Magnetic Authenticity Podcast with Jolynne Rydz

10: Shaping Tomorrow's Leaders with Kelvin Bennetts - Part 2

• Jolynne Rydz • Season 1 • Episode 10

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Can embracing life's emotional ups and downs truly lead to personal growth and resilience? 

And what happens when we do this from a young age?

This is part 2 of a 2 part conversation, where we dive into what it takes to create leaders who believe in themselves, are resilient, adaptable and have the courage to stand up for what they believe in, without waiting for permission.

Join us as we explore the powerful concept of "the pit," a framework that helps young people navigate through emotional indecision and challenges. Together, we discuss how normalising these emotional swings can shift expectations away from constant happiness and towards a healthier understanding of personal growth.

Our conversation then delves into the importance of valuing your number one asset, your people and how to bring people along on your vision for what's possible.

Finally, we unravel themes of gratitude and empowerment, touching on the breakdown of traditional power dynamics to foster equality and empathy organisations. This episode is a must for anyone looking to understand and inspire the next generation of leaders.

Want to connect with Kelvin? Send him an email kelvinbennetts52@gmail.com

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I am a Confidence and Success Coach for leaders, Organisational Development Consultant and independent Leadership Circle Profile® Certified Practitioner. Information shared about this tool is courtesy of Leadership Circle®, all rights reserved. www.leadershipcircle.com

Jolynne Rydz:

Welcome back to the podcast. Now. This is part two of Shaping Tomorrow's Leaders with Kelvin Bennetts. So if you haven't listened to part one, go back to episode 10, part one, shaping Tomorrow's Leaders with Kelvin Bennetts, because we're about to dive right back into the conversation. Yeah, and I love the forethought that went into. You know, let's address it now, when it's easier to address, rather than waiting for it to later. And so how does that contrast with your concept of the pit? So you talked already about resilience and adaptability and how you actually help kids through that. Could you explain a little bit more about that concept for us?

Kelvin Bennetts:

bit more about that concept for us. Sure, the pit isn't something we invented. I was really fortunate some time ago to be given a scholarship to travel overseas and bring that learning back into the department. I chose to go to Stonefield School in Auckland, new Zealand. They were working on the same sort of things as us, except a few years ahead of us. So I went there to learn from their errors and not make the same ones.

Kelvin Bennetts:

And within a couple of minutes of being in the rooms watching the children and listening to them, they were talking about the pit. And so while we took the concept of the pit, we reworked it a little bit, but the pit we reworked it a little bit, but the pit was putting somebody in that state of indecision. And we all end up in the pit every day, and often that's an emotional pit for us, where we're disappointed or upset by something and we don't know what to do. We'll often get caught in that terrible thinking trap or a circle where we'll just go round and round and round and keep coming up with the same answer.

Kelvin Bennetts:

that doesn't work and we had to teach kids about well, when you're in the pit, the first thing to do is to recognise that you're there. And we'd use language like that with our kids and say, look, right now you're in the pit about this. And we'd use the visual in front of them and say, well, here you are. But here's some steps to get out of the pit and we checked that they'd work and really our ultimate goal with that was that to be at a stage where somebody could say well, jolene, I was in the pit about that. Here's how I got out of it and really what you're building there is that ability to be more resilient and that ability to recognize that you're there. Often people don't recognize you're there and I still have to be reminded sometimes by people around me hey, you're in the pit about this, you need to get out. And while I might grumble and say, damn it, they're using my strategies on me, I'd have to say, yes, and you are exactly correct. Correct, I am, and I need to recognize it and I will, and I need to get out of the pit.

Kelvin Bennetts:

There are lots of times as a principal, where really difficult things were there and you were.

Kelvin Bennetts:

You would get stuck in the pit about it because you'd be sleepless at night worrying about things, and that was a sure sign that it's time that you're doing something about it. But really that's where that pit concept came from. We redrew it with our cartoonist and then we turned it into the learning pit as well, and the learning pit was really about learning and really what the shop will do Sorry, I'm just making it impossible for you to sound recording there and really what we were trying to do was ultimately get kids to push themselves a little bit, get out of that safe zone, and the learning pit was excellent to use that because we wanted kids in a state of indecision, not just comfortably knowing oh, I know the answer's here, it's okay. We wanted them to be in that pit of indecision where they're going. I'm really not sure what to do here. I actually have to think about this and really what we were trying to build there was that concept of pushing yourself a bit harder, not just sitting and being comfortable.

Jolynne Rydz:

Yeah, and it really normalizes that, doesn't it, that you have these emotions that go up and down and you have these moments of indecision. And I think that's so important, because I've noticed a lot of the people that I work with or teams that I work with. There's this false expectation that everything should be happy and great all the time, and you know that's not really human. Either something's going on underneath that you're not showing, or maybe you know you are in a good period, but things are going to change at some point. So I love that. It just normalizes that fact that we're not always in this great happy space. And how do we then get out of it?

Kelvin Bennetts:

I think as a manager, you need to um, if you've got people, if you're working with people, you have people working for. You have to understand that they're not robots and for the preceding 12, 14 hours or whatever, they've been outside of your workplace and who knows what's going on there for them. I mean, we ended up with a team of about 80 and it would be fair to say that at any one time, just because of the age, demographic, somebody's parents were ill or unwell or needed help. We went through that quite a bit, including me personally and Christine personally with her mum, and I went through it with my mum that you, you have traumatic time at home and I'd often work with people that were facing that and saying you know, work can actually be your safe place, just away from all the things that are going on. For a moment, and try to put that aside and normalise things a little bit for yourself in the way your emotions are running or feeling or you're chewing things over, and just have that mindset that I'm free from that issue at the moment. And that might sound a little bit harsh. I don't mean it to sound harsh, but there are a whole lot of reasons why people could arrive at work in a position where they felt quite vulnerable or quite low and you needed to work with your staff to be able to support them in that, in that process. But then that also leads to the fact that you need to be, you need to understand your staff, you need to have a relationship with them. You can't be just, uh, in your office with your door closed. You need to be, you need to understand your staff, you need to have a relationship with them. You can't be just in your office with your door closed. You need to be out on the front line and and working with them and taking the hits like they might do. And you know, sometimes you're the one that has to take the hit for somebody because you're protecting them from something that's coming towards them. It might be downwards from the department, it might be a parent who was disappointed with something, but you needed to be able to do that because you needed to support the people who worked for you and did the everyday practice that you couldn't be there for that. You would hope that they'd just get all that right and that started to then build that environment where people needed well. First off, people need to feel like you've got their back and then, once you start to build that, you can work on other things as well.

Kelvin Bennetts:

I mean, we, we spend a lot of time on staff well-being. One of my philosophies is that the your staff are your greatest asset. It doesn't matter what you've got. You could have the most fabulous factory or school or classroom or whatever, but if you don't have the right person in there, that doesn't mean anything. So you need to be looking after your staff and we we'd run a quite comprehensive staff well-being program. That included massages, would you believe, during during periods of high stress, until the department put a line through being able to do that. So we just went around that and bought two massage chairs and put them in the staff room so that people could be in there for 15 or 20 minutes for a cycle in the massage chair, and they were being used quite a lot.

Kelvin Bennetts:

We we looked at well. We need to be well fed, so we'd be making sure that there were some walk-in, walk-out lunches where you didn't have to do anything. There was always crew in staff room if you were hungry, because sometimes you're busy as a parent and the last thing you think of is your own lunch while you're getting your kids out the door. And we also used to have some treat times where we'd just have a coffee and cake day at the local cafe just near the school at Tanks, because you need to be able to reward your staff for the untold work that they do. Teaching's an easy hit oh, you get all those holidays and rah, rah, rah, but they forget that each day staff don't walk out at 3.30. If they're going out to go home, I can guarantee they're going to do an hour or two work at home anyway. It's just the nature of the job. A lot of it's unpaid. It comes back to choosing the person that loves doing it, who's not doing it, to be paid to do the job. They're doing it because it's a passion and once you've got passionate people in front of kids, that rubs off and kids hear your passion and feel it and they actually love it to know.

Kelvin Bennetts:

One of the last things I did at the school was challenge the staff and I gave them a small grant each person to bring their passion into the room. Show the kids what your passion is. So kids started to see all sorts of things. I had one teacher brought in a record player and records because he loves collecting records. We had another teacher that brought in Carlton gear because he's a Carlton nuffie, which is unfortunate. He's just slightly better than Collingwood, but not by much.

Kelvin Bennetts:

We had other teachers that were bringing in basketball rings but working that into their program, that you know you're achieving your goals, go and shoot some goals, type thing, and that worked really well. Or whereas a student might walk into my office and there are all these sitcom spanners there and they'd look at me and go, what are they? And I'd say well, that's my passion. I collect them because I grew up playing with them, because my dad was a motor mechanic, and so they start to see you more as a human and more as a person. Now. One of the misnomers I had to often undo for preps was that I didn't actually sleep at the school. I didn't stay in my office all night and come out in the morning and then go back in at night.

Jolynne Rydz:

Because you're always around.

Kelvin Bennetts:

Yeah, that's right. They think that you live at the school and they'd be shocked if they'd see you out and about in the community, out shopping. They'd walk past, they'd see you in the supermarket aisle and you'd see these eyes looking at you like this you eat food.

Jolynne Rydz:

You go to the supermarket.

Kelvin Bennetts:

Yeah, Wow. And they were even funnier, even though we never hid it, that Christine and I were married. So you know, for people that don't know, Christine taught it here in bed as well, but they were just kind of like oh, I know the biggest secret in the world. They were very funny about it. You'd just have a laugh with them and say, yes.

Jolynne Rydz:

I think that's so important because in organizations there's often power dynamics between the leaders and the employees and sometimes there's an us and them dynamics. Of being able to level that playing field and just go we're all human is incredibly empowering and connecting and I think kind of links in with your talk earlier about just being seen as people.

Kelvin Bennetts:

The power dynamics is very evident in a school about adult versus child, and that was one of the things we were trying to do with our kids is to say we need to level that playing field a little bit. I'd encourage kids to talk to me if things weren't going well in the classroom. And lo and behold, some did, and I really commend them for stepping up and saying, hey, things weren't going well in the classroom and lo and behold, some did, and I really commend them for stepping up and saying, hey, things aren't working well here. I don't know if the teacher actually likes me, and really that was often a perception rather than a reality, but if you dealt with that, then you'd see things level out quite quickly and then the child could start to learn better again. Because one of the things no doubt is if you don't think your boss likes you, you won't do a good job and your mindset every time you see that person is that they don't like me. Now imagine you're a child in a classroom and you don't think the teacher likes you. You're there for six and a half hours every day. So what is that doing to your self-talk, what is it doing to your mental health and what is it doing to your learning disposition? Are you ready to learn? Hell, no, you know it me ready to learn, because you're telling yourself you're the worst person in the world and this person doesn't like me, and so you need to be able to deal with those sorts of things. And really we were exceptionally fortunate that so many of our kids arrived at school ready to learn. I've been in schools where you'd spend the first hour actually getting them ready to learn, so we were very fortunate and I often say that to the community, we're in a very lucky spot that our kids come to school ready to learn that they, they, they feel like they've got someone who loves them. This is one of our big picture things, too, about building that gratitude and gratefulness for what you have rather than what you don't have, and so we did work with the resilience project and we had really really strong data with that.

Kelvin Bennetts:

But really it was important to start building that gratefulness and gratitude about what you have rather than what you don't have. And these are the most common things that will come up for parents are phones, and it'll happen when your child will start to manipulate you like we all did with our parents. It'll come in the form of words and it'll go like this mum, I've only got the iPhone 12 and the iPhone 13s come out and I'm the only one who doesn't have one, and it's so unfair and you're just not nice because you won't let me have one. I usually wouldn't use words quite like that. It'd be far more vicious than those words.

Kelvin Bennetts:

But really that was that inability to be grateful that you actually have a phone, over that need to have the most latest phone, and that's a very destructive thing that you've always got to have the latest thing. It's kind of, and one of the things I said in my final speech to the school was that life isn't a competition about who has the most toys. Really, the mindset should be about what good have you done with what you have, and so that's more important than having the latest phone, having the fastest car, having the the most fishing gear, having the biggest collection or whatever. It's really about what you've done with what you've got. What have you done to help those around you? What have you done to improve what needed to be improved? What have you done to support those who need to be supported?

Kelvin Bennetts:

And a quiet thing that I was really proud of was that we supported the Diamond Valley Food Share for all the time I was a principal. We've given them probably tens of thousands of cans of food over those 18 years because every time we were out of uniform we collected food. But the reality was that every single can we'd give them would be gone in a week or two because that helped others and that started you started to see that in built in our kids. When they'd come forward with their initiated projects in the leadership program to run an out of school day and out of the uniform day that they'd say, oh, we'd like to raise money for this, but we want to get the cans for the food share as well. And so that's what it is to me, to others it isn't, to others it's I've got the biggest boat.

Jolynne Rydz:

Yeah, and it's something I see a lot of in terms of being able to switch from this entitlement, scarcity mentality to no, I've got what I need and how can I best add value from where I am now. And I think it's such an empowering space to be in and to have that from youth, I think, an incredible gift.

Kelvin Bennetts:

Don't sit there and think I've been saying I've always had that belief because I haven't. I've been on the other side where I thought I had to have this, I had to have that, and it was a realisation that you don't actually have to have things, things you actually need. What you need the most in your life is the love and support and the trust of one person. That's what you need the most in your life, because then you've got somebody you can share your disappointments and joys with. But you can also feel like someone in the world has my back to me. That's the most important thing is that you've got somebody who has your back in the world yeah, and that's an incredible thing to have.

Jolynne Rydz:

So, before I dive into our seven swift questions, I I'm curious to know what does the next chapter look like for you? Is there still more you want to do in in a different lens? What does it look like for you? Is there still more you want to do in a different lens? What does it look like for you?

Kelvin Bennetts:

Yeah, I'm still sorting that out. I'm on leave for a year before I actually retire and there are things that I'd really like to do, but I'm still undecided what that looks like. I still have a passion about what schools can look like and what you can do within a school and exploring some possibilities about what that might look like in a construction sense or a consultancy sense. But then, who knows, I might find another passion that I actually want to do, or I coached for a long time. I don't know if I want to go back to that, but I'm still maybe open to doing something like that again.

Kelvin Bennetts:

It depends as you get a bit older, you get a bit more picky about what you want to do and you're actually doing it because you want to do it rather than you have to do it. So I doubt very much that it'll be back. Well, no, I'm 100% sure it's not back. As a principal of a school, I have had some offers of doing some mentoring to people and we'll look at that. At the moment, I'm just enjoying being able to do whatever I want. At the moment, when I want to. Um, there's a job list that's clearly mounting up about what needs to be done at home and in other places well, you've got all these sitcom tools right yeah

Kelvin Bennetts:

I don't seem to be, um, I don't seem to be getting much off that list at the minute.

Kelvin Bennetts:

I'm trying, but there's also a sense of doing something that I've probably not done before, and that's just giving yourself time to recover from things and to refresh. You tend to burn yourself out and you tend to just push, and for some reason on Facebook I'm getting these feeds of these jumpers that says it's a Bennett's thing, but I don't stop when I'm tired, I stop when it's done and I'm thinking well, that kind of does sum it up, because I would spend weekends at school doing things and making sure things were right. In the end, I said to myself I've got to stop doing that and have other things as well, and at that time the football coaching was really good because it forced me away from that. It was completely nuts for those three hours while you were coaching, but it was a different sort of crazy to what being a principal is, but basically the same. You were trying to predict the future and put things in place now so that those things didn't happen, and so really, that's what it was the same.

Jolynne Rydz:

Yeah, so transferable and so meaningful. So let's bring us into the Swift 7 questions, so no need to overthink them. They're just kind of quick questions that you can answer to give us a bit more insight into you and the way you think. So the first question is in your view, what are three words to describe an ideal leader?

Kelvin Bennetts:

I think you have to be resilient, you need to be adaptable and you need to be independent in your thinking. So, yes, you'll have disappointment. Show that you can absorb that. That's where that adaptability comes in. You need to be sometimes roll with the punches and what might be perfect world in your thinking is not how you can get it in the real world. But you might be able to get it close to that and you need to be adaptable in the way you're going about that. And then you need to have some sort of independence in your thinking and not reliant on others thinking, certainly be influenced by it. One of the things I'd always say is that learn from others. Sometimes you might dismiss what they're doing totally, sometimes you might take parts of it and rework it and sometimes you might think, well, that's just perfect the way it is. But they'd be three things I'd say.

Jolynne Rydz:

Beautiful and number two, so fill in the blank. Magnetic authenticity is...

Kelvin Bennetts:

Okay

Kelvin Bennetts:

So this is interesting, but I think it's just you've got to be yourself, eg, you're realistic, you can't be fake. You've got to have beliefs, you need to be visionary and you have to believe in them, but you also need to be able to express why you believe in those things. You need to have integrity in your leadership, be honest and I think you need to be a problem solver, so you're a lateral thinker as well.

Jolynne Rydz:

Wonderful. So number three when you notice yourself trying to fit in, what's the first thing that you do?

Kelvin Bennetts:

I think to myself I'm trying to fit in here and I don't know if I do. It is something that I said in my closing speech to Yarinbet. That was the first place I'd ever felt like I fitted in, and that's just a reality. That's just a personal feeling, but what I try to do is just try to find a comfortable space where you're talking with somebody and just try to blend into some conversation and try to get comfortable with what's going on and try to understand a little bit of what's happening. That sort of stuff.

Kelvin Bennetts:

Believe it or not, I'm not a person who's going to walk into a party and say hey, everybody, I'm here. I'm much quieter than that, although the job demanded me to be at the front often and running assemblies and things like that, which I loved doing, and I particularly loved if there was a question and answer time. I loved that sort of challenge as well. But in a party sense, I'm more likely to be the quieter one rather than the one that's leading the whole thing, because I don't mind others being the centre of attention. I don't really like myself being the centre of attention. I don't really like myself being the centre of attention. So I did find that final assembly very challenging in that sense.

Jolynne Rydz:

Yeah, definitely. And so number four what song gets you really pumped?

Kelvin Bennetts:

Sometimes I'd listen to music in the morning in my office and people would go past and say, well, what's going on here? But the song that I would always my go-to song would be Psycho by Muse. And if you ever want to go into their great live band, go and see them.

Jolynne Rydz:

Okay, good to know I'd go again if they were here.

Kelvin Bennetts:

Yeah, yeah, okay, number five, which is what's the most daring thing you've ever done the most daring thing I've ever done is um ask christina, my wife, my now wife.

Jolynne Rydz:

That's beautiful number six is do you have a favorite quote or mantra that you live by?

Kelvin Bennetts:

I do, um, it's from a, a coach in the nfl um, an ex-coach of the San Francisco 49ers who I follow. His name was Bill Walsh. His mantra was that, no matter who, if it was your turn to take the hit, you took the hit, even if you were the high play quarterback on millions of dollars a year. If you needed to do that to make the play successful or make something successful, you'd do it, and so I took that into the way that I'd be the principal. If it was my turn to protect somebody, or I needed to take the hit for something, or if it was my fault, I'd put my hand up and say, well, I messed up there, I'll do better. And so that was something that I learnt quite early on and always tried to hold to that.

Jolynne Rydz:

Thank you, and so our last question is what's one small thing that brings you incredible joy?

Kelvin Bennetts:

Just at the moment it's actually completing any building projects I'm doing at home.

Kelvin Bennetts:

Yes, getting them off the list, trying to From a teaching sense. Often it was just somebody would be at my door, they'd slide a note under my door or they'd say something about something that you'd been working on or done for them, and I'd think to myself gee, that took real guts for a seven-year-old to come and say thank you or write a letter or something like that. Because I remember back to when I was in primary school. I'd tippy-toe past the principal's office because I was so scared of them that I'd nearly be pooping my pants as I was walking past the door, mainly because they hit me. But the thing is that I always looked at that and thought well, that means that we're really making some impact with somebody if they're coming up and they're saying thank you, or I appreciate this, or a note that they'd written you, and I'd always take time to try and write back see if somebody did that because it was very meaningful for them to do that in the first place.

Jolynne Rydz:

Wonderful Well, this has been such an enlightening conversation, Calvin. I really do appreciate your generosity and time. If people want to connect with you, where can they find you?

Kelvin Bennetts:

Well, nowhere really. Um, I am on facebook but it's very private and I only have that for messenger for football coaching. But, um, you can email me. I have an email address available if somebody wanted to write to me to ask for things, and just provide me with some contact details and I'll make contact back, and so my email address to use is kelvinbennetts52@ gmail. com.

Jolynne Rydz:

Wonderful. Well, thank you Once again. It's been wonderful, and I hope you have a wonderful day. Thanks for joining us.

Kelvin Bennetts:

Well, thank you. I appreciate being invited. It's been great to speak with you.

Jolynne Rydz:

If you've just listened to the two parts of this episode, well done. I hope you've enjoyed it and there's so many great things in there that is so transferable beyond education. I hope you take that message away. One of the key things, I think was the pit and that ability to move through change. There are so many organizations dealing with an incredible amount of change currently and we get stuck thinking about how to move our people through change and so many people find resistance. And I think part of it is that personal awareness and toolkit of how to move yourself through change. And that's something that I love working with teams on. And I also love the concept of your.

Jolynne Rydz:

People are not robots and I think sometimes with the pressure of getting results, of meeting targets, that we can treat people like robots Whether or not that's on purpose, it's probably unconscious, but when that happens, that's when we can start to reach trust and respect and those social contracts that people rely on to feel safe in the workplace.

Jolynne Rydz:

And the third thing I really loved about this conversation, out of so many things, is that ability to equal the power dynamic, because in organizations, again, there are so many power dynamics at play and if we're not conscious of how that can modify people's behavior, modify what you hear and see in the organization and, at its worst, stop you from seeing what's actually preventing the organization from doing great work and getting great results, because people are too scared to be open about the challenges. That's when being able to level the power dynamic and create that environment and that culture where you can have those open conversations, regardless of your title or who you are in the organization, that's so incredibly powerful. So, once again, I trust you've enjoyed that and reach out in the comments. Find me on LinkedIn if you want to discuss the conversation further.

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