Make It Mindful: Insights for Global Learning

Seth Fleischauer (00:01.22)
Hello everyone. And welcome to make it mindful. The podcast exploring how students learn who they're becoming and how global experiences, human development and emerging technologies are reshaping teaching. I'm Seth Fleishauer, former classroom teacher and founder of an international learning company focused on global learning. Each episode features deep conversations with educators, researchers, psychologists, and school leaders who are rethinking teaching and learning.

And together we examine how students make sense of a rapidly changing world and how technology can support rather than replace the human heart of education. Today's guest is Dr. Karen Dudek-Brandon, a speech language pathologist, executive functioning specialist, and host of the De facto Leaders podcast. After 14 years in schools, Karen has dedicated her career to helping clinicians, related service providers, and entire school teams build the systems, routines, and shared principles that make executive functioning support actually transfer into classrooms through her training programs and leadership work. She empowers educators to increase their capacity, avoid burnout and create sustainable building wide approaches to supporting students with complex language and cognitive needs.

And in this episode, we dig into what's breaking down in the traditional direct service model, how clinicians can stop being bottlenecks by simplifying and systematizing their work and why burnout often isn't about being busy. It's about not feeling effective. We'll explore the iteration spiral, the art of delegation when everyone is overloaded and the foundational EF skills like time perception, like time perception and self-talk that can transform student independence.

And we look ahead to the building level shifts that allow speech pathologists and related service providers to influence entire school ecosystems brought to you by Banning Global Learning. Let's make it mindful. So Karen, you were on the podcast before that is one of our most popular episodes, by the way. Welcome back.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (02:04.034)
Yes. Yay. Thank you for having me back. I'm happy to be here.

Seth Fleischauer (02:11.826)
Yeah, nice to see you. I'm wondering since our first conversation, how has your work developed? you work with clinician clinicians and schools. What feels like the things that are bubbling to the surface right now?

Karen Dudek-Brannan (02:24.984)
So gosh, lots of things. I would say there's the work that I do with clinicians, but then also the work that I'm doing for the state as well. I'm doing a lot of my own, going through a lot of my own learning curves at the same time as I'm supporting clinicians. And I would say this concept of making yourself scalable or making what you do scalable,

Because I think that no matter how many system issues you fix, we're never going to fix all of them. And even if we could just, you know, rain buckets of money on the public sector and have all this funding and resources, there would still be a need. still wouldn't, people in that clinical role would still never be able to teach all the cognitive and language skills that kids will need in their direct sessions alone.

So again, even if obviously we do have some systemic and resource issues, but when we're thinking about best practice, we have to think about other models besides the one that a lot of us learn in our pre-service training. So that's what's bubbling up for me because I think people are more and more feeling capacity constrained and worried about what's going on in education. And also I think

wondering how they can have an impact on things going on outside their classrooms or therapy rooms.

Seth Fleischauer (04:01.37)
Yeah, it's well, let's dive into it. You're talking about like certain systemic issues that we have no control over such as funding and what's happening. I should say we have little control over. Uh, but then you're also talking about building systems within schools. want to back up and understand the problem a little bit better, which is you're talking about this direct clinical model where a, um, a support teacher.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (04:06.306)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (04:12.238)
Mm-hmm.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (04:23.47)
Mm-hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (04:27.062)
is supporting students in isolation, teaching them executive functioning skills. And you're noticing that there is a difficulty in transferring those skills over into the classroom, where perhaps the support specialist could have some kind of role in supporting the classroom teacher in teaching the same types of skills that they're teaching in isolation. Is that about what you're seeing?

Karen Dudek-Brannan (04:48.312)
Mm-hmm.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (04:56.81)
Yeah, and it's not just executive functioning, but I think it becomes more apparent that the whole generalization issue, like my students are able to do this skill when they're in this isolated small group session. And maybe I'm seeing some results with them when I'm there able to scaffold and respond in this again, small group, supportive, intensive setting. But then the teachers, the other people interacting with the student are saying that they're not seeing it.

carry over to other settings. That happens a lot with language as well and other academic skills. But with executive functioning specifically, it's even more apparent because you're talking about things like, know, a lot of times when people think about executive functioning, they think like, the skills that help you plan and be organized, which it is that, but it's also skills that help you to walk into a situation and just evaluate your surroundings, read the room.

and then figure out how to react and respond and then continually do that. Have this continual feedback loop of how is everyone responding to things that I'm doing and saying, and what is my impact on this environment? And so there's that continuous feedback loop. And so those things are, it's very difficult to get that full experience of all this information that you would need to take in when you have this isolated setting. So,

I would say that the whole generalization issue happens all over the board, but it's really obvious. hear a lot of pain points, especially when it comes to social skills or social executive functioning, because they're what we often would refer to as soft skills. So yeah, I mean, that's really what I'm seeing. And I'd say that that is the social skills issues specifically as one that comes up a lot as a skill that does not generalize.

And some of the other areas do as well, like with other language and more academic skills, but that one jumps out time and time again.

Seth Fleischauer (07:01.498)
For sure. And the work that we do at Banyan Global Learning, we help students put their language skills into context, right? We are bringing in virtual experiences that simulate the real world or, know, depending on how you define IRL, it is IRL being brought to the classroom. And, and it makes sense that teaching students these skills that require them to read the room is difficult to do when there's no room there, right? When, when you, you've isolated.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (07:08.269)
Yeah.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (07:16.696)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (07:26.019)
Mm-hmm.

Right, exactly. Or when you're not in the room that you're supposed to be reading. Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (07:32.186)
Exactly, exactly. And so the task then is for the clinician, the one working with the student in isolation, because you need that foundational practice, right? Similarly, yeah, you can't just throw them into the room and try to teach them in the context of the room with all that stuff going on. You've got to isolate these things, build the foundational skills, and then give them the opportunity to put it into context. But at that point,

Karen Dudek-Brannan (07:45.836)
Right, yeah, yeah, there's a place for that, absolutely.

Mm-hmm.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (07:54.477)
rate.

Seth Fleischauer (08:01.838)
They are under the, the supervision of another teacher. Right. And so you are supporting clinicians in how they can support the rest of the building in the context of a time when education is incredibly under stress, when everybody has 5,000 things they'd love to do if they only had time to get to it. So how are you actually doing this in a way that feels palatable to the teacher in a way?

Karen Dudek-Brannan (08:05.358)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (08:18.52)
Mm-hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (08:31.352)
that is actually doable and reachable. How do you support these clinicians in supporting the teachers they need to allow their students to put these skills into context?

Karen Dudek-Brannan (08:44.622)
That is the million dollar question, isn't it? I'll tell you, so I'll tell you what not to do and then I'll, I can tell you what, how I've shifted. What I used to do when I was in the schools initially and I was pretty green is I would sometimes get really excited about a certain idea and be like, here's this cool thing that I want to show you. And usually, you know, if you have a relationship with someone, people will hear you out and be nice to you, but a lot of times they won't do it and follow through.

Seth Fleischauer (08:46.244)
Hehehe.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (09:13.75)
Unless you, again, have this ongoing relationship and I think some sub teachers are, they just sort of like to try a lot of different things, but think about how much work is on a teacher's plate now. So I think that the problem is that the way that I presented it, it felt like an additional thing that they had to do on top. So it didn't fit within their existing workflows. It felt like a separate workflow.

the way that I saw it was here's this thing that's going to make your life easier. And here's something that's actually going to help you with a lot of those pain points that you're having. Like you have this student who struggles to follow directions and follow along in class. And, you know, they're, you know, not performing where you would expect on reading comprehension and vocabulary and like all these other language skills and that, that would impact things like language executive functioning or whatever it is.

But the way that I was presenting it was very much packaged in a way that made sense for my pain points, but I wasn't necessarily tying it to theirs. So I would say don't do that. You've got to read the room as well, figure out what the teacher is coming to you with, and figure out what their, again, kind of like their existing routines.

I'd say that the way that I reframe it for clinicians, and when we're thinking about things like, again, what I refer to as the clinical decision bottleneck or the iteration spiral or all these things is I think that sometimes they have this mindset of, well, I'm a clinician. What I do is individualize, because I'm doing these, you know, individualized education plans, which a lot of it is. That's where you have that clinical judgment. And there are a lot of things that should be

delivered in a direct intervention setting. You don't want to get rid of the therapy or the resource room or whatever it is for students who need that foundational learning. But I think that sometimes where clinicians miss an opportunity, and I would say any support person as well, not just a therapist, but they think so much about that concept of individualizing everything that they miss opportunities to find things that could be almost

Karen Dudek-Brannan (11:36.578)
like they're documented operating procedures where they could document and create something instead of redoing it every time they do that workflow. So what that does is that it could make them more efficient in what they're doing in their sessions, but it could also be an opportunity for them to simplify something that they could eventually hand off to someone else. And I think that first stage of documenting and defining what you're doing and making it simple enough

or a version of it that's simple enough that you could hand off to someone, even if there might be a version that you only do with your session, that's the missed opportunity there. And you might not necessarily take that original version of what you documented, and that might not be the final product, but at least you have something to work with so that when you do go have a conversation with a teacher and you're not getting that response, because maybe you didn't quite connect the dots for them, you at least have something to work with.

And I think a lot of people are so stuck in that, again, what I refer to as the clinical decision-making bottleneck where they think that they have to individualize every time that they miss the opportunity to, again, create some of those operating procedures, which is that starting point for figuring out, like, how do I make something tangible that I could give to somebody else and share my knowledge in a way that's more scaled?

Seth Fleischauer (12:43.694)
Hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (12:59.822)
Yeah, it's funny because I'm listening to you and I run my company. So much of what you're talking about are basically business practices. Like it's like, like marketing, right? Like in order to be able to convince someone that what you have and you believe is a good solution for them in order to be able to convince them that that is the case, you have to put yourself in their frame of reference in order to frame what you have as solutions to their problems, not just what you.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (13:07.222)
Yeah, right, I know, know.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (13:18.83)
Mm-hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (13:29.294)
might think would be good for them, right? Even coming down to using their exact language of how they speak about these types of things. And then you spoke about what is essentially standard operating procedures, being able to generalize what you do, which is critical for any manager, right? Who is delegating responsibilities to other people. The first task is to just write it all down. And of course it takes longer than first time to get it all out there.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (13:40.397)
Yup.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (13:47.757)
Yeah.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (13:55.541)
Over.

Seth Fleischauer (13:57.605)
But once you have that, that's, as you say, a starting point. And these are things that, that make processes scalable into systems, right? You're talking about creating systems. there is something you've mentioned a couple of times that I want to dig into a little bit more, which is the, the iteration spiral is what you call it, where it, let's say you have a standard operating procedure, but as a clinician who is prone to individualization,

Karen Dudek-Brannan (14:16.834)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (14:26.826)
You are constantly iterating on your approach based on the specific case that you have in front of you, maybe based on the own trajectory in your career and what you're learning. Maybe you went out and listened to a make it mindful podcast and you were inspired by Karen about what she's doing. so a clinician might be resistant to writing down some of those SOPs, some of those standard operating procedures if they're constantly iterating. So how can they.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (14:33.228)
Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (14:55.14)
Break out of this cycle or very least enough in order to be able to feel comfortable and confident with their standard operating procedures.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (15:05.794)
Yeah, I like to introduce this idea of a, like a container. So I think that, cause people go in, they might go one direction or the other. Like I think some people get a little bit nervous about trying things. You know, they're, they're afraid to take the first step if they don't see the whole staircase. I do interact with a lot of clinicians who are like, I want to learn the whole system before I even implement any part of it. So they're.

they get that analysis paralysis. So that's one version. But then some people are very creative and they just, they love to just play around with like, here's this different, you know, all these different ways that I can use this set of materials to do my, my therapy session. And they're really good at, you know, taking this pen and a piece of paper and just coming up with something on the fly because they're, really good at that. But again, all those ideas live in their head and they,

there are so many possible skills when you think about executive functioning, when you think about language, you could come up with this massive list of things and you could be again, iterating forever and ever with this huge pile of materials. And it's just like, you're kind of going all over the place. And a lot of clinicians are so good at kind of organizing it in their head, cause they have this good mental schema of what they should be doing. Again, they're not necessarily writing it down, but

their system, even though it might be working for them, it's so complicated that they could never explain it to another person or it'd be very difficult. And then, you I used to do this as well where I'd start explaining something and you realize that the person that you're talking to, it's like deer in headlights, they're overwhelmed and they're not really processing everything and they wouldn't be able to replicate what you're doing. So that's really what I refer to as the iteration spiral where it's like just

Seth Fleischauer (16:48.908)
You

Karen Dudek-Brannan (16:58.574)
there it's not contained and it's just chaos and it and maybe it's kind of working but then you're hitting this this this wall so what I like to do is again the idea of clinical containers so like for my language therapy I say vocabulary is your big container and your other little mini containers like those little closet organizers that you fit under that are things like semantics, phonology, orthography, morphology, syntax.

where things like executive functioning, have again, executive functioning is this bigger umbrella. And then you have things like self-talk and time perception and future, future pacing and episodic memory and encoding. like those are these containers and what those containers allow you to do is, you know, if you're this creative person that likes to iterate, can iterate within these parameters, but it keeps it a little more organized. And what that allows you to do is figure out

are there some things that maybe aren't moving the needle even in my therapy sessions? So maybe I don't need to fully iterate and go down the spiral for these certain things. But then these other things are that I can put into these buckets and then you just have to make sure that you have enough things in each little container. And then you can say, all right, if I've got like one to two things in each little bucket, then I have

something that is enough that I can start sharing with other people. it kind of, you know, again, it contains it and it defines it a little in a way that's more organized. And it also gives you some bumpers and parameters because it's great if you're creative, but if you are creative with no parameters and you can't be productive and creative and really channel things in the right direction. So that has been helpful for the people who are

an analysis paralysis that feel like they have to see the whole system. gives them a just do this little, this, this amount, just like implement this little container first and move forward. And then you can think about the next one. And then for the people who are like, you know, totally okay with jumping in, but, but, you know, again, get going down the spiral. It helps keep them a little bit, almost helps them rein themselves in a little bit more. So kind of a happy medium.

Seth Fleischauer (19:19.726)
Got it. Yeah. It sounds like clinicians in general who work on this sort of thing might be systems thinkers on the individual level where, because they see the way that all of these things are interacting with all of the other things, as you said, they might have schemas in their head about how they all connect. And if I'm going to dial up this one, I have to make sure that I'm dialing up or down this other one and

Karen Dudek-Brannan (19:30.83)
Mm-hmm.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (19:40.75)
Thank

Seth Fleischauer (19:49.069)
just the act of breaking down some of these skills into general categories allows them to think about each of them in isolation, which allows them to create some kind of toolkit standard operating procedure, whatever you want to call it, and start to actually communicate some of the things that work well for them so that they can also work well for the teachers. I'm wondering if there's a way that a

Karen Dudek-Brannan (20:09.646)
Mm-hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (20:18.244)
clinician in a school setting can communicate this information to teachers that it where it won't feel overwhelming. there, and you mentioned the top about like understanding their problems and maybe it is just that of like understanding, know, this kid is struggling. You're telling me that this kid is struggling with this and this here's some solutions for that in particular, but it feels like even that type of

Karen Dudek-Brannan (20:28.29)
Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (20:45.612)
interaction is a bit reactionary compared to what you're talking about, which is building systems within the school of how to help everyone with executive functioning, how to help the entire class with episodic memory and time perception so that when it comes time to support any given student that that teacher understands how. But I know how resistant teachers are to one more thing. So

Karen Dudek-Brannan (20:52.334)
Mm-hmm.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (21:01.25)
Mm-hmm.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (21:10.604)
Yeah. Right.

Seth Fleischauer (21:13.282)
What are you finding is successful or is it a case by case basis?

Karen Dudek-Brannan (21:17.954)
I mean, yeah, it's case by case in that what sometimes clinicians might ask me, like, which specific skills should I be working on versus the special ed teacher? And that does have to be customized somewhat because I often tell people who are in that specialist role, just because you're qualified to do something doesn't mean you're the only person who's qualified.

And so for one team, based on the way that the resources are arranged, it might make sense for you to dive into certain things. Whereas on another team, it might make sense for another person to be the one addressing it directly, like a special ed teacher or somebody else, like a reading specialist, another clinician. And then the SLP, for example, might be involved on more of a consultation role.

But in general, what I find, and this is just like you went back to a few minutes ago, you said these are just good business leadership management practices. And I don't think a lot of teachers, clinicians are trained to think that way. And I think it's really interesting because I think they should, even though everybody's like education is not a business. And I'm like, well, it kind of is.

you know, if you think about it. yeah, so there's obviously the standard operating procedures part of it, but then there's the change management part of it. And I think that, so for a lot of people who, one, they get excited about the possibility of some new initiative, especially if it's their brainchild, like if it's a clinician who's really excited about executive functioning, or the other person who's like, this really needs to happen, but I'm kind of overwhelmed.

And what I encourage people to do is not go with what I would refer to as the nuclear option, where you just blow up your entire system and try to do all of everything at once. Cause it's not, that's not a good change management practice. You have to prepare people for the change. So if you, as a clinician, even though you might not have people who report to you directly, but you are trying to have an impact on your team,

Karen Dudek-Brannan (23:35.01)
you'd want to still follow those same practices because if you're going to make a change to your practice and then expect that to have a ripple effect, you need to do it in one phase at a time. So that's why I encourage them to, regardless of how it looks for their building or for their team, again, use those containers to have this staged rolled out approach where like, here's your big container that you're working on, executive functioning, for example.

And then you're going to maybe work on your time perception container first. And then within that container, you might have specific strategies or protocols that you're going to build and iterate on and use kind of a, again, another business entrepreneurship turn, like build a minimum viable product and do some kind of a mini pilot on a small scale in your session. And then maybe you get another teacher involved that

Seth Fleischauer (24:24.346)
You

Karen Dudek-Brannan (24:34.208)
is open to it has been already approaching you. You go after the low hanging fruit, the people that already are like, hey, tell me your cool ideas. Somebody you already have a relationship with, you team up with them. Maybe you start a mini pilot or a work group and then you can expand it from there. And you can maybe be having some side conversations to try to prep people for it and feel out like what are their pain points? How could we tie this to what they're already doing? And then again, you scale it up from there. And that's why it's important to

look for those opportunities to document. And again, so it's contained, it's iterative, but it's not like, again, the nuclear option where it's, we're gonna throw everything out and do this whole initiative all at once. Cause people in education have plenty of those types of things that come from the top that we just can't control. So yeah, that's really the, that would be the approach that I would recommend to try to almost like a grassroots bottom up.

Seth Fleischauer (25:23.61)
Absolutely.

Seth Fleischauer (25:31.227)
Yeah. Change management. mean, it's funny, you know, all these big business terms keep popping up. And you said that, a lot of teachers don't think that way. And maybe school isn't a business in the strictest sense of the word, but it is an organization, right? So organizational psychology comes into practice here. what's, what I think is funny about a lot of the things you just said though, is that I find teachers do a lot of this for their students.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (25:31.99)
situation.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (25:59.672)
Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (25:59.887)
But they don't necessarily do it within the building. And so some, some examples here of like putting yourself in the, in the, mind frame of the person you're trying to influence teachers do that all the time, right? How are my students going to respond to this? let, let me think about what, what they're going to know. Let me, let me gut check and take their perspective before I think about how I'm going to present this information, standard operating procedures. Every teacher knows.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (26:03.075)
Mm-hmm.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (26:11.544)
Mm-hmm.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (26:22.84)
Mm-hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (26:26.178)
You break it down into the steps or else you're not getting anywhere, right? Like, like you have to, you have to break it down so clearly and do step by step by step. And that's what an SOP is even a minimum viable product. They do that all the time. That's like every lesson plan is a minimal viable product, right? Cause you're not going to do more than the minimum because you're just trying to get it out there. Cause you got another one to do next period. Right? And so this idea of like, let's make it.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (26:29.464)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (26:51.77)
good enough and then test it and then iterate on that. Like that's happening all the time. And so it's just a, it's a mindset shift to try to get that to be extended to the building in general. Teachers, you get a bunch of teachers in, in a staff room or a professional development session, all of a sudden they turn into children, right? Like, like we are all just large children. And so a lot of the things that work in a classroom, they are organizational psychology principles.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (26:55.924)
Mm-hmm. Totally.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (27:10.158)
Mm-hmm.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (27:20.706)
Mm-hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (27:20.728)
So it's, it's, it's funny, we just have to kind of extend that to our adult colleagues, not in any sort of derisive way where it's like you're acting like a child, but more in that these principles are consistent across age group. And maybe once you get to the older people, there's I'd say in general, they want more control and agency over, over their learning. Although I think that is evolving. but, but in general, it's a lot of the same stuff. and another thing that we, you and I have talked about.

that applies to students as much as does to teachers is burnout. This feeling of not having purpose, motivation, it just does not feel relevant to me anywhere, this work that I'm doing. You've argued that clinicians burn out basically because they don't feel effective. I'm wondering where that comes from for you and...

Karen Dudek-Brannan (27:56.717)
Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (28:17.14)
Is this strategy that you've outlined above around delegating or creating systems to support the work that's done in isolation back in the mainstream context? Is that part of your solution for making clinicians feel more effective and thus less likely to burn out?

Karen Dudek-Brannan (28:38.316)
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that sometimes clinicians feel like they're in a position where they, because of the systemic issues that are happening at their building or beyond, no matter how much work they put into that direct time that they have with students, they just can't, I've had people say like, it just feels like a drop in the bucket. It's just.

This ecosystem around students can only do so much if I can't have an impact on what's happening when the students leave the room. Yet, sometimes they get into this situation where they're spending so much time on their individual operating procedures that aren't defined that they have no bandwidth to focus anywhere else. So it's like they just continually repeat this process of just planning for

the week in front of them rather than planning the long-term. And so if they can define some of those things and become more efficient with their own personal operating procedures, then they can carve out some additional time to think more big picture. So even though a lot of my work is focused on that long-term, and I talk a lot about how we need to use multiple service delivery models, a lot of times where I start is,

really focusing on that direct therapy. Because if you're spending so much time doing lesson plans that you can't even think about, what, like, how would I, how would I have an interaction with one of my coworkers? And you can't even think strategically and create some space for that, then it's going to be really hard. So you almost do have to start with what am I currently doing, even though it's a strategy to

free up some time and solidify things to add this other layer. So I see it as kind of a stacking strategy where you're focusing on, here's this one service delivery model that I'm, a lot of them are very good at. they, and again, sometimes they're focused on that because they're comfortable there and they're good at it. So they're kind of in their, the zone of competence, but then they're not necessarily creating that space for themselves to expand these other skillsets. Again, the,

Karen Dudek-Brannan (31:01.57)
the change management at the building level. So those skills to, like you said, they're really great at doing it for students, but how can you figure out how to apply those skills to other contexts? So it is really about creating that space, but it does get frustrating when you feel like you're working so hard and you're not seeing that difference. and I think that my biggest challenge with it when I was in the school, it's like, yeah, I can...

take a break on the weekends, but I still have to go to work Monday and pick up where I left off. And I don't want to live my life for the weekends. I want to actually look forward to all of my life or at least a good portion of it. So that always just felt so disempowering to me when self-care was almost framed as like an escape mechanism because then that, I don't know, me personally, I had the tendency to do some things that maybe weren't the...

Seth Fleischauer (31:53.292)
Hmm.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (31:58.956)
the best, weren't the best strategy when you think of it like that. So yeah, it always felt disempowering when I felt like you're just kind of, you know, taking a break from the problem, which sometimes that is what you need. You do need to create, you know, get away from it sometimes. It can be powerful, but it's often not enough, or at least it wasn't for me.

Seth Fleischauer (32:20.708)
Hmph.

I want to do something new, that I've been experimenting with in the last few podcasts, which is like a lightning round. was inspired by Adam Grant and his work life podcast. so I've got three short questions that we call them shorter. The answers can be shorter. They, don't have to be like one word. but what is something you are rethinking right now?

Karen Dudek-Brannan (32:25.761)
Okay.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (32:32.034)
Okay.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (32:37.623)
Okay.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (32:44.174)
Breathing King, gosh.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (32:50.742)
I would say, well, going on the leadership and management thing, I'm constantly rethinking what micromanaging is. So yeah, when are you micromanaging and when are you giving guidance and scaffolding and phasing yourself out? Because I work with a lot of people who are like, just empower your team to figure it out. And I'm like, OK, don't I have to?

provide some direction and guidance. So that is something I think about a lot.

Seth Fleischauer (33:26.874)
That's a good question. Uh, maybe another, maybe your third episode on make it mindful of the heavy back. Um, besides the de facto leaders podcast, what is a piece of media that you recommend?

Karen Dudek-Brannan (33:31.03)
Yeah. Yeah.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (33:38.894)
piece of media that I recommend. gosh, let me think here. Hmm.

I have so many.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (33:55.231)
I'm thinking podcasts, but...

That's a hard question. Okay, so.

Okay, this literally just popped into my head, but, I know, I know where I'm going to go with this. Okay. So when I am stressed and I do need a break, I like to, we like to watch episodes of the office and parks and recreation. But recently I've been reflecting more on parks and recreation because they're again, they're, like Leslie, nope. She's public servant and like,

A lot of the things that come up in that show, it's lighthearted because it's the Parks and Recreation Department, but there's so many things that are so true about working in the public sector. So it's very therapeutic, even though it is kind of a break, but there's a lot of things that when something happens to me at work, I'm like, this is just like that Parks and Rec episode. Like this is exactly what they were talking about. yeah, it's therapy. Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (34:48.666)
You

Seth Fleischauer (34:56.794)
You

That's beautiful. I haven't, I've not rewatched that, since it was at first aired. I'm happy to hear that it holds up. I know that I am coming on your podcast, but do you have a question for me other than what we'll cover there? Do you have any questions for me?

Karen Dudek-Brannan (35:07.988)
Yeah, it does.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (35:13.198)
Mm-hmm.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (35:20.418)
Let's see.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (35:25.666)
Well, how would you answer that micromanaging question? How do you think about that? Let's throw that back to you. Do you have any words of wisdom there?

Seth Fleischauer (35:30.97)
man. Okay. Yeah. when are you micromanaging? I mean, you know, it's the cop out answer, but it depends on the person, right? Like, there's a lot of I would say, executive functioning social skills that are coming into that. There's a great, there's a great book called like this. It's like seven habits of coaching or something like that.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (35:43.704)
Yeah, yeah.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (35:50.19)
Mm-hmm.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (35:57.933)
Okay.

Seth Fleischauer (35:58.741)
that I've been using in my management because you can have the right idea in your head, but as you say, it's better if you can get them to arrive at that idea without you. And what happens sometimes when you come solution first is that you're stifling their ability to try to solve the problem on your own. And yes, you have.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (36:24.238)
Mm-hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (36:25.902)
research backed, experience backed solutions that would probably work, but teach Amanda fish sort of thing. They're going to remember the intervention that they struggled through and came up with on their own more than they're going to remember something that you told them they should do. And that solution that they come up with on their own might be just as viable, even more viable than the solution that you have.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (36:33.624)
Mm-hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (36:54.262)
So I do struggle with that, but whenever I find myself, I'm listening to myself and I'm like, there's a lot of telling, I try to go back to what I learned from that book. could chat, GBT it and get like the broad strokes and get 80 % of the way there. I think it's the seven, seven coaching habits or something like that. seven, seven coaching questions, seven powerful coaching questions.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (37:00.014)
Mm-hmm.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (37:08.226)
Yeah. What's it called?

Karen Dudek-Brannan (37:14.2)
Seven coaching habits. Okay.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (37:23.278)
Okay, I'm writing it down.

Seth Fleischauer (37:24.12)
Or the coaching, the coaching habit. No, no, it's one of these things I just Googled. but, I, yeah, I, now I will put it in the show notes too. so, and, that obviously is taking the perspective of, less is more. and so if you're finding yourself feeling like you're micromanaging, then that might be a good tack in the other direction.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (37:28.951)
Okay.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (37:40.6)
Mm-hmm.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (37:48.066)
Yeah. Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (37:50.623)
awesome. Well, I have one more question. this is for, for listeners who are like, everything that you said here is a great idea. I don't know where to start. If a speech pathologist or some related service provider wants to influence building wide, executive functioning practices or generally generalize their work out to the building. What is the single most actionable starting?

Karen Dudek-Brannan (37:51.286)
Okay. All right.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (38:20.12)
Single most actionable starting point. Wow. You're asking the hard questions today. Yeah. okay. I know where I'm going to go with this. So I would say that there's, have specific tools, resources, but I would say that you would want to carve out a block of non-negotiable time that you would spend every week.

Seth Fleischauer (38:24.538)
Sorry.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (38:47.15)
to work on your solution. And what goes into that block of time is going to change every week, but you have to create the space first. So yeah, you're creating your container and then you, and I have lots of stuff that you can put in that container and get more specific, but if the container doesn't exist, then it's, you know, it's not gonna happen. yeah, that's where I would start.

Seth Fleischauer (38:58.403)
Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (39:08.844)
It seems, it seems so simple yet it is something that is constantly avoided. Right. It's like, I just, I don't have time for that. And really I don't, I don't have time is not true. What is true is that you have not prioritized it yet. Right. And so like setting that time aside, I have several like blocks on my calendar where it's like, this is my reading time. Like I was noticing I wasn't getting to.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (39:16.098)
Mm-hmm.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (39:26.21)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (39:35.096)
Mm-hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (39:38.284)
any type of professional learning that I wanted to like independent professional learning. So I had to block that out, right? Like that's just an example, but that's great. Great advice. last question would be where can our listeners find your work?

Karen Dudek-Brannan (39:51.192)
So let's see, my website has a lot of my resources. So I two, I have drkarenspeech.com, which is a little more language therapy, speech pathology specific. then my podcast and yeah, my podcast website that has some of my other resources is drkarendudekbrannon.com. And I just...

released a new training that talks about this concept of clinical containers that's more focused on the language therapy side. And so people can sign up for that at drkarenspeech.com backslash language. And then I have some resources for executive functioning. So the one that I have available now, so that my full blown program where I do help clinicians create that scalable

system and talk about all the different strategies, that is the School of Clinical Leadership. So people can find out more information about that at drkarendudekbrannan.com backslash clinical leadership. And then I also have more of an introductory program that's called the School Leaders Guide to Executive Functioning Support. And then people can find out more information about that at drkarendudekbrannan.com backslash school leaders.

Seth Fleischauer (41:16.538)
Okay one second I am just finding the episode number that you were on before so I can cite that.

Okay. Excellent. I will put all of that in the show notes. Also for our listeners, if you want to hear, the first podcast episode with Dr. Karen Dudek-Brandon, that was number 50 of make it mindful. was executive functioning part two, which went with part one, which was with Mitch Weathers of organized binder for our listeners. If you enjoyed this podcast, please do tell a friend, follow us, leave a review or a rating. This episode was written and produced by me, Seth Fleishauer and edited by Lucas Salazar. Thank you, Lucas. And remember that if you would like to bring positive change to education, we must first make it mindful. See you next time.

Karen Dudek-Brannan (41:58.828)
Yeah.