Reinforce- Ensuring that Change becomes Cultural Muscle Memory

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Lauren explores Reinforce, showing how to build lasting organizational wellness through repetition, reflection, and routine.

In this episode, Lauren dives into Reinforce, the third phase of the Staff Sustainability Program. After moving through relief and reset, this stage is about turning new, healthy patterns into lasting habits that define an organization’s culture. She shares how repetition, reflection, and consistent routines help build stability, trust, and regulation across teams. By focusing on reinforcement, organizations can move beyond short-term fixes and create a culture of well-being that truly lasts.

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Transcript:

Lauren Spigelmyer: Alright, we're back for, like, kind of almost the last episode in the series, within the series. Reinforce. So, if you've been here with me the last two episodes, we talked through organizational culture, organizational wellness, that's really the word that Jessica and I do, is, like, we put it under the umbrella of organizational wellness, but it's… it's trauma-invested care, it's compassionate-based care, it's helping organizations prevent burnout, essentially, and retain staff, and reduce burnout. So… In doing this work for many years, we have built out what we call our Staff Sustainability Program, and it's a three-phase system that are all labeled with R's. So, the last two episodes, we talked about the first two R's, relieve, and then reset. So, if you've been here with me, relieve is, like, relief work. It's to get you out of survival state, to get you out of a crisis state. That's phase one. Okay, let's build you out of that. Now that you're out of that as an organizational whole, and individuals you're a little bit more regulated, you have a little bit more brain space, mental capacity, you definitely have more access to logic and reason. So now we're in reset. Reset is where you start to identify the patterns, where you've kind of, like, stepped into awareness, like, oh, this is broken, this is not a good pattern, we need to shift this, we need to change this, and we start to rebuild trust with staff. Because we definitely lose trust when we are in the… survival and crisis state. Okay, so then we've moved through this phase, we've… we've understood that we… things to fix, we recognize what those patterns are, we name them, we get to the root cause of things, we identify all these things, and we start to think about solutions for these things, and maybe even start to begin to set up those solutions. The last phase is reinforcement. Because here's the thing, if your culture has functioned in a way that's kind of unhealthy for a while, or isn't healthy now. It's likely you've been there for a little while, and things become problematic because they're patterns. So, in order to break the patterns, we have to do something new or different, and breaking the patterns is really hard, because we're so used to the habit. It's almost automatic behavior.

Lauren Spigelmyer: So now we're working on reinforce, because we're changing the automatic behavior to a new, healthier alternative. And that ultimately leads to, which we'll talk about in the last episode, retention. And retention isn't necessarily a phase, it's more of an outcome of these three R's. Relieve, reset, reinforce. But this is the system that we walk through when we're working with organizations that have high trauma, high stress, high burnout, high… high turnover. So today, we're going to focus on the reinforcement phase at this stage, and really kind of ensuring that the change that we are putting in place mapping becomes muscle memory. That's the point here. Muscle memory. New patterns. And we will learn how to embed stability, sustainability, trust, regulation into everyday rhythms through, like, micro habits. And that way, this… system of sustainability, sustaining staff, becomes a lived culture, rather than just some kind of temporary initiative, quick fix, try and stop the burning of everything. Everything's on fire. Stop the fire. We're not trying to just stop the fire. We're trying to figure out what keeps causing fires. That makes sense. So, we have moved through the relief work, we've relieved the pressure, come out of survival state, we've moved into the reset, where we've been trying to rebuild trust and identify the patterns, step into awareness. And now, we're going to… move into… the reinforcement, where stability really solidifies. And… we… start developing this more permanent culture of just, like, healthy, healthy interactions, healthy supervision, healthy discourse, healthy problem solving. I feel like when I have this conversation, especially when we talk about, like, organizations… programs will say, like, oh yeah, like, self-care. It's not… it's not about self-care. Organizational wellness is, like, redefining the culture of an organization. It's redefining the way we lead, and we've become so stressed in society that that's really playing into our leadership, plus add patterns of traffic, plus ad patterns, own leadership that we are now, you know, living out. So, I remember when a program told me when we stopped just talking about and adding in, like, self-care initiatives and, like, self-care PD sessions here and there alongside all the other stuff we had to do, and we actually started to redesign things in our organizational whole, like, even, like, daily routines. And we've redesigned them to be a bit more compassionate and caring. everything's shifted and everyone was staying more regulated, therefore everyone was able to solve problems faster, and produce better, and be more motivated, and show up better. So, that is what… that's the goal. That's what reinforcement is about, to feel that, to feel the shift, to feel everything shift. Small doses at first, but then permanent doses beyond that.

Lauren Spigelmyer: Okay, so… Let's talk about a couple things here. Okay, what does reinforce actually look like? What does it really mean? I used this… this analogy in the last podcast, but… And here's how, like, patterning, neural patterning, like, we say patterning, but it's neural patterning. Neural patterning is how your neurons fire and wire together, and… What happens is these neural patterns connect, and they fire, and they wire together, and the more that you do the thing, the pattern, the… The connection becomes what we call myelinated, and what it means is, like, it just… it fires faster, better, stronger, quicker, all the things, and it becomes, like, a secure pattern. But that's not just for positive things, that's for negative things, too. And when you want to break that pattern, it's really hard to break, to be honest. That's why, like, addiction is so hard to break. It's a really strong pattern, like a genetically maybe pre-determined pattern, but also then an environmentally defined pattern, and then, you know, behaviors and personality and all the things. So… what we want to do, or what that is like, the analogy is, like, if you are familiar with living in the countryside, and you're used to driving a car down a dirt road, like a driveway, and let's say you're, like, driving a truck down a driveway, and it's been years and years and years and years, and you've lived at this property, any car, you're driving it down the road, and you… I actually decided that you want to start creating, like, a new… a new lane. Like, it's become… the ruts in the road have become, like, too deep, and it… it's, like, pulling you all over the place, so you want to create a new dirt road, so you kind of start driving beside the old road to create a new… a new road. But what happens is those ruts are so deep, it just kind of pulls your car over.

Like, without even being consciously aware, kind of, like, you keep sliding back into the old… the old path that you formed. So, what you have to do is, like, so consciously choose to drive on the new path, and to hold it on the new path, and to stay on the new path enough times, and for long enough, that the old path wears away, and the new path is now solidified. That's a really hard thing to do. Like, think about how much time that takes. Your brain's not really that much different. Like, your neural patterning is kind of the same way. The old… like, the old connection, the old pattern won't necessarily break until you set the new one in place, and you've intentionally worked on the new one enough. That it overrides the old one. It's so hard, y'all. But it's worth it, because it changes everything for you, as an individual and as an organization. So, reinforce means we're working on repeating, we're working on anchoring, we're working on rewarding people for the new things that we're working on, like regulation and trust building and all the behaviors that come up that… that show us that these things are actually changing. Seeing them, pointing them out. It also means that the nervous system learns through repetition. We must repeat, repeat, repeat, it has to become a habit, it has to become automatic. It's like learning a new language. You're not going to get it quite right at first, it's gonna take a little while, but eventually, it will become very natural to you. So, just like the nervous system learns through repetition, so does organizational culture. You want to change your organizational culture? You gotta… you gotta address the nervous system, and you gotta do it through repeating Actions. Without reinforcement, the old stress patterns that existed, the old problematic cultural patterns, they will just return, especially under times of high stress and pressure. So, you're building new defaults, you're building systems, new systems, new ways of being, new supervisory systems, new, just functional way of being, expectations, management, leadership, frontline action steps, all of it. That automatically support sustainability. That's what we're doing. It's nothing different, honestly, y'all, than like, healing generational trauma, healing traumatic psychological patterns. they all require repetition until the new pathways feel safe and familiar, and it's gonna be hard. It's gonna be really hard at first, and your subconscious can push back against it, but… it's… it's gonna take more than just, like, one little thing, or a little bit of self-care dash here and there. That doesn't rewire culture. That doesn't lead to sustainable change. It's the consistency that cues safety, and cues regulation, and breeds an entirely new culture. That's what we're after.

Lauren Spigelmyer: Okay, so I'm gonna give you a couple more R's, more R's to the R system, just gonna stick with all the R's through the system of ways that you can work on reinforcement. So, one, recognize, like, literally alert people's efforts, whether it's leadership, and you're alerting up, or leadership is alerting down to frontline staff and acknowledge regulation, like, acknowledge when people are, like, actively staying regulated. And I know that sounds like a crazy thing, like, good job, staying calm. It's actually a lot harder than… Don't say it like that. It's a lot harder than you may think it is. Like, when your mental capacity is stretched thin, your emotional preservation wears, and you react. So, giving people grace for that. And then just… Also, relational leadership, like, human-based leadership, compassionate-based leadership. Acknowledging that, rewards for that, like, seeking and identifying and praising that, not just performance outcomes. When you just praise performance outcomes, you're going right back to the old culture, and it's going to lead to all the problems you had before. I feel like… a good example of this is, like, when I see teachers that I've worked with, if I'm working in education, or if I'm working in nonprofits where I'm working with people who work with kids, or police, or whoever, people so quickly want to react, and it's just natural. It's habitual, it's biological to react immediately to, like, the big behavior or whatever thing is causing the problem. When I see a teacher, or a police officer, or someone working in a nonprofit, when I see them pause before they react, even if the reaction wasn't the right reaction. If I see them pause and try and attempt to change the pattern, or break the pattern, or regulate a tiny little bit before they react, I'm gonna praise that. The outcome wasn't perfect, but the behavior is starting to change. So I'm praising these, like, actions that these, like, pre-micro actions that people are taking. Even if the outcome wasn't exactly what I desired it to be, because it's not just about the performance as a whole, it's the little steps that we can catch and take to get there. You gotta build in rituals and routines. You've got to build consistency that anchors staff in safety and predictability. There's so much chaos in a lot of leadership and micromanagement, and if you don't have rituals and routines that sustain your staff, you're gonna burn out. The nervous system regulation, it loves rhythm. Rhythm is routine. Rhythm is rituals. So… maybe start Monday morning meetings, if you're having Monday morning meetings or Monday meetings, with some type of, like, reflective activity or breath-based regulation activity. I know it seems kind of silly and, like, a waste of time. It's not a waste of time, because it's… building you back in, that time investment there, is building you back in time throughout the rest of the week, because you started off the week strong from a regulated place, versus, like, chaos, we gotta do all these things, hurry up, start fast. Build in routines and rituals, regulating routines and rituals. Also, learn how to do the repair work. Like, if you don't know how to do it, and most of us weren't taught it, you have got to learn how to do the repair work. It's one of the first things I learned through my child. I was, like, felt like I was a decent leader. I became such a better leader when I started leading my child, because I don't learn how to go back and do the repair work with him, because I lost it sometimes. I just… even though I knew the tools, you get depleted, you burn out, you're at home after working all day, you're tired, you don't have the capacity to respond always the way that you want to, so you learn how to go back and relationally repair, and apologize for what you've done, and ask for forgiveness. So, address tensions quickly when you feel them, but also compassionately, and normalize that there is and will be, in this organization, repair after rupture, and rupture is going to happen. That's normal in relationships. We're all in relationship together. When we work together Like, this is what managing people is, building relationships and repairing when that relationship ruptures.

Also, really adding in those reflective practices as a supervisor, but also as a frontline staff member, too, and… and making that an action-based frequent… another, like, routine ritual-based step. So, make reflection an active part of the workflow. Like, mini moments where we talk about what's heavy, or what's working, what's not working, and just… just click. Again, you don't need to solve the problem, but just to have the conversation to get started, and just being reflective in nature within your daily rhythms and routines, or weekly rhythms, or monthly rhythms, whatever it is.

Lauren Spigelmyer: And then, the last thing, we just want to build resilient systems. So… We really need to make sure that we truly have policies and systems in place that protect staff well-being. Like, not just adding in a couple fluffy self-care things, but like, clear communication channels and communication channels that aren't burning staff out, like, not having 16,000 channels, and the channels going off all the time, managing caseloads when someone says they feel overloaded or they can't do something, like, either building a bridge with them to get to where they need to get to, or delegating elsewhere, or, you know, solving that problem in some other way, but knowing that if they're truly feeling that way, like, you've got to do something that… It says, like, I protect your well-being, because I value you as a staff member, I want to keep you here, I value your work, and we're going to move through this in whatever way it is. Recovery time? just make sure that we have that, like, even just, like, meeting, meeting, meeting, meeting. So now it's like, I've been in jobs where I'm just going from meeting to meeting to meeting to meeting to meeting, and by the end of the day, I'm like… And I wish I had either built it in, or my leadership had, like. encouraged or, you know, created time, like, over lunch, to be like, okay, don't work, go outside, go for even just a 5-minute walk. And even… even peer mentorship, I really like peer mentorships in… in organizations, especially larger organizations, that really help to build resilient systems and also, like, alleviate some of the pressure at the leadership level.

Lauren Spigelmyer: Okay, so let's just talk real quick about how to embed reinforcement into daily practice, because this is the biggest thing that we do that I think is a bit different than others. It's like, how do we make these rhythms? How do we make these daily practices? How do we make these habits. So for leaders, If you don't know how to regulate your emotions, get support, learn, read, therapy, whatever it is, to learn how to better emotionally regulate and do so very consistently, because the better you can emotionally regulate, you'll be able to co-regulate people beneath you. Meaning, when you stay regulated, it's a mirror. People will either become anxious because you're anxious, or become dysregulated because you're dysregulated, or they will stay regulated, or get more regulated because you have stayed regulated. So, we want to stay regulated, and co-regulate with them, and pull people out of dysregulation by our grounding presence. Also, just, like, visible accountability for wellness, like, I feel like… gosh, we… we praise things like showing up on time, or, you know, producing an outcome. And sometimes that's not necessarily a bad thing, but, like, how can we praise people for things that, like, sustain them to actually do that kind of work long-term. So, thinking about how can I possibly… what it would look like, and this may be a conversation you need to have with AI, like, okay, how do I create visual accountability for wellness in this organization? I value wellness, I value my staff sticking around, so how can I, How can I do this? Provide training refreshers. I think so many organizations just do one and done, so what does it look like to not just do, like, one and done, but, like, one, and then, like, a micro follow-up, or, like, a lunch and learn, or, you know, a series, even? I think that's a big one. And just revisiting expectations, and normalizing that we're going to need to change expectations based on different things, even different seasons of life. For teams, I would say continue with quick stress resets. We're gonna get dysregulated, so what are some quick, on-the-spot resets? Those probably come from the relief work that we've done. And then, don't forget to continue the reflective conversations. Maybe journaling, maybe not, maybe just open conversations. That comes from more of the reset stage, where you, you know, build that trust back. Consider those peer, peer guides, peer… what's the word? I'm losing my train of thought. Peer mentorships. Or even just, like, peer check-ins. It could just be… Pairing people for, like, a micro-check-in, 3 minutes, 2 minutes, 1 minute at the end of the day, and just leaving on a more positive note by, like, getting something out of the system. What do rhythms look like for teams? Weekly, daily, monthly, seasonally? And revisiting what's not working, and make adjustments based on those reflective rhythms. And then, what do your rituals look like? Like, do you have morning huddles? Do you integrate any, like, practices of gratitude? I know that sounds, again, like, a little fluffy and fruity and feminine, but… y'all, there's so much research behind gratitude practices, and they don't take long. So, a great reset and a great ritual to have included in the space. And… maybe a ritual could be, like, an end of week, a decompression chat, so you don't go into the weekend carrying everything that you have been carrying all week, or you've built up throughout the week. Just decompress, let it out, move into the weekend, and actually get some rest. So, those are just a few things for leadership and for teams. I mean, there's… hundreds of more things that one could do, but those are just a couple examples of things that might be put into action in the reinforced phase.

Lauren Spigelmyer: Okay, common pitfalls of this… stage. Oh, complacency, just assuming… like… That… that creating stability, like we talked about from that relief work, like, oh, I feel a little bit more stable, that means you're done. It doesn't. You have to go through reset. to find the patterns and start to break the patterns, and you have to go through reinforce. And reinforce is ongoing. You're constantly working on patterns and breaking and resetting. So, don't assume that just because you feel better as an organization, or it looks better, it's going better after the First phase, that it's all good to go. And organizations will drift. Will… put practices in place and forget about them, or not follow through, or we'll do the first part where we listened and we heard, but then we didn't take the action, or something will come up for an individual in their personal life or organizationally, and that even pulls us back to a previous phase, which, if we were strong in that phase, we can easily build back into the phase we ran, but it's not uncommon to drift. And just turnover gaps, like… new hires might miss something, or if you're working through this culture and you're bringing in new people, they might get parts of it, but not all of it. So then you've got the old, you know, mindset and the old patterns that were there, and then you've got some of the new patterns and mix between the two, and there's just these gaps. So… We're really trying to reset onboarding, too, while we're doing all of this, and really teach through onboarding the why. Like, why is all of this important when we're talking about organizational sustainability and self-sustainability in this organization? And the biggest thing, too, is, like, I see, like, gamified things, or, like, initiatives, or, like, token gestures, just, like, rewards that are, like, mmm… I don't know, what's the word, It… it needs to be… It needs to be automatic, like, it needs to be… just a way of being in the organization. Like, we… here's the difference. Intrinsic versus extrinsic. If we are using these fun things, yes, they're fun, and it's good to embed some of them sometimes, but that is more extrinsic. So those things go away, then the behaviors go away. So what can we… and how can we simultaneously build intrinsic rewards, and the feeling of intrinsic rewarding, more internal. Like, I do this because I not only want to, because I feel better, because it builds the organization, because it builds me. How do we build those things alongside of our reward systems that we have in place? Here are some signs that you'll see, maybe, that you would be like, oh, this is definitely working. One, you're having way more… not way more, definitely not… way fewer crisis meetings and you're able to do more proactive planning, so you realize that when your meetings, like, used to be just like, oh, solve the fire, turn off the fire, turn out, solve the problem. It just was always crisis and stress, and heavy, that you're like, oh, the meetings are more positive, they're more proactive, they're more planning-based, you'll feel that shift. You'll also see that when feedback is received, that people are being honest. And others are not being defensive. That's a big one, like, you see it right away. Staff also begin initiating regulating on their own. Like, you'll see, as an organizational whole, like, when you start to embed these micro-practices, you're like, oh, wow, they're doing the thing, and they're staying more regulated, and because they're staying more regulated, they're staying more rational, and we're solving more problems, and this is all going much better. Plus, if you're getting data on morale and trust, those scores, like, if you're tracking scores, or if you're just tracking that, or just energetic, even feel of it, or people's feedback on it, like, it's gonna go way up, like, the comments… just shift. And the conversations shift, too. And you'll also know, because when new hires come into the organization, they just, like, adopt and absorb the organization's calm and connected, rhythms, routines, and rituals. Like, it just, like, they just adopt it, and they just move right into it, and it's just seamless, and it becomes a pattern for them right away.

Lauren Spigelmyer: So… know that when you've moved through Phase 1, and you've moved through Phase 2, and you get to Phase 3, and you're reinforcing there are gonna be bumps in the road. It's not about perfection, it's about creating rhythms that last. It's about creating micro-practices that are sustaining. And we'll cycle through, we'll move back into reset, we'll move back into the relief work, and we'll have to build back up into reinforce. But ultimately, we'll be able to do so much faster, and we won't stay in those stages as long. And… each pass-through really deepens the stability and widens the window where we can tolerate more. Like, stress just is easier to handle when we move through these different phases, because we've been given the tools and know how to handle it. Okay, so if you're gonna do any reflection, here are your reflective questions to consider. What do we already do that reinforces stability? And… is there a way to even make that more visible? Talked about that earlier. Where, possibly, do our systems, our individuals even, we don't need to name them individuals, but just, like, where are we getting stuck Or we're still sending stress cues instead of safety cues. That's the biggest thing, is shifting from stress response to safety response. And how can we catch people and celebrate the pattern breaks and the consistency, like, the actual consistent actions. If I were an individual, whether it's leadership or frontline staff or somewhere in between, I would think about today, as I leave, like, what's one daily ritual that I can attempt to bring in here for myself, or for people I'm serving, and… make it a goal to, like, put a sticky note up to remind myself to do it, and give myself 2 weeks, and after 2 weeks, really reflect and think about, like, how'd that go? How do I feel? Did anything shift? Did anything change inside of me, in my work, in the people around me? Any of those things?

Lauren Spigelmyer: If you want to learn more about any of these phases, or this program as a whole, and how it shifts cultures in an organization, how it really, truly, not only keeps staff from leaving, but it brings staff in, because people want to work for an organization that feels like this. It feels like home go to FiveIves.com, F-I-V-E-I-V-E-S dot com, and on our service page, you'll see the Staff Sustainability System. If you're on the website under our podcast blog page, it's linked in the show notes, and if you're on any other format of podcast listening, it's in the show notes, but it's in our services, and it's the very first link on that service page. Also, we are about midway through a course with the University of Pennsylvania that we partner with them for, so if anyone that you know of works in education. Or you are in education, and you want to learn more about, kind of, what's behind behavior, and how to prevent yourself from burning out based on the workload that educators have to carry. Jessica and I created a course called the Behavior Breakthrough Program, and this particular course is in partnership with Penn, and you can earn 4.5 graduate-level credits from the university. It's mostly on… it's all online, and some asynchronous mixed with a little bit of, like, live coaching. So… that program is on the website as well, and we will launch a new cohort in January. Don't forget to do… kind of just, like, do something with this information today. Like, take action, take a step, reflect, journal, create an action, put a sticky note up somewhere, do something to move from listening and getting information to actually taking action. And, next episode, we will move into… The last R, which again isn't really a phase, but is more an outcome, and it's retention. So, I'm Lauren Spigelmyer, and thank you for joining me.


Categories: : Regulation Strategies

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