IDD Leader

Wes Mast used to call himself the "chief everything officer." Answering phones, doing inspections, handling marketing, driving to job sites, and eating lunch in the car — all at the same time. Somewhere in there, he was also picking up dead chickens at chicken houses just to keep the lights on.

That's not where the company is now. It's a multi-state business, and the difference wasn't hiring more people — it was building an actual system for growing leaders, instead of just promoting whoever happened to be best at the job.

Wes and Kristy Mast aren't leaders within human services--but they are experts at developing people and businesses that don't just run from one crisis to the next.

In this conversation, they walk through the mindset shift that gets a leader out of the bottleneck, a surprisingly cheap benefit that outperforms their 401k match in staff loyalty, and the specific test they run before anyone gets promoted into leadership — because they learned the hard way that wanting the job and being ready for it aren't the same thing.

If you've ever felt like every decision in your organization somehow finds its way back to your desk, this one's for you.

🔗 Learn more about Wes and Kristy — https://www.levelup2lead.com/
📥 Free resource — 7 Quiet Danger Signs Your Supervisors Are Burning Out Their Staff: https://iddleader.com/burnout
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TIMESTAMPS

00:00 – From chicken houses to "chief everything officer"
01:17 – Meet two leaders who never planned to teach leadership
03:08 – The mindset shift that gets you out of the bottleneck
03:47 – Why most leaders assume everyone can problem-solve like they do
05:33 – Slow down to speed up
09:14 – The moment they realized handwritten notes weren't going to cut it
13:30 – The bold bet they made when COVID nearly killed the business
16:12 – Why they're not actually passionate about home inspections
19:59 – The $50 bet nobody could win
22:09 – The benefit that beats their 401k match
25:18 – Becoming the "Chief Repeating Officer"
26:30 – Why raising your hand isn't enough to get promoted
27:06 – Inside the leadership academy anyone can take
30:41 – The Peter Principle, and the promotion that backfires

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Do your frontline supervisors sometimes unintentionally contribute to staff turnover? It happens so easily because... Most supervisors were never trained to lead.  Get The 7 Quiet Danger Signs Your Supervisors Are Burning Out Their Teams and learn how high-retention agencies spot — and fix — these issues fast. https://iddleader.com/burnout

There’s a sentence Amanda Elder says almost every executive director is thinking, but nobody actually says out loud.

Amanda leads Frontier Community Services in rural Alaska. Kim Champney leads the state’s disability provider association. In this half of their conversation, they get honest about something most leadership content skips past entirely: what it actually feels like to run an organization when you don’t have all the answers, and what you say to your own team when the numbers stop adding up.

You’ll hear how a housing crisis and an aging population are colliding into a math problem no provider association can out-strategize its way through. You’ll hear why one of these leaders finally stopped pretending she wasn’t overwhelmed, and the one sentence that changed how she carries it. And partway through, host Nate Beers steps out from behind the mic to share something he wasn’t planning to say either.

If you’ve ever felt like you’re supposed to have it all together and don’t, this one’s for you.

🔗 Frontier Community Services — https://www.fcsonline.org/
🔗 Alaska Association on Developmental Disabilities (AADD) — https://aaddalaska.org/
📥 Free resource — 7 Warning Signs Your Supervisors Are Burning Out Their Staff: iddleader.com/burnout

TIMESTAMPS
00:16 – What Amanda says every executive director is thinking
01:35 – The workforce problem no provider can out-strategize
02:27 – Why the numbers in Alaska "just don't add up"
04:08 – Rethinking what independence actually looks like
06:36 – Inside the scheduling model built for burned-out DSPs
09:19 – When 24/7 care isn't actually what someone needs
10:42 – The pilot project that let leaders "dream ten big dreams"
14:38 – Giving yourself permission to not have all the answers
16:34 – The moment one leader realized she'd become the problem
18:59 – The quote that changed how Amanda carries being overwhelmed
19:35 – Nate shares something he wasn't planning to say
24:49 – The sentence no executive director is allowed to say
26:19 – An old cartoon's lesson about failure and success
28:35 – What both leaders refuse to give up on


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Do your frontline supervisors sometimes unintentionally contribute to staff turnover? It happens so easily because... Most supervisors were never trained to lead.  Get The 7 Quiet Danger Signs Your Supervisors Are Burning Out Their Teams and learn how high-retention agencies spot — and fix — these issues fast. https://iddleader.com/burnout

If you're leading in this field, chances are you already know: there's no real playbook. No one handed you a map for the exact situation you're in right now.

Amanda Elder and Kim Champney lead in rural Alaska, where that's not a metaphor — parts of their state aren't even on a road system. But the bigger truth is one you'll probably recognize: they've had to build the way forward themselves, one hard decision at a time.

You'll hear what happened when Amanda got kicked, hard, by someone she supports — and why she says it's the best thing that ever happened to her leadership.

You'll hear how a promotion gone wrong became the blueprint for a completely different kind of job, and the $250 benefit that came out of it.

And you'll hear how direct support professionals in Alaska got something almost no one in this field has: an actual seat at the table when policy gets made.

No map. No excuses. If you're figuring it out as you go, this one's for you.

🔗 Frontier Community Services — https://www.fcsonline.org/
🔗 Alaska Association on Developmental Disabilities (AADD) — https://aaddalaska.org/
📥 Free resource — 7 Warning Signs Your Supervisors Are Burning Out Their Staff: iddleader.com/burnout

Timestamps
00:00 – Why the standard workforce playbook doesn't work here
01:13 – Meet two leaders working without a map
02:26 – What made them choose a different path
03:15 – "There's not even a road system"
03:55 – The conference that changed how Kim saw her career
08:55 – Why Amanda never wanted this job in the first place
11:11 – Giving yourself permission to innovate when the house is on fire
14:23 – The moment that changed everything about how Amanda leads
19:42 – Meet Kyle — hired for the hot dogs, not the job
22:07 – The promotion that didn't work, and the job that did
23:40 – "I think that's a cop out"
25:17 – The $250 benefit that came from one hard conversation
28:21 – How Alaska gave DSPs a real seat at the policy table


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Do your frontline supervisors sometimes unintentionally contribute to staff turnover? It happens so easily because... Most supervisors were never trained to lead.  Get The 7 Quiet Danger Signs Your Supervisors Are Burning Out Their Teams and learn how high-retention agencies spot — and fix — these issues fast. https://iddleader.com/burnout

One organization used to spend three staff members and two full weeks writing their quarterly reports. Now it takes one person about an hour.

That's the kind of number Daniel Caridi, co-founder of Kibu, mentions almost casually — and it's just one of several moments in this conversation that reframe what's actually possible inside a disability services organization.

Daniel talks candidly about building trust as a VC-backed outsider in an industry that has every reason to be skeptical of tech companies, a mistake he's made more than once by growing faster than his product could support, and a leadership habit he's had to unlearn as his company scaled past thirty employees. He also lays out, in plain language, where AI is actually headed inside compliance work — and shares two statistics about the health outcomes of people with IDD that he believes deserve far more attention than they're getting.

If you've ever felt like you personally have to touch every decision for things to go right, or if your team is buried in reporting that doesn't need to exist, this one's worth the time.

🔗 Kibu — https://kibu.com/

📥 Free resource — 7 Warning Signs Your Supervisors Are Burning Out Their Staff: iddleader.com/burnout

Timestamps
00:00 – The line Daniel wants every executive in America to hear
02:27 – How do you earn trust as an outsider in this industry?
03:16 – Why staying profitable mattered more than raising another round
04:59 – The mistake Daniel admits Kibu made more than once
06:35 – The lesson in choosing to "grow better, not bigger"
09:08 – The three types of organizations that adopt Kibu
12:06 – The report that used to take two weeks, now takes one hour
13:51 – What it means to give your team real permission to speak up
21:43 – What Daniel's had to unlearn as a leader
22:28 – The moment he realized he'd become the bottleneck
24:20 – What's coming next for Kibu
26:19 – A plain-language walkthrough of agentic AI
30:55 – Two statistics about IDD health outcomes most people haven't heard
---------
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Do your frontline supervisors sometimes unintentionally contribute to staff turnover? It happens so easily because... Most supervisors were never trained to lead.  Get The 7 Quiet Danger Signs Your Supervisors Are Burning Out Their Teams and learn how high-retention agencies spot — and fix — these issues fast. https://iddleader.com/burnout

A volunteer dodgeball class for five people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. That's where Daniel Caridi's company started — and somehow it turned into an EHR platform now used by over 400 disability service providers across the country.

Daniel isn't a DSP. He doesn't have a family member with IDD. He stumbled into this world by accident, and that outsider's perspective is exactly what let him see something the rest of the industry had missed: if you design software around making things easier for the person actually entering the data — not the administrator pulling the report — everything downstream gets better.

In this conversation, Daniel walks through how a Zoom dance class during COVID turned into a full compliance and content platform, why he thinks compliance culture has quietly pulled the sector's focus away from the people it serves, and the surprisingly simple feedback mechanics — including a running joke about confetti — that helped staff satisfaction with their own documentation jump from 18% to 81%.

If you've ever wondered whether there's a better way to get your team to actually want to do their paperwork, this one's for you.

🔗 Daniel Caridi & Kibu — https://kibu.com/
 📥 Free resource — 7 Warning Signs Your Supervisors Are Burning Out Their Staff: iddleader.com/burnout

Timestamps

00:00 – The stat that made Daniel rethink everything about EHR design
01:00 – Meet Daniel Caridi, the founder who never planned to work in this sector
02:39 – How a volunteer dodgeball class turned into a tech company
04:07 – The first provider partnership that changed everything
05:48 – The real estate major with zero software background
07:11 – The insight most of the industry never saw
08:56 – Why Daniel says the whole platform is built on listening
09:46 – "Nobody gets into this job to make Uncle Sam happy"
12:15 – Turning 30 minutes of paperwork into a few minutes of talking
16:53 – Why generic AI tools miss the mark in this sector
18:23 – Inside the dashboard that shows exactly who's behind
20:06 – The police car analogy that explains why visibility works
21:18 – The gift card habit most providers never hear about
22:48 – The stat: satisfaction jumps from 18% to 81%

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Quick Question:

Do your frontline supervisors sometimes unintentionally contribute to staff turnover? It happens so easily because... Most supervisors were never trained to lead.  Get The 7 Quiet Danger Signs Your Supervisors Are Burning Out Their Teams and learn how high-retention agencies spot — and fix — these issues fast. https://iddleader.com/burnout

There was a woman in her 80s. Her one goal was to get her driver's license. When someone finally asked where she'd go first, she said the grocery store. Then: "I'd go see my sister." They didn't know she had a sister. They'd been supporting her for years.

That's what happens when someone asks the right question.

Most leaders in IDD services are asking plenty of questions. Satisfaction surveys. Engagement pulse checks. Annual reviews. But there's a category of question that almost never makes it onto the form — and it turns out to be the one that changes everything: what do you actually want?

Not what the checklist covers. Not what the role requires. What do the people you support envision when they dream of a good life? What do your frontline staff want out of their career, their growth, maybe even their life?  That gap — between what organizations assume and what staff would say if someone genuinely asked — is one of the most underestimated drivers of turnover in the field. And this episode is about how to close it.

Mary Kay Rizzolo, Katherine Dunbar, and Courtney Kelly Chapman from the Council on Quality and Leadership share what the research shows about the link between how you treat your staff and what happens to the people they support, what genuinely high-retention organizations do on the ground that others don't, and how a tool called Personal Outcome Measures has been uncovering things organizations never knew — about people they'd been supporting for years.

If you're a leader who's been asking questions but not quite hearing the answers, this one is worth your full attention.

🔗 Learn more about CQL: c-q-l.org
📥 Free resource — 7 Warning Signs Your Supervisors Are Burning Out Their Staff: iddleader.com/burnout

⏱️ Timestamps
00:00 – "No dream snuffing" — and the woman in her 80s who wanted a driver's license
00:55 – Do you know what your DSPs actually want?
02:27 – The connection between quality and workforce stability
02:57 – When you treat staff with dignity, here's what the data shows
04:34 – Why CQL's focus groups with DSPs are the favorite part of accreditation
05:54 – What DSPs say they want most — and the research outcomes behind it
08:59 – Who absorbs the most when an organization struggles with quality
11:22 – What high-retention organizations actually do differently
11:59 – Why closing the feedback loop matters more than running the survey
15:28 – "No dream snuffing" — the philosophy behind personal outcome measures
17:48 – The performance punishment trap nobody talks about
20:08 – What surprises organizations when CQL holds up the mirror
21:07 – The woman with two daughters nobody knew about
21:38 – The woman in her 80s who wanted a driver's license (full story)
24:32 – Person-centered planning applied to staff — the most innovative thing in the episode
29:03 – "People don't want a good plan. They want a good life."

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Do your frontline supervisors sometimes unintentionally contribute to staff turnover? It happens so easily because... Most supervisors were never trained to lead.  Get The 7 Quiet Danger Signs Your Supervisors Are Burning Out Their Teams and learn how high-retention agencies spot — and fix — these issues fast. https://iddleader.com/burnout

What if the thing you've been dreading is actually the thing that could transform your organization?

For the past year, Nate kept noticing a pattern: a disproportionate number of the highest-performing organizations he interviewed were CQL accredited. When he asked them about it — off the record, almost as an aside — they didn't talk about compliance. They used words like transformational.

So in Part 1 of this two-part conversation, Nate sits down with three leaders from the Council on Quality and Leadership — President & CEO Mary Kay Rizzolo, VP of Services and Systems Excellence Katherine Dunbar, and VP of Training and Special Projects Courtney Kelly Chapman — to find out why.

This isn't an audit. It's not a checklist exercise, and it's definitely not the DMV. What gets uncovered here is a model built on appreciative inquiry, real partnership, and a relentless focus on the why behind every policy and procedure — and the story of one organization whose frontline staff went from dreading accreditation to wearing buttons that said "ask me about outcomes."

If you've ever associated accreditation with dread, this conversation might just change your mind.

🔗 Learn more about CQL: c-q-l.org

📥 Free resource — 7 Warning Signs Your Supervisors Are Burning Out Their Staff: iddleader.com/burnout

⏱️ Timestamps
00:00 – "When's the last time a compliance process energized you?"
02:26 – Why CQL kept showing up in Nate's interviews
03:19 – The real culture shift accreditation creates
05:10 – Why "the why" matters more than the checklist
07:28 – Meet Mary Kay Rizzolo — and the buttons that said "ask me about outcomes"
09:26 – Meet Katherine Dunbar — from DSP to accreditation lead
11:10 – Meet Courtney Chapman — drafted into CQL on a Tuesday
13:26 – Why this "feels nothing like an audit"
15:19 – What true partnership looks like on the ground
18:26 – Can you actually fail accreditation?
21:20 – The different levels of CQL accreditation, explained
23:49 – What "basic assurances" and "personal outcome measures" actually mean
25:24 – How most organizations find their way to CQL

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Quick Question:

Do your frontline supervisors sometimes unintentionally contribute to staff turnover? It happens so easily because... Most supervisors were never trained to lead.  Get The 7 Quiet Danger Signs Your Supervisors Are Burning Out Their Teams and learn how high-retention agencies spot — and fix — these issues fast. https://iddleader.com/burnout

Most IDD organizations genuinely care about their staff. You celebrate DSP Appreciation Week, recognize milestones, and try to say “thank you” in meaningful ways—and yet, people still leave. Not because recognition doesn’t matter, but because much of it isn’t tied to what actually drives retention. Well-intentioned efforts can feel good in the moment without building long-term commitment, and supervisors often miss the everyday moments that matter most.

This episode is the REPLAY of a live, interactive session between Kris Foss (UMN’s Institute on Community Integration) and Nate Beers (IDD Leader). It explores:
--Why recognition efforts fall flat—and how to make them stick.
--What staff actually experience as recognition
--Where gaps may exist in current approaches
--Simple, practical ways to embed meaningful recognition into everyday leadership

If you’ve ever thought, “We’re doing a lot… so why isn’t it making a bigger difference?”—this conversation will likely hit close to home.

Join us LIVE for the next session on August 6 at 4:00 ET:
https://zoom.us/meeting/register/6KIXpayWTkisPlhVau0qnQ

RESOURCES:
Contact Kris Foss: [email protected]
"Building a Culture of Recognition" training - https://z.umn.edu/bcvu

The Seven Danger Signs assessment - https://tally.so/r/ZjZ4aV

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Quick Question:

Do your frontline supervisors sometimes unintentionally contribute to staff turnover? It happens so easily because... Most supervisors were never trained to lead.  Get The 7 Quiet Danger Signs Your Supervisors Are Burning Out Their Teams and learn how high-retention agencies spot — and fix — these issues fast. https://iddleader.com/burnout

Most leaders already know they should be listening more. This episode is about what actually happens when someone does.

Steve Gonyea is a parent, foster parent to 178 kids, and one of the most relentlessly solution-oriented advocates in the IDD space. In Part 2 of this conversation, he shares how he went from barely getting five minutes with politicians to one assemblyman clearing his entire afternoon — because Steve was the only person who walked in with solutions instead of complaints.

He also shares how he built a fully operational complex care center in Utica, New York — six days a week, free to the community, built without a single waiver dollar — after every disability nonprofit in the region turned him down. And how he convinced New York State's OPWDD Commissioner to drive across the state at night and sit in a library, listening to eight families she'd never met, until she cried.

The through-line in every story is the same: get out of your office, bring solutions, and listen to the people nobody else is asking. It sounds simple. Steve is proof that it works.

📬 Connect with Steve: [email protected]
🔗 Finding Common Ground Podcast & Projects: fcgadvocacy.org
🔗 Special Needs Resource Directory: specialneeds.help
📥 Free resource — 7 Warning Signs Your Supervisors Are Burning Out Their Staff: iddleader.com/burnout

TIMESTAMPS
00:00 – "You came in with solutions. I want to hear them."
02:20 – How Steve changed his approach to advocacy
05:33 – One-on-one meetings vs. bus trips to Albany
07:40 – Inside the 4-hour meeting with an assemblyman
08:20 – Building the complex care center (when everyone said no)
11:26 – The veterans said yes the next day
14:32 – If you have 70% turnover, the problem isn't the DSPs
18:40 – What Steve would say to a CEO with 5 minutes
22:43 – The OPWDD listening tour — and the commissioner who showed up
29:39 – Get out of your office. Here's what you'll find.
35:09 – Introducing specialneeds.help — a free national directory

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Do your frontline supervisors sometimes unintentionally contribute to staff turnover? It happens so easily because... Most supervisors were never trained to lead.  Get The 7 Quiet Danger Signs Your Supervisors Are Burning Out Their Teams and learn how high-retention agencies spot — and fix — these issues fast. https://iddleader.com/burnout

What if the people most likely to solve your retention problem are already on your payroll — and nobody's asking them?

Steve Gonyea has been inside more human services systems than almost anyone: IDD, foster care, juvenile justice, mental health. He's a parent, a foster parent to 178 kids, and a former DSP who went on to become one of the most tenacious advocates in New York State. He's not an executive. He doesn't run a provider organization. And that's exactly what makes this conversation so valuable.

In this episode, Steve breaks down what actually happens to a family when a DSP walks out the door, why DSPs stop speaking up even when they have exactly the answers you need, and the story of how he turned a failing Xerox manufacturing line around — not with a new system or a new strategy, but by asking every single person on the floor one question: how can we do your job better?

The answer that came back almost every time? Nobody had ever asked them before.

📬 Connect with Steve: [email protected]
🔗 Special Needs Resource Directory: specialneeds.help


TIMESTAMPS
00:00 – What happens when a DSP leaves a family's life
02:24 – Steve's intro: 178 foster kids and counting
05:08 – From aerospace to advocacy — how Steve got here
09:06 – Why Steve became a DSP (and what he learned)
10:54 – What IDD leaders miss when they only see one corner
13:34 – What "a seat at the table" actually has to look like
15:32 – Taking wheelchair users sledding (and what happened next)
17:00 – The Christmas dinner no one planned — and the report that followed
20:43 – "It's telling that I was unsure if I was making the right call"
22:09 – Why your 98% satisfaction survey might mean nothing
25:57 – The Xerox plant story: from 67% to 107% efficiency
36:43 – DSPs leaving not for money — but because nobody listened

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Quick Question:

Do your frontline supervisors sometimes unintentionally contribute to staff turnover? It happens so easily because... Most supervisors were never trained to lead.  Get The 7 Quiet Danger Signs Your Supervisors Are Burning Out Their Teams and learn how high-retention agencies spot — and fix — these issues fast. https://iddleader.com/burnout