S2 E99: Three C’s of Culture at The Refuge Center with Amy Alexander

Amy Alexander is Co-Founder and Executive Director of The Refuge Center for Counseling in Franklin, Tennessee, where the Center serves more than 30,000 counseling sessions to over 4,000 clients annually.

As a nonprofit, Amy is always wrestling with how to retain quality people on her team. And for her, it's the culture they create day-to-day that retains the best people.

Amy encourages and supports culture through her ‘Three C’s approach’ of connection, character, and continuous growth within the organization.

“Our team has to be the first priority and Client Services has to be the second priority. Because if we're not healthy, if we're not in a good place, if we're not taking care of ourselves and one another, then the quality of our work is not going to be what it should be. And our clients deserve us to be at our best.”
- Amy Alexander

She has a very unique way of framing leadership and culture and values within her organization by modeling a ‘servant first perspective’.

Listen to our full episode to learn more about Amy’s Three C’s approach!


Connect with Amy
Website - https://refugecenter.org 
Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-refuge-center-for-counseling
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/therefugecenter
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/refugecenterforcounseling
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxzP8YpKRKo
Email - info@therefugecenter.org

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Transcript

Amy Alexander  0:00  
Our team has to be the first priority and Client Services has to be the second priority. Because if we're not healthy, if we're not in a good place, if we're not taking care of ourselves in one another, then the quality of our work is not going to be what it should be. And our clients deserve us to be at our best. So we have to start there. It's with ourselves.

Winston Faircloth  0:24  
Hey there, it's Winston Faircloth and welcome back to our love of team podcast. This is the podcast dedicated to helping you grow a team you love multiplying your impact, income and freedom in business and in life. And in this episode, I want to introduce you to my friend Amy Alexander. She's the co founder and executive director of the refuge center for counseling in Franklin, Tennessee, and she began her journey there in 2005. Today, the Center serves more than 30,000 counseling sessions to over 4000 clients annually and is executive director. Amy encourages and supports a culture of connection, character and continuous growth within the organization. And that's why I invited her to the podcast today. She has a very unique way of framing leadership and culture and values within her organization modeling a servant first perspective, as so many leaders talk about, but Amy and her team experience and model for clients. I know you're going to enjoy this podcast with my friend, Amy Alexander. Amy Alexander. Welcome to the for love of team podcast.

Amy Alexander  1:34  
Thank you so much for having me. I am absolutely thrilled to be here. 

Winston Faircloth  1:39  
Amy, you and I met each other a couple years ago at a mutual friend's event in Franklin, Tennessee, won't you give us a little bit of your introduction, your background, tell us about the organization that you founded and that you steward today?

Amy Alexander  1:53  
Well, I'd be glad to so again, my name is Amy Alexander, and I am the co founder and executive director of a Christ centered nonprofit called the refuge center for counseling. We are located in Franklin, Tennessee, which is a small suburb of Nashville, although we do serve people in 17 counties throughout our state. And my dear friend, Jennifer jillette, and I started refuge center back in 2005, with the goal to do a couple of things, you know, one was to pair excellence and affordability. So we wanted to provide counseling services to all kinds of people in all walks of life with many different presenting concerns, and to do it with a high standard. In terms of the overall experience, we also feel that that experience is just as important for our team members who are here serving, but to make sure that our services were affordable and accessible to everyone. So fast forward, you know, nearly 16 years and we now have about 80 team members, we provide about 33,000 counseling sessions every year, or about 4100 people we see mostly calls for anxiety, depression, PTSD, sexual trauma, divorce, adjustment, grief and loss, etc. The average human struggle, you know, at every point, some of us will, all of us will go through something difficult or hard, and we're going to need somebody to walk with this is just human stuff. And suffering does not discriminate. So we do all of that here. And we do it on a sliding fee scale so that anyone can access it. Yeah, and

Winston Faircloth  3:24  
it's such an important mission, and especially with a lot of the conversation recently, you know, with the Olympics just passed and and so many people talking about the mental health challenges that they've had, given the pandemic and racial strife and everything else. It's just such a timely topic, could you just speak to the mission and the work that you're doing and some of the things that you're experiencing right now in? You know, given what we are all coming out of what the, with the pandemic?

Amy Alexander  3:55  
Well, absolutely, you know, we've seen a 22% increase in request for services consistently month over month since the pandemic began. You know, if if we ever thought of mental health as that thing over there, or that person over there, what do we do we have these stereotypes about mental health. We think it's someone with quote unquote, mental problems or a mental breakdown. And the truth is we need to normalize and humanize mental health. It's, it's our, you know, our thoughts, our feelings, our behaviors, it's how we handle stress, it's how we relate to others. We all have this, I recently read that someone, they define mental health as that little voice in your head that you've been hearing for as long as you can remember, and so many people have a little voice in their head that tells them things like you're unworthy, or because of what you've been through you're unlovable, or you have failed or you're not enough, and that little voice is quite prevalent in their life and it's our relationship to that voice and the things we do to create new beliefs. about ourselves, that really is our mental health. And so the pandemic has leveled the playing field, unlike anything we've ever experienced that in our lifetime, I think the average global citizen now would say they very much understanding xiety or helplessness or depression, because we've all experienced those things.

Winston Faircloth  5:18  
It's, and you've been at this now for 16 plus years building, building the service, brick by brick, person, by person, case by case. And you've managed to assemble a very capable and talented team. And so today, we're really here to talk about how did you do that? How did that come to be in terms of developing a culture that really fits and supports the mission?

Amy Alexander  5:45  
Absolutely. Well, the people that work here are our first priority. Because the more we can pour into our team, the more supported they feel, the better they can do it supporting and caring for our clients. And you know, of course, we're therapists, right? So we look at lots of therapeutic models and philosophies. And something that always interested me was an organization out of Spokane, Washington, they are called the circle of security. And their work is really phenomenal, it's certainly worth looking up. And they talk about a lot about the parent child or caregiver child dynamic, and what it means to be a safe haven and secure base. And I started thinking about that work, I also started thinking about the work of Daniel Siegel, who's done so much for us in terms of defining attachment. And I became very curious as a therapist about how to translate this language. And these models from a therapeutic model, as in therapist client or a parent child dynamic. How do we translate this to leadership? So we've used the tenants of our work and translated those to now what we call an attachment based leadership model. Daniel Siegel, as he teaches us about healthy attachment, which he defines as being bonded to one another in a positive way, that allows us to relate from a place of kindness and compassion. And you know, I think we all need that in the workplace. But there's four ways that this happens. It's when the people you work with feel seen, safe, soothed and secure. And I can go into much more detail about that. But that's become the tenet of our attachment based leadership culture, that people would feel seen safe, food insecure.

Winston Faircloth  7:34  
And what a contrast to the way that most of us learned leadership, right? up in organizations where it was more command and control C words, not these s words that you just mentioned,

Amy Alexander  7:46  
well said, well said this is a different way of relating to people. You know, seeing someone is not just seeing with the eyes, but it's perceiving someone deeply and empathetically. And for that to happen for you to really see the people you work with, you have to know some of their story, you have to understand them in terms of context, and we're talking about their needs, their triggers, perhaps their enneagram type, we need to understand not just their professional experiences and their resume, but we need to understand some about them personally as well. transitioning into this idea of safety. This means that we know enough about someone to hopefully avoid actions and behaviors that would harm them. And once you know someone's story, you will hopefully have a sense of things that could be triggering to them in a work environment. For one person, this might be that in their past, they didn't receive adequate, adequate or frequent feedback about their performance. And so they're very uncertain about their contributions and value to the organization. For another person feeling unsafe might be tied to conflict without a clear timeline or format, for our resolution process. So when we know each other in context with our stories, then we're able to help people feel seen and safe, being soothed. This is also part of those four S's is knowing that her and misunderstanding is inevitable. It's inevitable in the strongest Families and Work cultures, therapeutically. We call those ruptures and ruptures occur, because we are human. But in this model, what matters is not Is there a rupture, but how do we repair it? How do we repair it, it's brave apologies, it's humility. And it's how we seek to soothe each other when we are hurt, scared or confused. And then finally, Winston that that last s of feeling secure in the workplace. If you were to look on that circle of security model, you'd see a pair of hands and it's from this secure base and safe haven that the child launches and maybe at two or three, it's their first time on a slide Nine or 10, maybe it's a sleep over at 16. It's keys to the car. But kids need to be able to launch from parents and then return back to them and process the feelings of becoming independent. And we feel the same way about the workplace. We want supervisors to be a secure base for staff to launch from. That means trying new things, exploring new solutions, perhaps trying new products. And if I feel that you are for me, that you're on my team, and you really know me, then I feel secure enough to go out and be really creative. talking a bit more

Winston Faircloth  10:33  
about brave apology, those two words just kind of lifted to my ears when you said that that's a novel concept in a lot of organizations,

Amy Alexander  10:41  
it is it's a term that Bernie brown uses often as she trains on leadership. And, you know, here in tandem with brave apologies would be courage, which we define as not the absence of fear that the judgment that something is greater than the fear. So it's always scary to say sorry, always, but it matters a lot. And humility is a characteristic that we are absolutely looking for. In any new hire, we're looking for people who are constant learners, willing to try things new ways and willing to say I'm sorry, I missed the mark, or here's the part that I can own.

Winston Faircloth  11:17  
So this leadership framework really gives you a ability to attract and retain certain employees, team members that are coming into the organization, how does this also shape your overall cultural dynamics?

Amy Alexander  11:32  
Absolutely. And you know, we're in an interesting field, because the majority of therapists that move into the field professionally launch into what we call a private practice, right? So this is where they are on their own, independently operating, perhaps with their own LLC, but just they unto themselves, and you can do fairly well financially in that model. And so as a nonprofit, we are always wrestling with how do we retain really quality people when those sorts of options are out there. And for us, it's our culture, this is how we retain people is this ability to be in a community with what we define as the three C's, but you are working with people who are have deep character, okay, and there's definitely ways that we're defining that, that you're working with people who you have a genuine connection to, and then that we are a community of continuous growth that we are always learning and growing together, that iron sharpens iron mentality.

Winston Faircloth  12:33  
So, Amy, in terms of the how these values and culture really applied to the to the daily work you have at the at the refuge center, can you get just a story or two about how these play out in your day to day work?

Amy Alexander  12:49  
Well, I can and you know, just principally, I would share that as a Christ centered organization, we have a statement of faith, but we also have something called a spiritual expressions document. And that's, that is the fulfillment of how we live out our mission here together. It's the practical ways that we live out our faith in this place. And it talks about of course, we value service connection, humility, rest, forgiveness, transparency, etc. But we get real practical with it. In fact, before you are ever hired, or even given an interview, you're given this document just to say, hey, transparently, here's who we are. And here's how we do life together. This means that we routinely pray together, we integrate prayer devotions, and meditations into our meetings. We share sermons, or face in our podcasts, there's a lot of ways that we are practically living out our faith. And for us, that's about congruency. So we defined congruency as that our actions are compatible with our values that our insides match our outsides. And that matches what we're doing with clients, right? Someone comes to us, they have a lack of peace in their life, they're distressed, well, are their actions in reflection of their values, that's something we would need to look at. And we want that happening at refuge. But there's so I mean, there's so many stories, you've seen our cultural model, this infographic that we use, and there's a lot of ways that we do the things we do. One of my favorite pieces of that graphic is the generosity, right, which is that we do not operate from a place of a mentality of scarcity, but a mentality of enough and that is potentially unique in the nonprofit sector. I think when you're trying to raise money and you need community support, it can be very easy to feel like there's not enough but we just sort of refuse that ideology. And so in this idea of generosity, we have created a director of compassionate care. So this is a senior staff position whose job is to pour into the people that were Here, that's a line item in the budget for us, the director of compassionate care. And their job is gift baskets and prayer and visits at home or in the hospital. It's planning quarterly potlucks, and golf, golf outings and time with horses and equestrian events. And it's just everything you can think of to help us grow in our sense of compassion towards one another.

Winston Faircloth  15:23  
That is amazing. I love that so much. Thank you. So this journey of how you got to this culture, how you how you helped craft this culture, this isn't something that was there on day one, or was it? Oh, no,

Amy Alexander  15:36  
no, it wasn't, this has been something very organic. It's evolved over time. It's something we evaluate frequently, 16 years later, there's things that we may have done in the early years, that made a lot of sense, then. And we're very adaptive and functional for us here. Now, in 2021. We recognize we've grown a lot as an agency, and we still need this to be a living, breathing thing that we're always going, how do we do this better? How does it make sense for where we are today?

Winston Faircloth  16:05  
And when you think of me, you talked about the spiritual expressions document. And that's one way that you demonstrate the values of the organization to potential new members of the team. Are there other ways that you you mentioned is before we started recording here, about your onboarding process? Could you share a little bit about how you lay out the culture and the values with your team?

Amy Alexander  16:31  
Definitely. Okay, so I might want to answer that two ways. If it's okay, I want to be sensitive time here. But there's almost two things I'd like to focus on. One is that we do a 90 minute culture onboarding. For every new team member that includes interns or long term volunteers, board members, anyone involved with the organization. And we take time to sort of build out this infographic, we call it our professional acre. And there are metaphorical images on this document that help us to understand the things that are the most important to us. And again, it all ties back to those three C's of character connection and continuous growth. So it's, it's about doing our part, it's about having integrity, it's about I mean, there's one practical example is this idea that we can't be connected to one another if we're not accessible. So here at refuge, we say that if you're not in session or supervision, your door needs to be open. And we ask you to walk the halls at for us it's a big circle. So make the loop at least once a day. And if there's an open door, step in and say, how's your day going? Is there anything I can support you in anything I can pray for you on any resource I resources I can point you to. And these kinds of conversations lead to really genuine relationships at refuge we've had people get to know each other through our organization who became roommates or started businesses together, ran marathons together, that's what we're going for culturally real relationships that long outlast the life of Maybe someone's professional tenure here. So that's, that's just on one side of it. With I would say that going back to these four S's, which are just paramount to us, in this attachment based leadership, back to that original s have seen knowing your team. So at the very beginning for us, this is back to the interview process. We're asking very intentional questions like, has there been an event in your life, which was so intense, it permanently affected your outlook on life? What what beliefs or values guide you talk about your primary response to feedback, fight, flight embrace. We're asking very deep, very intentional questions early in the process. Once someone is hired, one thing that I love, we do this thing where if your supervisor is connected to you before you even start your first day before all that onboarding paperwork, we want you to take that person to coffee and ask them to bring three items of meaning or significance that represent who they are. So someone may bring a photo of their family across a favorite book, and we just use that time to informally really get to know them, get to know their story, we hand out a questionnaire about your strength, your passions, your attachment needs, and we use personality inventories, like the Strength Finders values in action, the enneagram and the disc. So getting to know people and helping them feel seen in your organization is tremendously important to secure attachment. And then those ongoing things like potlucks, experiential retreats, having themed years with activities that tie back to that people also feel seen when they are honored and celebrated. So you got to have a line item in your budget for staff appreciation. You know, baby showers, wedding showers, intern or volunteer celebrations, celebrations around launching, coming, going lunch. promotions and then really honoring the unique gifts and skill sets that people bring. So there's a lot of ways we can be more intentional.

Winston Faircloth  20:10  
And that I think that is the underscoring word right there intentionality, right. Everything that you've mentioned have has been crafted with intention now, what drove you to put a culture together? With this kind of intentionality? Was it their experiences and other parts of your career? Or what? What kind of shaped that for you?

Amy Alexander  20:31  
I think so, you know, I had been in other places, other nonprofit settings. And certainly, there's lessons learned there. And always things you might want to do a little bit differently. But I just kept thinking about how we connect what we know, therapeutically, and what matters in a therapeutic environment in the therapeutic relationship, and how do we tie those principles back to our organizational culture and leadership model. And it's made for a lot of congruence in terms of the language we use and the way we relate to each other. It feels very natural here to do that, not just with our clients, but with each other. Well,

Winston Faircloth  21:10  
I can imagine there are a lot of people listening to this going, gosh, how can I work at the refuge center with such a rich and intentional culture that you've described here?

Amy Alexander  21:22  
Well, I appreciate that it it's something that matters very much to us. And no matter what we accomplish, in terms of number of clients served are a capital campaign, we're in the middle of, you know, what matters the most to us is that people genuinely feel cared for and seen in this place. And everything else is just kind of gravy,

Winston Faircloth  21:42  
any, so many people who are building an organization, you know, one of the things I notice about founders a lot of times is that their focus initially is on the service, and then the clients, but then the team can really be an afterthought. It doesn't sound it sounded like you kind of reverse engineer that.

Amy Alexander  22:02  
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I would say our team has to be the first priority and Client Services has to be the second priority. Because if we're not healthy, if we're not in a good place, if we're not taking care of ourselves in one another, then the quality of our work is not going to be what it should be. And our clients deserve us to be at our best. So we have to start there, it's with ourselves. Beautiful. There, there is maybe just one thing that's tremendously important for me to share with leaders. And that is, we have to do our own work, okay. And by doing our own work, I mean, who are the people in your life at your table that are addressing your blind spots with you, I call those our iron sharpens iron people. And research says that all of us need about four to seven of those people. I think it's really hard for leaders though, to find safe places. And so we can't give what we don't have. We can't give help when we're not asking for it. And we have to invite people into our lives who can do that deeper dive with us. It might be a therapist, it might be a spiritual director or a life coach, an acupuncturist, a small group, Celebrate Recovery, but we have to be intentional about inviting people in to help us do our work. And one of the things I would say is that, going back to circle of security, they had this video this beautiful video called shark music. And when you pushed play, you saw these beautiful feet walking down a sandy path and ahead was the sparkling ocean on either side, or these palm trees in the wind. And there's this classical music playing, it's peaceful and your heart rate slows down and your breathing slows down and you're thinking boy, I would love to be there What a gorgeous place the scene stops. And it starts again. And this time, it's the same exact imagery, okay, palm trees and sparkling water. But this time, it's the the music to jaws that starts and so now you're thinking, Oh, I got this all wrong, this is going to get bloody I don't want to see this heart rate goes up, breathing goes up. The point is that we all have our own shark music. We all have some music playing. Maybe it's past traumas and ones maybe it's a current state of anxiety. But our shark music is coloring the way that we are experiencing people and circumstances. And we all need to do work around our own shark music. It's going to make us better leaders.

Winston Faircloth  24:25  
That is going to land oh my goodness that so many leaders probably play to their own shark music when they're they're not even listening, right? Because they are playing the shark music and they're not even being present with the person across the table

Amy Alexander  24:39  
from Well, it's become a way of living or leading it's become a template, maybe maybe even for survival. And it's not always conscious to us. But that's where we have to invite people into our lives to do this work with us.

Winston Faircloth  24:52  
So how do we find those four to seven people?

Amy Alexander  24:55  
You know, that's such a good question and I meet with many people frequently Who would tell me they have trouble perhaps even identifying one. Thank god if you have a list that includes four to seven and beyond, but the places that I just mentioned are fairly good places to consider starting. aa creates a wonderful structure for safety. Many times, things like Celebrate Recovery or small groups, a therapist, a spiritual director, a life coach, people that are bound by confidentiality can typically be trusted to be a safe place for your hurts, and wounds. And that really is the goal of therapy. It's to overcome the burdens, barriers and shame stories that prevent us from living a full and free life.

Winston Faircloth  25:39  
So what are the best ways for people to connect with you and the organization?

Amy Alexander  25:43  
Yeah, so our website is the refuge center.org You can also email us at info at the refuge center.org. And I love to come and do trainings for companies on attachment based leadership, I would do a much deeper dive than what we've had time for here today. But I would love to have ongoing conversations with companies about how they can improve the built experience and quality of the environment for their team members. We also have a YouTube channel with a number of wonderful stories from our clients about who we care for here and how we do that. So check that out as well. Well, Amy,

Winston Faircloth  26:20  
thank you so much for sharing this wonderful framework in terms of your culture of character, continuous growth in connection with a environment where people feel safe, secure, sane, and Sue. Oh, thank

Amy Alexander  26:33  
you so much.

Winston Faircloth  26:34  
So what do you think of that podcast interview? Man, some great nuggets, Amy is going to be a tremendous resource for so many leaders out there in terms of her framework. I think this conversation just could have continued on and on talking about how her culture is so unique. It's so needed in this era. So when you think about it, I bought a business you love supported by a team that you love. What could be better than that. I believe that for love of team is a leading indicator of your future success, multiplying your impact income and freedom in business and in life. You bless friends. I'll catch you on the next episode.