The Tight Five: Origin Stories from The Second Row

NOTE: The initial post of this episode was edited for brevity, in the spirit of offering more to those that are interested, this post includes the video and full transcript of my conversation with Pat, ENJOY!

The Tight Five: Origin Stories from The Second Row is a series of conversations with smart, thought-provoking folks who are doing great things in ‘The Front Row’ of work, mental health, marketing, service and technology and how they came to their personal and professional path in life. The series is named after the moniker of the combined Front Row (two props and the hooker in the middle) and the Second Row in the rugby scrum which I explained in this initial post.

Today I’m proud to present the third episode of The Tight Five: Origin Stories from The Second Row featuring Patrick Ryan. One of my closest friends in the world, Pat is a one-of-a-kind human being whose kindness and empathy are unmatched, whom I am proud to have spent time in the scrum as his teammate on the rugby pitch during our time together at Boston College. He is also a heck of a therapist and a top notch business operation expert and a key member of the management team at Active & Connected Family Therapy, headquartered in Virginia.

While our conversation is broad, I urge you to digest the entire interview. Pat offers some deep insights on modern fatherhood (a trend in The Tight Five), useful tips on how foreign service and military families can prepare for overseas deployments, why a quick phone call can go a lot farther than a long txt message and the importance of a night at the pub, something we’ve done together a few times over the years (per the photo below).

Matt Landry:

You did something different that I’ve phrased as ‘unicorn like,’ you got an MBA and an MSW, why did you make that choice?

Patrick Ryan:

After college, not knowing what I really wanted to do with the rest of my life and what direction I was going to go professionally, I found myself working with children with emotional and behavioral issues and I really enjoyed the work. But I didn't see myself as a clinician and ended up doing some work on the management side of the program and I really enjoyed that.

I was trying to figure out what I was going to do and started looking around at different nonprofits and social service agencies, even looking at hospitals and schools. I tended to see one of two situations happening. You had people who were really good at the work, the teachers, the clinicians, being promoted into management and business positions, and although they were great at the direct work, they really didn't have the training or experience for the managerial business work. On the other side, I saw businesspeople in the leadership roles, and they didn't have a deep understanding of the clinical or the teaching work and there was a disconnect between the people doing the work and the management.

The other thing that I saw is the constant challenge of the individual versus the whole and how do you meet the needs of the clinicians and the people doing the work are always focused on ‘how do we meet this individual's need,’ where they should be, but on the business side, you’ve got to think of how we keep this business running efficiently and the needs of the overall structure.

So, my goal was to learn both languages so I would be able to bridge the gap between the people doing the work and the business side, while finding the balance between the individual's needs and the needs of the organization so we can best serve everyone.

Matt:

How did you find the program at Boston College, we went there undergrad together obviously, but how did you end up finding that exact MSW/MBA program?

Pat:

You know, it's, goes back to the rugby connection of a fellow rugger who mentioned it to me, and I said ‘Wow, that sounds really cool.’

When I started looking into it, there were only six schools in the country that offered the dual degree and BC just happened to be the best fit. I figured if I'm really going to challenge myself in two big areas, that I didn't have a lot of experience in either and I wanted to be somewhere that I was familiar with and knew the people. I knew the culture of BC and how supportive the environment was, and I knew it was a good fit for me.

Matt:

You get that degree and was there an instance after you graduated where you found yourself, wow, it's a good thing I got that dual degree…

Pat:

When I was an undergrad, I started working with children with emotional behavioral issues at this amazing place called Wediko Children's Services, a mid-size nonprofit that was based out of Boston with a residential center in New Hampshire. They ran this really cool summer program that was a cross between activity based summer camp and a psychiatric hospital in the woods. It was super intensive and a ton of fun, and we saw kids make huge gains.

Wediko offered me a great opportunity after I graduate school to come back and do my clinical training to get my license and they also offered me a position on the management side as well. So, it was 50% clinical and 50% management.

The dual degree was really helpful as the environment changed and Wediko needed to change too. We went from primarily serving publicly funded children and families to working with privately funded populations too. So, the experience of that strategy change and being able to think a little bit differently really helped me and I think it helped the organization too.

Matt:

As part of working with kids, there's a family component to working children. Which I’ll use as a segue into the work you're doing now. How is working with men, specifically fathers, more challenging than working with other adult client populations?

Pat:

it's different.

Matt:

How so?

Pat:

I think one of the things I really like working with men and fathers’ is that overall they will want to do whatever they need to do to be a better dad and to be there for their kids and their wives and their families. The challenge now is that the culture's changing so much and we're expecting different things from dads than we ever have.

Our new focus on mental health is great. We're teaching kids to talk about feelings, expecting kids to talk about those feelings, then we're looking to the dads to model it, but dads were never taught how to talk about feelings. In fact, we were taught not to talk about feelings. We were allowed to be happy and angry and that was the extent of it. So, part of the challenge now is giving dads the vocabulary and teaching them that it's okay (to talk about their emotions) and help them try this new thing that they've never really tried before so that they can then help their children.

The other change that we're seeing culturally, which is really good, is that dads are a lot more involved, both with their kids and in the day-to-day stuff in the house. Especially when if both parents are working, which is great, but my concern is that it's often with a sacrifice.

This kind of ties into third cultural change is around vices. When we look at some of the vices that are kind of seen as negative now, I’m talking about going to the pub, hanging out with friends, having poker nights or a cigar night and these things for some guys who have an addictive personality can be really dangerous. But in getting away from it, guys have lost connection. Beyond the actual activity of going to the pub or having a cigar night, that was where guys connected with each other. They shared what was going on, their troubles. They got advice, they were actually talking about their feelings. Without that so many couples are putting that weight on their marriage and guys don't have the outlet that they had before. We're asking more of guys, and they don't have as many resources they had before. So, one of the challenges I run into is how do we help guys find those connections and support outside the home?

Matt:

You and I have talked a lot about fatherhood. Time is one of the things that becomes more and more precious and squeezed and your role is helping them see ways to make finding and maintaining those connections a priority and find the time to do those things.

Pat:

I think that's where the culture shift needs to go an extra step. We need to be there for our families. We need to really be present for our families, but to do that we need to take care of ourselves first. We need to make time to exercise. We need to make time to eat right. We need to make time to connect with friends. We need to make time to go on a date with our wives. If we do that, even though it's a little time away from the kids, we are going to be more present with the kids and more available to them. By taking time for oneself, you can be more present in the moment for those that are really important.

Matt:

One of your specialties, both personally and professionally, is working with parents and families involved in foreign service. Actually, you're going through that process right now, correct?

Pat:

Yes, we are preparing to go to a deployment.

Matt:

How do you help families with the transitions that are endemic to a deployment overseas?

Pat:

I think the first thing is really honoring the strength and resilience of our families, our children and our parents. A lot of us who live this foreign service culture and lifestyle, we also see it with our military families, we are really good at making transitions. I mean the actual physical movement of change and the whole family really steps up. It's really cool to see how often they're able to make this change and how well they do it and how well they do it in a crisis when it's an unplanned movement, like evacuation for a medical reason or a safety reason when you may have 24 hours and the kids just make it happen and the hard part is we're running on adrenaline, but you can only run on adrenaline for so long.

Two, it takes a toll. The first thing is recognizing the strength, and second the toll that that it takes. In honoring the toll, we need to give it time to recharge and allow ourselves to recover and allow our children to recover. After that how do we give them time to process?

Matt:

So, for the parents, you get through those things, and they have to deal with their own stuff as well and process those things. As we were saying, it’s similar to the concept of ‘Make sure you put your own air mask on before you help somebody else.’ What are some of the thing’s parents should look out for?

Pat:

Well, I really encourage families to think about it as if they're going on a trip and just as you're going on a trip, you’ve got to prepare for the trip. Then, how do you unpack upon the return?

So emotionally, how do we talk about it before it happens? How do we start to have a good goodbye so we can have a good hello? It's all about starting to think about it before it happens. Doing some goodbye rituals, whether it's a goodbye party, maybe sending thank you notes or making sure you exchange contact information. One of the great things with technology now is that it is a different goodbye now, because are able to keep in touch virtually.

It's all about reminding the parents to give grace to themselves and their kids that this is going to be hard. Yeah, you may have a meltdown.

We use the analogy HALT. Stopping and asking four fundamental questions… Are you Hungry? Are you Angry? Are you Lonely? Are you Tired? If we can quickly see if one of those things is going on, before the meltdown happens, maybe they just need some M&M’s. Recognizing that we've been traveling for 12 hours today, and that we're all exhausted. It makes sense that we're a little grumpy and afterwards giving everyone the time to recharge and time to process because sometimes it doesn't hit right away. It may not hit for a month and you’re suddenly seeing that your kids are a little off, they could be getting angry, having meltdowns in different ways and they may need some time to talk.

Matt:

Three years after the world shut down because of covid, what are some of the impacts that you're seeing on the, the clients and the communities that you work with, that you live in?

Pat:

Impact in two different ways. The first on the business and management side, and then clinical.

On the management side, the acceptance of telework and for Active and Conducted Family Therapy, it's been awesome, we've been able to connect with children and families in a different way. We do a combination of in-person and teletherapy work and with teletherapy it's much easier for the working parents to join a family session, so it's better involvement overall.

On the business side, we've been able to attract awesome talent from a number of different states, and what we're really proud of is we've been able to tap into spouses of our servicemen and women and spouses of our foreign service officers. These are people who normally put their career on hold as they follow their partner to the next deployment, but we've been able to employ people who are going to be able to stay with us as their spouse moves to different countries.

So, we’ve been able to get great people and it's great that we're being able to offer these people these opportunities. Now the challenge is, ‘how we build that connected team?’ I’ve been really encouraging something that I’ve labeled exaggerated communication. Which is making that extra effort to reach out in a personal way. For example, if I was going to send an email to a colleague to say ‘Hey, I need this really quick. Can you, do it?’ Instead, I pick up the phone and check in with that person and I can see how they're doing and if I hear a little stress in their voice, maybe I don't give them this task right now because they're crashing on something else, and I don't want to stress them more. Or it's encouraging people over instant messenger, where traditionally it’s all business, and sharing a lot of personal stuff as a way to keep in touch, whether it's pictures of kids or graduations or family vacations, just keeping in touch in that personal way.

Matt:

You know, it's funny how a quick little video call and checking in with someone can help or a phone call or text can help you connect versus just sending an email, its things like that.

Pat:

Exactly. So always up it by one. Looking to shoot an email, you make a call. If you're looking to make a call, you make a quick video call or walk over to their desk. Just up it one.

Then on the clinical side, we're seeing huge spikes in anxiety across the board, which makes sense in a lot of ways. Our children lost their innocence. For two years we asked them to wear a mask or to stay away from Grammy and Grandpa. We didn't want to get them sick.

They took on that responsibility and they did great with it, but it's a responsibility that they normally wouldn't have had and it's how they're thinking about that now. They're worried about things that they normally wouldn't have been worried about. They also lost connection for a while. Some families did a great job and were able to really connect in different ways and families that would've been working were able to spend more time at home, but kids weren't with their peers, so we're seeing some social skills issues and kids who struggled socially before tended to regress even more in or more into computers instead of face-to-face interaction and it's hard to pull them out of that.

But on the flip side, something really cool that I didn't expect, and it took me a while to notice, is that kids learn to connect in different ways. So, what we're seeing is kids connecting with friends around the world, connecting virtually. At first, I heard my clients talking about this and I didn't really give it the respect it deserved. So, they're playing video games with somebody somewhere else, and I didn't think they were really connecting, but after working with some of these kids for a while, I'm learning that these kids have created friendship's that are going on for four or five years as they're playing the games, they are talking and they’re sharing about themselves, they're asking for advice, they're supporting each other. The cool thing is that we're starting to see people playing in person with these groups of friends that have never met one on one before. The internet and the social connection it’s creating allow people around the world to connect in ways they never were able to before.

Matt:

When I was talking to our friend Matt Doyle, one of the things he's really noticed is the power of video game parallel play discussion and how it's enabling him to kind of access for teens things that are hard to do in the normal therapy situation.

Pat:

It's interesting that many of us have seen video games as kind of this boogey monster that we're trying to limit as much as we can with our kids. But it can also be a place for learning and connection, which is something our generation is having trouble understanding a little bit,

Matt:

And it also goes to how we've been able to connect, we've been friends forever and at times would go months without talking. Now we're able to connect. We've made it a priority to connect on a more, more regular basis and it enables us to elevate our connection, as you were saying before.

Pat:

Yes.

Matt:

Instead of just the phone call or a text, we actually schedule stuff, make sure we do it. Which kind of circles back to what we were talking about with men in terms of the awareness of making sure things are a priority and scheduling the time to do them. Devoting time to them

Pat:

It's interesting, I think the priority is getting guys to understand that what they use every day as a business tool can be a social tool and a social avenue. I've talked to a couple guys that I know, and they never really thought of that, literally saying to me ‘Why don't I do that?’

Or things that work socially can also be used for business reasons.

Matt:

Last question and I think I know which way you're going to go with this one, which book or author or thinker has been a touchstone for you throughout your professional career?

Pat:

So, thinking about this, it’s not really a book, but more the place I mentioned earlier on. Wediko, my first job out of BC and they gave me a job after graduate school, which I mentioned earlier and the opportunity to work with some amazing people there.

My first supervisor, Dr. Hugh Lightman, I only worked with him for a couple years, but he still makes an impact on how I think about children and families.

Dr. Harry Pared, with whom I had the opportunity to work with him for years. He is with me in almost every session as I do my clinical work to this day. Dr. Todd Rossi is another awesome clinician who really helps me think outside the box. Finally, Patty Freeze, who is in charge of finance, just their commitment to children and families and their commitment to making the organization work, really taught me the importance of caring for staff. The importance of families in making sure they are involved in the work.

I was talking about this earlier, one of the things they really pushed was starting with the basics. ‘Are you hungry?’ I often have kids and families come in with this big thing and after a few moments we break it down to ‘is he sleeping?’

And the importance of celebrating successes and so often when we're working with a kid and the family's really struggling, they have trouble recognizing the small things. But if we start celebrating those small things, we start getting momentum and we can really make some change.

Matt:

Now, I've known you for a long time, almost 30 years now, and while you're talking about Wediko and you used the word commitment, that's a word that you definitely know well in the way that you conduct yourself. What, what does that word mean to you?

Pat:

It's going all in and staying in. It's a combination of either working with children and families or working on the organization. We're going to give it 110% and when 110% doesn't work, we're still here, we're going to help. We're here to help figure it out. We're going to try something different. We're going to ask for help. If I don't know the answer, we're got a great team behind me that does.

Matt:

It’s commitment to persistence.

Pat:

Yeah, I like that. Commitment to persistence. I'm committed to being persistent.

Matt:

We'll end it there. Thanks for taking the time. I appreciate it.

Pat:

Thanks for the questions. This was fun.

Matt:

No worries, man. Talk to you soon.

Pat:

All right, take care. Bye bye.