ask her any questions, this is so hard.” And I don’t think it’s pure, like you can ask your kids questions, you get the idea. Afterschool is not interrogation session. It should be a safe place for kids to just unwind.

Chris Tompkins:
So I got in the car and I was like, “Hey, do you like the music? Can I change it to something? What do you want to listen to?” Again, not about her day, but do you like this song or whatever, I know those are all questions, but trying to create a place for dialogue. Then honestly, like from quiet, just driving along, I was like, all of a sudden something came out. It was like, “Oh, this happened today at school.” I was like, “Man, if I had started with questions, I probably would’ve never got there.”

Mathieu Yuill:
Do you remember the book?

Chris Tompkins:
Yeah. Planet Middle School it’s called, by Kevin Leman.

Mathieu Yuill:
One of the first guests in one of your first episodes, Dr. Karen Gordon said this thing that’s really stuck with me. She said, “Your kids might have a different schedule for when they want to share with you.” And she said, “Often it’s late at night, when you’re tired.” So this… Go listen to that episode with Dr. Karen Gordon for more of that. Finally, you asked this great question and I’m going to steal it from you. I’m just curious, you ask everybody what’s shaping your world? So Chris Tompkins, what’s shaping your world?

Chris Tompkins:
The short answer is coffee. That would be the easiest answer in this day and age. Yeah, what’s shaping my world? I mean, it’s hard to be in a global pandemic without thinking about how that shaping your world, but I would say a couple of things in my age and stage, I think are really shaping my world are number one, a new found desire for healthy rhythms in my life. I use both of those words, intentionally, healthy around the things that really bring life. For me, exercise, quiet time, reflection, reading, praying, the things that are important to me in that area, but time with my family as well, relationships, creating space for those things, that I know bring me life and are really good for me.

Chris Tompkins:
And rhythms, I say that because I’ve learned something lately just about the consistency of things and doing things at the same time to help them become habits and so, I think those two things together have really shaped, particularly in a pandemic, when we’re just kind of coming out of lockdown, to have a consistent routine where I ensure the things that bring me life are in my calendar, are in my schedule, are happening every day. That’s really shaping me. I do think, as you may have gleaned from this interview today, I really feel like I’m on another curve of personal development and learning. I’m just starting to become more curious about who I am and where I’m headed in the next chapters of my life, that have got me thinking and processing and diving into learning.

Chris Tompkins:
Learning is one of my top five strengths, if you do any strengths assessments in the Clifton Strengths, done by Gallup, learning is like my number two or three, like I’m wired to be curious about life and things and want to learn more, but I’ve just noticed in this season, the learning has become a lot more about who I am and how I’m wired or what I want the next chapter of my life to be. So those are the two things that are really shaping who I am today as we’re doing this interview.

Mathieu Yuill:
I know you’re listening to this and you now instantly have this question, like how can I get more Chris Tompkins? So there’s two ways. The first way is this.

Chris Tompkins:
Get some pretzels.

Mathieu Yuill:
It’s like ET with Reese’s pieces. You just lay them down. He’ll follow the path. You’re a-

Chris Tompkins:
Well they do have peanut butter in them.

Mathieu Yuill:
Sure, they’re like the 2020 versions.

Chris Tompkins:
Yeah.

Mathieu Yuill:
There’s two ways. One, go and subscribe right now to Shaping Our World. The preview should be up. The second way is he is available to come and speak and consult with your company. You can get to him that way through leadingwithnice.com because there is real value in the experience and the learning for your company.

Mathieu Yuill:
There’s a few people I want to thank. These are all leading with nice staffers. Carrie Cotton, she basically, when I’m doing talking to people online, she runs the show. I appreciate you so much, Carrie. Naomi helps me come up with questions and helps me kind of workshop what we’re going to talk about. Cindy Craig books everybody, she gets the schedule ready. She sends the questions out in advance. It’s amazing. The reason you probably know about this is Jamie Hunter. He does all the social, writes the blog posts and puts together the promotion of it, uploads the episode. Jamie, I’m so thankful for you. And of course, Austin Pomeroy. I actually sound much worse than this. He makes me sound amazing and does all the editing, leaves a bad tape on the floor digitally, but man, I’m super appreciative of you. And of course, Chris Tompkins, thank you so much for coming on today and I look forward to the launch of your podcast and being on that journey to see what else we learn.

Chris Tompkins:
Thanks for having me.