4 Steps to Enhancing Leadership Skills Through Physical Health and Wellness

Tim Barnes: 0:01

Welcome to episode 102 of the Practice of Nonprofit Leadership. I'm Tim Barnes and I'm Nathan Ruby. The Practice of Nonprofit Leadership podcast is built on the reality that there is a gap in information, support and community for leaders in small to medium-sized nonprofit organizations, and the purpose of this podcast, then, is to fill that gap.

Nathan Ruby: 0:27

Yeah, that's right, tim, and that includes both hard and soft skills. Hard skills are job-related competencies and abilities that are necessary to complete work, while soft skills are personal qualities and traits that impact how you work. So, said another way, hard skills are often applicable to a certain career, while soft skills are transferable to any type of job.

Tim Barnes: 0:56

Well, nathan, I'm excited about our topic today because we are going to focus on the impact of physical health and wellness in leadership and, as you mentioned, this would fall probably under the definition of soft skills. The issue is, we don't often think about how much our health impacts our ability to do our jobs, to lead well, and even the impact it has on the culture that we set in our organizations.

Nathan Ruby: 1:27

Yeah, absolutely. And over the last year, both Tim and I have traveled our own journey in changing some long-held oh what do I say patterns and habits that we both and it's kind of interesting, we both independently decided that we needed to tackle these this year and although we kind of did it a little different, we did have some very similar results and some similar experiences.

Tim Barnes: 1:58

That's right and it's going to be fun sharing a little bit of our stories and hopefully it will be an encouragement to you, wherever you find yourself. Now, before we go any further you know the lawyers always tell us, nathan, before we go any further we just want to remind you that we are not doctors, we're not nutritionists and we're not health experts per se. All we can do, and all we want to do, is to share our experiences, the things that we've learned from the journeys that we've taken, and to share kind of what we've experienced. Now, your experience may be different than ours. You need to do your research, you need to figure out what's best for you, but we're going to maybe give you some motivation and some encouragement to take some of those steps.

Nathan Ruby: 2:43

All right. Well, let's get at it. Tim, why don't you lead us off and share a little bit about your story?

Tim Barnes: 2:50

Yeah. So 2023 has been the challenge for me to really work and focus on my health. I was really disappointed in myself at the beginning of the year. I've always struggled with my weight ever since I was young and I've tried several different things, but I just decided I was going to do something this year. I had a friend who I'd been tracking with, who had lost a lot of weight and was really getting healthy. So I reached out to him and said, hey, what are you doing and can you share with me? We began to connect and he got me started on a few things For me. Here's what really made this possible. Somebody asked me recently how do you stay motivated on this journey? I think a couple of things happened. One was I got a very strong why that I wanted to do this. I actually wrote it down. I wanted to be able to get off the couch without groaning or struggling.

Nathan Ruby: 3:57

That's a good motivator.

Tim Barnes: 3:58

Oh man, I wanted to be able to put my shoes on without struggling so much. I wanted to be able to take a walk and not hurt or not feel like, oh, this is such a big chore. I wanted to be able to be there for my family and to be involved in the activities with our kids, and so my why was really strong. I finally decided I was going to do something about it. The other thing was I wanted to focus on my health, not just losing weight. That was part of it, but I really wanted to focus on my health, and so he helped me get started on a good program that focused on the right kind and amounts of food, increasing immensely the water I drink, making sure I had regular movement and exercise and getting connected with other people. That could bring kind of create a community around. That would bring some accountability and encouragement. I'll just say, nathan, as of today, we're about eight months through this year I'm actually down 60 pounds and it's been huge and my mindset, everything has changed. It's been a huge deal. I do a lot of traveling. I used to hate having to navigate airports, walking from gate to gate and all that, and when I see that I've got a long walk from one end of the terminal to the other. I'm like this is gonna be great, I'm gonna be able to get it there, which is so totally changed.

Nathan Ruby: 5:30

But you were actually in a parade not too long ago.

Tim Barnes: 5:33

I actually walked in a parade. I didn't think I could, I could do that earlier this year, much kind of kicking and screaming actually, but it was. It was something I hadn't done for a long time and it was. It was a good experience and so so I could talk a long time. But this has been a life-changing year for me, for my family, is I've really taken this seriously and moved forward on it.

Nathan Ruby: 5:56

Well, yeah, that that's awesome and and I, tim and I, have been friends for decades and, but we don't always get to see each other Because of our travel schedules and and one of us has gone. We see each other when we record this podcast. We Record it where we could see each other, but we're not in the same room and the other day, while this was, I don't know, probably a month ago, and I it had been a while since I saw him and I had to look twice to make sure that's who it was there was quite the quite the transformation there. Tim, my journey was was similar but yet different, and so mine started actually a little longer ago, a decade ago, actually, it was ten years ago and I had at the time I had a daughter who at the time she was a junior higher Seventh-grader and she started running cross-country and I made a. I'm a big, big believer in incentive, because I think incentives are a great way to motivate people, and so I Did make a bit of an error on this incentive, but I Said, if you cut time off on your, on your running, on the two miles that they, that's what they run in junior high in our State. I said I will start running, and I didn't think she'd be able to do it. But it took her exactly one, one meat to bring the time down that I had given her and it was like, oh crud, all right, well, I made this promise, so I guess I'll go. I guess I'll go out and do it. So at the time I was off a scene from home, so it was a little bit easier for me to get this in, and so I went out over the lunch hour, got ready, got my shorts on and my tennis shoes and all that. I got outside I ran to the end of the block and my heart and my lungs Hurt so bad that I literally thought I was gonna. I thought that was it. I thought my heart was gonna explode right out of my body and I ended up. It took me a while, but I was able to walk home. Didn't go quite as I had planned, and so the next day came and I set up a new plan. I am, and I ran to the end of the end of the block and I thought, okay, that was a little dramatic yesterday, it wasn't that bad, and so I ran a little slower and so I ran to the end of the block and then one driveway and I walked back home. And the next day I went one block plus two driveways and then three driveways and then four driveways, and then I found out that there's a little loop in our neighborhood that if I went on the right loop it was from my driveway around the loop and back is a mile. So I kept adding one driveway until I got the mile and then I went one mile plus one driveway, one mile plus two driveways till I got to two miles, and then I did it again for three miles and I got up to three miles and I did that for about six years until my until my knees started to hurt and the the cost of the surgery was way more than what I wanted to spend, and so I stopped what. I stopped running then. But at that time then I discovered weightlifting and I hadn't weight lifted since high school football, and so Now this time I was smart enough to not go too fast. You know, I started simple, very light, and worked up to it, and I've been lifting for about six years now and enjoy it very, very, very much. But this year what I did this year I was my lifting was going well, but my weight was creeping up and which is not totally uncommon for when you're weightlifting, because Muscle is heavier than fat but my clothes were starting to fit a little tighter than what I liked and I jumped on the scale and I was 215, which is the heaviest I'd ever been in my life, and it was like, oh heck, no, no, this is no longer acceptable. And so I started doing some research and I started looking, and what I ended up doing, what I felt was best for me, was a it's it's based on the macro nutrients, and there's only three macro nutrients, and that's protein, carbs and fat. Those are the three macro nutrients, and so I started tracking Everything I ate, every single thing that I put in my mouth is it went down on a sheet of paper, and that's how I started, and I found some information on macronutrients, and so I calculated out from my size, body, what, what my, what my protein and carbs and fat should be, and and then total calories. That's the other piece of it, and so, yeah, so I started that and I I didn't have as big of a dramatic one as as Tim, but I did. I'm down 20 pounds since I started that and I've kind of plateaued a little bit and so that's. But I'm, I'm ready now to probably hit my neck, I think, probably another 10. I think, I don't know, we'll see. But yeah, it was, it was. It took me a couple of months to do it and my clothes fit better now and actually I'm almost too far the other way. I'm probably gonna have to false coming.

Tim Barnes: 11:34

I'm probably gonna have to get some new clothes because I don't think my fall stuff from last year is gonna fit one of the things that I've appreciated is there's there's victories in these kind of health journeys that are beyond just the scale and we really look at the scale. But there are other opportunities where you see, like, like my ring is a lot looser on my finger now and I'm like, okay, that reminds me. But the best one was I went to check into a hotel. I had to show an ID, so I gave him my driver's license and the desk clerk went Wow, you've lost weight. And I'm like, yes, yes, I have. Thank you for noticing. Thank you for noticing. Those are great, and it's not all about the scale. The scale is is a metric and we can use that, but I think they think what we're really talking about today is getting healthy, being able to have the energy to do the important work that we do. Non-profit work can be very stressful. We can carry a lot of stress with us. Oftentimes we're dealing with challenging circumstances. They take a toll on us and we will. We will be a better leader If we are living a healthy lifestyle, and I think that's what we are really grabbing on to today as we, as we bring this Podcast out to you guys.

Nathan Ruby: 12:57

Yeah, I had before we started to record this episode. This morning I had a event take place that created a Significant amount of stress in my body and it wasn't it wasn't fight or flight, but it was. I had about an hour or 20 minutes, hour and 15 minutes of extreme stress, mental stress, and it turned out everything's fine. It was, it always was fine. I just I was misinformed on something that would have been really, really bad and so it created this intensity of stress that that shot through my body. And you know it doesn't have to be a. You know that that huge, massive influx of stress, that that is fighter-fighter. You know it doesn't have to be those major episodes. It could just be day after day after day after day after day of the stress that we all work with, that we all carry of. You know, families and kids and mortgages and running small organizations and the leadership challenges that we have and the phone calls that we get, and all of that stuff combined together is that is stress and your body has to deal with that. And if your body is physically broken down or not running as well as it should, then your body can't deal with that and there is long-term stress and, long-term, a physical body that is, I'm just going to say, broken in whatever way Over months and years. Sooner or later, that is going to come back and bite you, if you let it.

Tim Barnes: 14:44

Well, I hope you're still with us. Part of it is we're just really excited about the journeys that we're on. We're seeing impact and we understand the positive nature of moving into a healthy lifestyle, and so we're not telling you what to do, but we're hopefully encouraging you to consider this as a leader, as a leader of your organization, the importance of this, and so what we'd like to do is we'd like to just put four things out to you that we believe you need to consider to start on this health journey. And so, nathan, why don't you take us through these four things and we can comment what we've learned as we've gone through that?

Nathan Ruby: 15:27

We can do this pretty quick. So first one is mindset, and I think Tim and I both agree that we got to a point where we just decided we've had enough and that we were going to do something different. And I think that decision then is what? And Tim said it what is your why? Why is this important to you? Is it for you, is it for someone else? Is it you're just tired of your clothes not fitting? Is it tired because you want to go for a walk with your son and daughter or grandchild, or you want to get outside and play a little bit better? I don't know. Whatever your why is that's where it starts, and if you don't have a strong why, then this will not work long term.

Tim Barnes: 16:15

And I just want to say if there's anybody who thought they couldn't get healthy, it was me. I'm serious, it's like my whole life. This is something I've struggled with and I just thought this is the way I'm always going to be. And it took somebody. I kind of believe it in me and say you can do this, I'm going to walk with you, I'm going to help, go along with you and I'm just telling you, if you think you can't do it, I think you can.

Nathan Ruby: 16:47

But that was a choice you had to make, absolutely yeah. And now you had somebody. I think maybe you had somebody that called your bluff a little bit and said that's not true, you can do this. I mean, somebody had helped you with that, but ultimately it was your choice to do that. For me, one of the things that I did was I had to change my relationship with food and I still do office at the house and which I have for a long time and I love it very much when I think, when I'm struggling or trying to solve a problem, and I'm struggling, I pace, and I have my offices on the main floor, same as the kitchen, and so I have this route that I take that takes me around a circle that includes the kitchen, and sometimes I will, I'll pace for 10, 15 minutes while I'm thinking, and and I have this little routine where I switch direction halfway, you know, but anyway it, my path takes me through the kitchen and I go by the kitchen and and there's the, the, the pantry, and inside the pantry or Pringles and I love Pringles and then you know the next two times. You know there's the counter and there's a donut over there, and even now, if I see a donut, I will eat it. I just I will, so I have to not see donuts. And then a couple more times around and there's the refrigerator and what's in there? Oh well, this last night's leftover pizza is in there, and so I was eating calories that I really didn't know I was eating because it was my habit, and so I had to break the habit in order to switch from eating out a habit to eating intentionally out of out of a Set number of calories that I'm eating, because that's that's in the plan. So that was for me. It was changing the habit.

Tim Barnes: 18:44

And I think the point here with the mindset is is really getting in a place where you have an Overwhelming desire to change, where you're really ready to do it. You're why is strong, you're gonna go forward, you're gonna do something with that. So mindset is really important in this journey.

Nathan Ruby: 19:01

Okay. Number two is do your research, and there are a ton of websites and resources out there with different health related issues and losing weight and how do you exercise and how do you lift and all of those things, and there are a lot of them maybe don't contradict each other, but they definitely have their own way of presenting the information in the material and like, for instance here's an example for me the macro nutrient system worked really well for me, and that is tracking Tracking calories, protein, carbs and fat. It did not work for my wife, as a matter of fact, it kind of had the opposite effect on her, so it just wasn't the right one for her and and Tim, for you. You found the right system that worked for you, and so I, my, my thought, my, my recommendation is there is a lot out there go research different things, find what fits for you and and maybe even try them for a little while. If it's not, if it's not fitting you, then find something different that will. So do your research and figure out what works best for you.

Tim Barnes: 20:17

I would also encourage you, before you start any kind of a program which which I did Talk to your physician, get their input. Is there anything about this that you're concerned about or things I should be careful of? They can. They can help you understand what the impact might be and whether it's good, bad or ugly, but it's important to talk to them as well.

Nathan Ruby: 20:40

So alright, number three is daily decisions impact long-term results. So one pound of weight equals 3500 calories. So if you eat 4000 calories in a day and you burn off 300, let's say, then you have net calories of 3500 calories for the day, which means you are gonna put on weight. Your weight is gonna go up. Now, this is overly simplified. There's a whole lot of other things that go into your weight and and weight can flex your weight Three to five pounds a day on any given day, on based on inflammation, and there's a ton of different factors. But at its base level, the most basic way you can think about it, it is calories. It is how much calories are you eating and how much is your body burning in calories, and that difference is either weight gain or weight loss. And so another example if you eat 3500 calories and you burn off a thousand calories, well congratulations, you just, you just lost some weight. So what then is the? The daily decisions then is Is what can you do to make small little decisions on it on a daily or hourly basis? That helps those numbers. So, can I walk for 30 minutes? Can I walk for 15 minutes? Can I, instead of eating the doughnut that I see on the counter that just calls my name. Maybe I have some carrots instead, or maybe I drink a glass of water which will make you feel full, so you don't Feel like you have to have the doughnut. Little tiny decisions every day Turns into over an extended period of time is the difference between Thousands of calories over weeks, months or a year.

Tim Barnes: 22:40

You're exactly right. I have a friend, nathan, who always says this I love it, he goes. You can't outrun your fork. And it's not only the activity, but it's also what you put in your mouth and the kinds of food and some of those kind of things. It's those kinds of of decisions. But the the issue really is, it's daily decisions. It's daily decisions. It's just a calorie here, a calorie there works both ways. It compounds. Don't underestimate how. What little decisions, how much that can help you as well, and it'll take a while, but just make those good decisions over a period of time.

Nathan Ruby: 23:19

Yeah, and it's the same way with with health in general, getting enough sleep, for instance, you know, is it. Is it better off to go to bed or spend a half an hour watching the Whatever TV show you're binge watching at the time, and do I call it a day and get an extra 30 minutes of sleep, or do I catch up on that show I haven't seen and on any given day? Tim, all right, you know it's probably not the end of the world to watch that show. There's, in and of that, self of watching the show is that's not the bad thing, but it's staying up 40 minutes later Monday night and Tuesday night and Wednesday night and one week and two weeks and three weeks and six months and a year. Pretty soon, those 40 minutes stacked up 300 days a year, that's a lot of sleep that your body is missing and so, again, it's just little. Decisions, repeated over and over and over, make big changes over the long term. Last one, fourth one I give yourself permission to make this a priority. I know Tim and I are leading organizations and so we get it. I mean, we know that one. I guess, speaking for myself, it is really easy for me to sit down on my desk at. You know I start about 6am usually and I can look up and it's 1130 and I have not gotten up for my desk. I haven't walked, I haven't, I haven't done anything and I am around a little bit for lunch, I do some things and then all of a sudden it's four o'clock and I've worked all afternoon. Today's a bad example because I have pretty much sat the entire day and. But you've got to prioritize this. You have to treat this. You know, if you are going to go for a walk during the day, you know you want to do a 30 minute walk each day. Well, you have to put that into your calendar and treat that as an appointment every the same as if you've got an appointment scheduled with your board president for an hour at one o'clock, you've got a walk scheduled at two o'clock. That is an appointment, an appointment that is important to keep.

Tim Barnes: 25:35

That's right. Intentionality is so important in this journey.

Nathan Ruby: 25:40

You know the same way with with eating. We're talking about calories a few seconds ago and you know, give yourself planning time to say, okay, I am, I am gonna, I am gonna eat better this week, so does that mean we have to go to the grocery store a little differently? Is that we buy something different? What? What does that mean for us? And so, giving yourself the time to plan that out, you know I'm gonna go to bed a half hour earlier every night this week, all right, well, what is that? That probably impacts the rest of your schedule. So, if make that important enough that you do the other things that need to be done to make that possible, so that's giving yourself permission to make this a priority.

Tim Barnes: 26:20

Nathan, I know those are just four simple things that I say simple, but they're for actions that we can take, and you know, I think of myself. I'm always trying to be a better leader, whether that's listening to a podcast or whether it's taking a course or reading a book or getting a coach to help me be a better leader, and this is one of those things. It may not be the first thing that comes to your mind, but to be in a healthy state and to create a healthy, to allow health to be part of your organizational culture, is part of being a better leader. And so we're not health experts we're not. We're not, you know, we're not coaching people down at the gym or anything like that, but we have seen the impact making this decision can have on your leadership and we're hoping that people will take it seriously and be a better leader because they're healthier.

Nathan Ruby: 27:23

If you don't brush your teeth tomorrow Not, you know, nothing bad medically, nothing bad is going to happen. Don't brush your teeth for 60 days in a row and maybe you know some medical things start to happen. So same way with this on any given day. Ok, it's probably not that big of a deal, but all of a sudden, day after day, week after week, month after month, it does become an issue. So it's worthy of your attention. So we'll leave you with this. There's a we read a study that was from the urgent way it's the name of the company there and urgent care, like a medical, like a doctor facility and urgent care facility in New York, and they had a list of 10, the 10 biggest health concerns of adults. And I just number one and number two caught our eye today. Number one was physical inactivity, and that is and physical and physical inactivity is one of the main causes of cardiovascular disease, diabetes increases, depression and mood swings, and all of that because we're just as a culture, we're just not moving enough. So easy thing to fix Get out, start moving a little bit. And then number two was overweight and obesity, and the this was saying that two thirds of the US population has been diagnosed with obesity and again, is responsible for many personal health issues Hypertension, type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, stroke, gallbladder disease, osteoarthritis, sleep apnea, and the list keeps going on and on and on. So those two things are some simple things that you could do to help help you feel better, make you a better leader and make life a little better.

Tim Barnes: 29:15

Thanks for listening today and we hope that you're benefiting from what you're hearing on the podcast and we'd love to hear from you. So if you are on your own health journey or if you found some things that have been helpful to you in getting on track, we'd love to hear from you, or if you have questions about our journey, we'd love to interact with you. Our contact information is show notes and that's all for today. Thanks for listening.