Change Starts Here

On this episode of FranklinCovey Education’s Change Starts Here, host Dustin Odham was joined by Franklin Covey Education President Sean Covey for an introspective look at Covey’s career and the organization’s mission to “[transform] education around the globe by bringing leadership principles and skills to as many kids, educators and schools as possible.”

As usual, the podcast began with the Brad Montague-inspired question of, “Why do you love what you do?”

For Covey, it’s a simple answer.

“I’ve done a lot of different things in my life. I love working in education,” he said. “These kids are amazing, and I think that there’s an identity theft going on in the world where kids are not remembering who they are and the great gifts and potential they have inside. … Everything I write about is all about helping people, especially you, achieve their worth and potential.”

Covey and Odham explored Covey’s life and career, from being one of nine children of "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" author Stephen Covey to playing quarterback for BYU, discovering a passion for working with kids and teens, and writing seminal works on leadership like “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens.”

The duo also dove into the life of the elder Covey, who Sean said was “no respecter of persons.”

“He treated everybody exactly the same,” he said.

Dr. Britt Andreatta has a unique approach to personal growth, meeting your biggest challenges head on and more – and it involves your brain.

A lengthy career in leadership and neuroscience has made Andreatta an expert on the science behind how our brains work, and that information can be used to elevate the way you approach your life, career, leadership potential and more.

On this episode of FranklinCovey Education’s Change Starts Here, host Dustin Odham sat down with Andreatta to pick her brain about, well, brain science.

Specifically, Andreatta said that, aside being naturally inclined to take care of basic needs like survival and belonging, we’re all wired to strive for and achieve our potential.

“Where I think we get in trouble a lot is that, oftentimes, modern day things and our world, technology and workplaces ask us to go against our biology, and it doesn’t end well,” Andreatta said. “Our deepest need is [that] we’re wired to become our best selves. It’s our hunger to learn and grow. It’s our hunger to get better. It’s our hunger to achieve.”

That desire doesn’t go away in the face of adversity, either. Even in the darkest moments of your life, your desire to heal and move forward and achieve the things you’ve set out to is still present, and our emotions serve as a barometer toward finding your path once again.

“We all want to be seen and heard, and we all want to grow to be our best selves,” Andreatta said.

If you enjoyed this podcast, Dr. Andreatta offers free chapters of her book Wired to Grow, as well as her other works: Wired to Connect, and Wired to Resist. Click here to download these chapters directly from her website!

Dr. Madeline Levine has spent almost four decades working as a clinician, consultant, educator and author. But, for all that experience, she knows there’s one unassailable, universal truth – change is always on the horizon.

That’s especially true in today’s world, where, like as not, you may wake up each day facing a totally new set of circumstances. That can be exciting, but it can also be overwhelming for kids working to get prepared for a rapidly evolving world.

That’s why Levine authored “Ready or Not,” a book tailored at “how best to prepare our children and ourselves for an uncertain” world. On this episode of FranklinCovey Education’s Change Starts Here, host Dustin Odham and Levine dove into some of the lessons from “Ready or Not,” as well as Levine’s history in educating the world and thinking critically about how we can best meet life head on.

Levine, herself, knows about working through challenges and finding ways to grow. At one point, after losing her father as a teenager, she experienced tremendous upheaval and chaos.

“I think my work really comes out of, ‘Life is tough.’ I get it – life is tough,” she said. “It was really tough back then, and what I feel in my heart is that we shouldn’t make it any harder than it is. … I love what I do, because it gives me a purpose, and I feel like I’m being helpful. I’m a big believer in purpose.

“You’ve got to have a why.”

In 2011, Angela Maiers gave a TED Talk that sparked a career. It derived its power and influence from two words – you matter.

Now a self-described leader, visionary, entrepreneur, disruptor and change-maker, educator and author Maiers is continuing to spread the importance of mattering.

“At my absolute core, I am an educator,” she said. “In the purest sense, the root word of ‘educate’ means ‘to lead out,’ ‘to bring forth.’ … My goal is not only to notice and note the genius in my presence, but to bring it forth – mostly to the individual who doesn’t realize for extraordinary they are.”

That messaged has now resonated with hundreds of thousands of people, largely because she’s been in the shoes of those who need to hear it. Growing up, she admits she struggled with self-esteem, but a found passion for helping others discovered in medical school, of all places, “[lit] her on fire.”

Now, more than 30 years later and with teaching experience in every grade from preschool to graduate school, her mission as an educator has been distilled to those words – you matter.

On this episode of Change Starts Here, host Dustin Odham and Maiers discussed helping students find their path earlier, helping people understand their own genius, and more.

Dr. Jody Carrington is a self-described “clinical psychologist, speaker, author and game changer,” as well as the author of “Kids These Days: A Game Plan for (Re)Connecting With Those We Teach, Lead, and Love” – and that connection has become the focus of her substantial professional efforts.

Though she’s achieved her doctorate in Clinical Psychology and educates and speaks on topics ranging from grief and trauma to relationships and parenting, she said her motivation is a simple one. When she was 16 years old, she experienced the loss of a classmate – and she remembers the compassion with which her teacher delivered the news to her class.

“I have no idea what literacy and numeracy she taught me, but I do remember where she was standing when she told 22 of us in my grade-10 class that the most popular kid in our class that year had been killed,” she said. “I have no idea what she said, but I remember how she made us feel. I remember thinking in that moment, as a 16-year-old kid, ‘That’s what I want to do for the rest of my life.’

“I want to make people feel the way [she] made us feel that day.”

On this episode of FranklinCovey Education’s Change Starts Here, host Dustin Odham and Dr. Carrington explored her journey toward doing just that, as well as how to help educators understand their impact and help students feel seen.

After all, you can’t give what you’ve never received – and that includes compassion.

You may not consider yourself a leader. Maybe you’ve tried but didn’t invest fully. Maybe you don’t think you have it in you at all.

Noted author, educator and leadership expert Stedman Graham is here to tell you that you’re wrong.

Graham joined Change Starts Here with host and FranklinCovey Education thought leader Dustin Odham to talk “Identity Leadership,” his book, and his philosophy that, to lead others, you must first lead yourself.

As Graham puts it on his website, that means that becoming a “passionate, purposeful, and meaningful leader [comes through] identifying who you are, your desires, and your abilities.”

If you can find the strength to come to know and invest in yourself, you’ll be able to pour that power and impact into those around you more effectively than you ever have before.

“Really, the foundation of my work is to get you to transform your own life by loving yourself, caring for yourself, organizing yourself and making love practical in your own life,” Graham said. “[You can then] teach your family that, live by that, create socioeconomic development around that … That allows you to create who you are [and] who you can be.”

Odham and Graham dove into self-talk, daily disciplines to take love of self from an idea to a practice, and more.

Graduating from high school is a huge accomplishment for young people – but it doesn’t always mean students are ready for what lies ahead.

Stephanie Malia Krauss knows that firsthand. As a high school dropout, she “needed people and opportunities within and beyond school to prepare [her] for adulthood.”

Krauss believes that’s more important than ever before in a rapidly changing world, and she joined host Dustin Odham of FranklinCovey Education and Change Starts Here to outline the four currencies young people need to succeed – competencies, connections, credentials and cash.

She and Odham, who have known one another for more than a decade, talked about her origins in teaching, her own unique learning path, a transformative experience in Africa, and her work now to prepare both young people getting ready to enter the wider world and the adults getting ready to receive them and interact with them.

“Sometimes, there’s a difference between what young people need to be ready for life in adulthood and for life in general … and what we get to experience in school,” she said. “There is a gap between completing high school and true readiness for life after it. So, that became this charge for me.”

Be sure to follow Stephanie on social media:

@stephanie_malia on Twitter

@wonder_and_wayfinding on Instagram

Stephanie's website is www.stephaniemaliakrauss.com, and you can easily purchase her book on Amazon or Bookshop.

If you listen to this episode, share that you bought the book after listening to the podcast on social media and tag Leader in Me, Stephanie will send you a signed bookplate!

Adolph “Doc” Brown is a businessman, author, investor, educator, researcher, keynote speaker, and much more, and his bio advances his hope that he leaves those he interacts with ready to “learn, laugh and lead.”

However, if you ask him – which Change Starts Here host Dustin Odham did – he’s “one of many of God’s children.”

“That’s my filter for everything that I do and everything that I attempt to say,” Brown said.

On this episode, Brown joined Odham for a walk through many topics and Doc’s, whose dream is to be “Good Medicine” for those he touches, winding and illustrious career from corporate entrepreneur to a world-class educator and agent of change.

Still, his internal motivation, like his answer regarding who he is and why he loves what he does, is rather simple.

“I want the world to be a better place,” Brown said. “It’s not necessarily something that I wanted to do quite the way I’m doing it – I actually love research. I’m passionate about research. I was actually asked to go on tour by, at the time, American general Colin Powell.”

As a tenured educator, Brown found himself being awakened each night, leading him to ask his grandfather – a farmer with an elementary education who Brown called the wisest man he’d ever met – for advice.

His answer, in keeping with his grandson, was simple. Brown was being called.

Since, Brown has been falling that calling, uncomfortable or not – and Odham and Brown spoke about that journey at length.

Self-described teacher, writer, coach, podcast host, mother, partner and daughter Elena Aguilar obviously wears many hats, including as a renowned author – but many of them also have something in common.

Particularly through Bright Morning Consulting, an organization focused on helping build more just and equitable organizations, and books like her recent work “Onward,” Aguilar has embarked on a mission to support the journeys of individuals looking to remove the obstacles to equity.

Those obstacles also greatly impact the world of education, where Aguilar said she believes that inequity leads directly to poorer outcomes, burned-out teachers and more. It’s not a lack of desire, but a lack of resources.

On this episode of Change Starts Here from FranklinCovey, thought leader and host Dustin Odham sat down with Aguilar to center on her thoughts and insights regarding education. “Onward” focuses on a simple concept, but one that takes significant work – cultivating emotional resilience in educators.

An educator has to be willing to tend to a true journey throughout the school year, from self-discovery in the summer months to building community to start a year, battling burnout in the winter months, and more. It’s a rhythm that, when mastered, can give educators more control over their own emotions.

If you or someone you know is struggling with feelings of burnout and uncertainty, visit Elena's Feel Better Program with Bright Morning.

Saving and budgeting are sticky subjects for spenders – and author Rachel Cruze knows that better than just about anyone.

Her bio on her website tells the tale. “I’m a spender at heart. And I love pizza. (These are the important things to know about me).” As the daughter of noted financial guru Dave Ramsey, that spend-first nature created a lot of pressure to rein it in.

However, becoming smarter with your money doesn’t mean turning to deprivation or changing your ways. It simply means understanding who you are.

On this episode of Change Starts Here, host and FranklinCovey Education thought leader Dustin Odham was joined by Cruze, who walked him through the ins and out of taking control of your money and creating a life you love.

That applies to all aspects of your financial life and literacy, as well – adopting a better attitude toward financial planning can elevate your relationships with others, help you understand what you can do to set yourself up for success, and more.

To all of Cruze’s insights about learning to understand your own unique relationship with money, listen to the full episode, where Cruze and Odham dive into the author’s best tips for taking the stress out of your finances.

Key Points:

Being smart with money doesn’t mean changing who you are.

Even “spenders” can learn to budget and save productively.

Approaching financial literacy with an understanding of who you are makes money fun.