Episode 26 – From tokenism to trust: Meaningful consultation in the Veteran community

MIND BEYOND THE MISSION EPISODE 26 — FROM TOKENISM TO TRUST: MEANINGFUL CONSULTATION IN THE VETERAN COMMUNITY

Brian McKenna

You found our podcast, we are Mind Beyond the Mission. This is a podcast about Canadian Forces Veterans and their Families, and specifically, mental health. What goes on in our lives, what goes on in our heads? We’re not talking to you as doctors or professionals? We’re talking to you about living with it and what it’s like. Brian McKenna, 19 years in the Canadian Forces. I’m joined by my partner, Laryssa Lamrock.

Laryssa Lamrock

Veteran Family member. I’m a proud military brat. My husband served in the military. Proud military mom. We’re really excited about this podcast to delve into issues that are important to the Veteran and Family community.

Brian

Join us as we talk about mental health from the perspective of Canadian Forces Veterans and their Families.

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Brian

We’re back, and we’re on another episode of Mind Beyond the Mission. We’re going to have a conversation about consultation and also about an appropriate consultation. What actually is it when someone engages the community, and when is it just, well, pretending that you engage the community?

I’ll start with saying this: If you’re engaging and speaking to people in the Veteran and Family community because you saw that that was an item on the checklist, then you get to tell the person you work for that,” Yes, I engaged,” you’re probably doing it wrong. In fact, you’re probably not even doing it. You’re probably doing damage. That does not feel like engagement. There’s nothing authentic there. The guy on the other end of the phone might actually be trained in these conversations and know that you don’t mean it. What does engagement, actual consultation mean? What do you think?

Laryssa

Okay. The word that came to mind when you were talking about that is “patronization.” I think it doesn’t matter whether it’s for this community or as a parent or in a relationship or at your job, nobody likes being patronized, and most people can sniff out when they’re being patronized, and it’s frankly insulting.

I think if you are not authentic in your engagement, if you really don’t give a shit about what people are telling you, they’re going to pick up on that, and it can do a lot of damage to the reputation of yourself or who you might be representing. It can actually be damaging for the person you’re engaging with, especially within a mental health space. If you’re dealing with Veterans or Families who are coping with mental health stuff, it can be difficult for them to feeling not respected in that or minimized in their experience.

Yes, I think if you’re not willing to put the time in to explore what authentic engagement means, if you’re not prepared to put the resources in because it does take extra time to truly engage whomever but the Veteran and Family community. If you don’t do a little bit of background information, so you know who you’re talking to, maybe some of the larger level areas of importance to them, don’t do it. Then just don’t do it. Take a step back, have someone else do it. You really need to prepare yourself for that.

Brian

I’m going to walk you through an exercise here. You and I are college roommates. You ready for this one? I tell you that I’d like to have a discussion about changing everything in the apartment, the carpets, the drapes and what not, then you walk in and I’ve already changed them. They’re already there. Is that engagement?

Laryssa

[laugh] That wouldn’t go over well. No.

Brian

Right. I am making a joke out of it, but this is something that our community has dealt with for a long time, is we’ll have folks come towards us suggesting that we’re going to have a discussion about what to do, or no, you’ve made the decisions. It’s a briefing, then. That’s my point. A briefing is not consultation. A briefing is data transfer.

If you’re consulting me, you should be nowhere past anything other than the idea phase. You’ve got an idea, and now you want to see what does that smell like? What does it look like? What can we do to add on to that idea to get it to a workable place? Now we have consultation. That’s one of the things that I think we’ve tried to do even through this podcast, is: as we talk about new and emerging topics to the community on the podcast, and they respond, and they write in with, “That’s not how it is for me” or “Thanks for that podcast, I feel heard”, those things are how we then gather more information on what we might do in the future.

That’s one of the places I want to start. Did you ever experience in your Family that consultation would happen, but it’s already I decided? You’re not consulting me about anything. You’re just talking to me after you’ve done things.

Laryssa

You mean within my – I’m going to call it advocacy. I don’t really see myself as an advocate, but I don’t know how to label it, but you’re talking about me representing myself as a Veteran Family. I think so in different contexts, yes, and that can create some resentment and maybe a loss of loyalty in some ways as well.

I have had a lot of really amazing opportunities just being, I use air quotes, just a housewife, right? That’s what brings me to a lot of these roles, I’m a spouse of a Veteran with PTSD. I’ve had a lot of really incredible opportunities. A bit of a flip on your question, and I hope that’s okay, is also while you’re already engaging with someone, the process of it. What I’m getting to is that a lot of times I was invited to a table to consult from my lived experience, and I would be at that table with doctors, other academics, researchers, people in government, then Laryssa Lamrock, “the housewife.” I found that really intimidating, and at first I was a little bit cynical going: “Okay, am I the check in the box? Am I the tokenistic?” Yes, we heard from a Family member there.

Brian

Someone’s checklist.

Laryssa

It may not only have been that I felt people didn’t consult me, but I needed to observe it enough to trust them that actually they are consulting with me. They did listen. I came back to the second meeting, and I said something in the first meeting, and they actually moved it. Then I was able to, I guess you could say, let my guard down or feel that I had an equal amount to contribute as the doctor, the researcher, the academic.

Brian

I think there’s value there. I mean, you’re saying that “Look, it worked. The initial one was a little rough, but we did get somewhere.” You also mentioned about a loss of loyalty. That’s something that I certainly feel. That’s what I mean when I say, if you’re doing inauthentic communication and reach-out to the community, you’re probably actually breaking some of the little bit of trust that’s there as opposed to what you might think is like “We’re talking and that’s good. Okay.”

If I don’t think that the consultation actually has a point, if you can’t show us that we’re contributing towards something that could actually happen, again I go back to you’ve already picked the carpets and the drapes. Why are you talking to me? That will then eat away at the next time you reach out to me, and it is authentic. People have actually come to us and said, “Let’s talk about consultation.” They’ve looked and said, “There’s a certain number of people follow your LinkedIn.” Yes, it’s not because it’s my voice that’s saying it. It’s because of the things that come out of my voice, I mean.

Laryssa

Yes, I think there are different things to consider for engagement and consultations. Let’s see if I can capture all of this. Number one, you have to spend some groundwork building trust. I said in my experience, I was already at the table, but it took me three or four meetings in order to gain trust and feel that it was truly understood. I think, particularly for this community, I’ve said for a long time that military, Veterans, and Families are good bullshit detectors. They need to eyeball you, they need to know that you’re authentic, they need to know all of those things that I’d mentioned before, did you do your research.

I think in order to gain trust and pass that sniff test, you need to be honest. You know what? Even if I show up to that meeting or the college dorm conversation, and you pick the drapes and the carpet, if you’re honest and say, “Listen, I picked the drapes and the carpet, but would you prefer the carpet over here or over here? Do you want us to hem the drapes?” You know what I mean? Be honest about that. That’s okay, I’ve done this already, but here’s where I’m looking for your input.

The other thing that I’ve noticed particularly since working with Atlas, and I don’t know why it’s more in this role that I’ve noticed it, is that something that I think is a value to the community is humility, which is ironic, so without going too far into it, one thing I’ve observed with military members is you have to build a certain confidence. I don’t necessarily want to say arrogance, but you’re asked to do a job that a lot of people don’t have the stuff to do. You have to have a confidence there.

It seems contradictory that humility is something that I’ve observed that this community values. I think maybe what happened for me at that table with Dr. So-and-so and the researcher is they presented themselves with humility. Say, “Yes, you’re right. I do have this PhD and whatever, but I don’t know what it’s like to be the spouse of a Veteran,” and they would come with that humility. I think there are a lot of things to consider in that peace. I think honesty, humility and being willing to invest are some of the core kind of pieces to it.

Brian

I think, when we talk about the humility side, I kind of have an answer for you. It’s the Brian answer. Is that, yes, you’re right, we do some pretty interesting things in this job, but 95% of what most people in the forces do is not doing their job, it is training to do their job. In other words, you better get used to getting critiqued. The best patrol you ever lead in your life at the end of it, even if you pass, we’ll have someone telling you for 20 minutes everything you did wrong. You just get used to being dissected.

When we run into people that seem to can’t even be able to take a joke or the first bit of pushback at some of their ideas, they just defend it, what’s going on there ? I don’t think we’re immune, I think we just get beaten into us that critique means it’s working. Someone tearing apart your ideas is love, because they see value in you and want you better. We find a lot of times from more on the professional side of things. It’s like, “well, I looked at this and I think X and X that you’ve put there don’t make sense.” That can ruin someone’s day. To the average soldier, that means good job, because he only listed two bad things. Where I take this into the engagement side is so say you have a meeting, and you find yourself up at the podium saying, that’s a good question, I’ll get back to you. We’d like you to get back to us.

In fact, if you hold a meeting once a year, I’d like the agenda of next year to be the stuff you said you’d get back to us on last time. Let’s get rid of those nice statements, the funeral discussion, as I call them. Veterans want to see that you’re actually going to be the guy that went to the book, got the answer, and came back. Authentic communication and authentic engagement with the community is to actually mean what you say when you say that stuff, “You know, I don’t know. I’m not briefed on that.” But I’ll speak to the guy that does. It would be such a breath of fresh air for us if things like that would happen. Does that make sense? Have you ever actually seen that? Because I have seen it done right.

Laryssa

Well, sure. I mean, you gain respect for the person that contrary to some people might think if they don’t know the answer, that puts them in a bad light, and it’s actually the opposite. You gain respect for someone who says, “I don’t know, and I will get back to you.” As you’re chatting about that, whether it kind of fits in this or not, I remember working with a clinical nurse practitioner.

She worked at an operational stress injury clinic that I worked with, and she was amazing at what she did. She told me a story once about a Veteran in her office who really challenged her. She was quite a petite person. Challenged her, just in the way of saying, what do you know about what it’s like to be a Veteran? She said, “You know what? I know nothing about it other than what you are teaching me, but I do know about mental health. I do know about PTSD, and that’s what I’m bringing to the table. You’re bringing your part and I’m bringing mine.”

To me, that was authentic engagement, acknowledging what that person and their expertise and what they were bringing to the table and she relied on them to bring that piece of it, and she would bring what she could bring to that table. I said, “It might not be in the exact context that you’re talking about, but that, to me, was about humility and about trying to gain trust. Just saying, “I don’t know what it’s like, and I’m not pretending to.”

Brian

How about this one? What’s your sense of the difference between dissent and table flipping? I’ll preface that by saying that there are some folks in every community that are just aggressive, just over the top, and no matter what’s in front of them, they will flip the table whether it’s literally or not. I don’t bring –

If I’m forming a consultation group, I’m not going to bring someone there that I know who’s their role in life is to flip the applecart over. There’s no value there. If I look around the room at a grouping of people I’ve gathered, and there’s no one there that’s ever showed me dissent to an idea before, I have not formed a consultation group, I have formed an applause choir, that’s going to tell me I have a great idea.

That is also, I would say a big problem in the community is, you could have two people in the room, but if it’s two from unique backgrounds that may disagree and you can arrive at a finding that was worthwhile conversation. You could probably fill up a bingo hall with 200 people, but if they all think everything you’ve ever said is great, then you’re not consulting anybody. What’s your sense of that? The dissent versus table flipping concept.

Laryssa

I think, you answered a lot of it. Listen, we’re dealing with a community. You know what I’m talking about, Veterans and Families with mental health issues. They’re injured. A lot of them have to advocate for themselves, that takes a lot of energy, let me put it this way. My spouse was an infant here, and the kind of analogy I use a lot is that he can disassemble and reassemble a machine gun blindfolded, because that’s his expertise.

Navigating a mental health system is not his expertise. It takes a different skill set, it takes different attention, it takes capacity that he may or may not have on a bad day kind of thing. He relies on other people to do that for him. For a lot of people in this community, yes, they might not have the capacity. Where I’m going with that is there can be a difficult community to work with. I love you all. I strongly identify as a Veteran Family member and very proud of it, but we can dig our heels in sometimes.

We have to be conscious that that might be some of the folks that we’re dealing with now. My mom always used to tell me, “Though, also that you get more flies with honey.” If you are a Veteran or Family member that’s advocating for yourselves or advocating for the community more at large, if you’re advocating for a child who has special needs, sometimes it is about your approach.

As much as we’re talking about engagement from, I’m going to say, like an organizational standpoint or those that are wanting to serve the community, I think there’s an onus or an accountability on the Veteran and Family community side to of that engagement. What are you presenting at the table if you’re going to keep flipping tables, there’s going to be no more tables for you to sit at.

Be conscious of your points that you’re bringing to the table be well researched as much as you can, or at least know the questions that you want to ask, or if someone does ask you to engage and contribute, think about what do I have to offer to bring to the table? Even for me, within this work, I have my own experience as a spouse of a combat arms Veterans. That’s what’s my experience is, but I also don’t pretend to know what it’s like to be, I’ve said this before, the spouse of an RCMP member or whatever.

I have to have humility in that to say, again, I don’t know the answer. I have to get back to you, and I’m not going to pretend to present myself knowing that information when I don’t.

Brian

I think one of the things that I’m proud of that we’re doing is our consultation is layered. Some people work here day to day to have that constant eye on things then there are advisory boards, then there are groups that come together to work on a certain topic, but there’s always going to be gaps. We have four layers of consultation. You can have 40. You better still be approachable, though. There has to be for our community, we need to be able to see what that route is to get in there.

I don’t mean physically, I mean, if this doesn’t work, where do I go? Who can I actually speak to address a problem? I think that’s part of it too, when you’re building layers of communication, it’s not as an excuse to shut down the rest of the communication. It’s that you actually have to be open. I find, you go to a conference, most of the work gets done at the water cooler or at lunchtime or on the way to the bathroom. Why? Well, it’s generally because the briefing is just really the topics you wanted to send to me, but you flew me here. I hope to hear what I might have to say to you.

I look at that, too, if you’ve built an hour-long presentation and 55 minutes is spoken with the speaker on send, well, how many questions can you get into that five? That’s what I mean when I say authentic communication. If you got a room of hundreds of people, then try this one. Have a five-minute briefing and 55 minutes is what do you think? What’s on your mind? Do you even know any place that does that?

Laryssa

Bring me there if you do.

Brian

Yes. Let’s go. I want to go. Those are the things that I wanted to talk about. I wanted to just get what your sense of it is, because it’s real easy to just plow forward with what makes sense to me. I’ve left a number of conversations thinking to myself they didn’t change their minds, but I actually felt heard in that conversation. What does that sensation actually feel like, even if someone doesn’t agree, but you know, they really heard you out.

Laryssa

As I said, it’s a word that I’ve been using quite often lately, is just that validation piece. Listen, I can appreciate that within systems, there are limitations, whether it’s policy, whether it’s availability of budgets, whether it’s resources, whether it’s manpower, whether it’s legislation, whatever. Listen, I get it, and I know that there are people that choose to serve our community, and a lot of them don’t have ties to military Veterans, so that’s not lost on me, I appreciate that.

I’m like, you’re choosing to support my community, and many of those folks are honestly wanting to support, but they’re humans with a job, so I also want to give the benefit that they want to improve the systems, but their hands are often tied, so I give that kind of benefit of the doubt as well. If again, they’re honest to say, I’m looking for ways I’m looking for the loopholes, or I’m looking for the solutions or coming up with strategies, if they let me know that and genuinely I feel that they’ve heard me, then that goes towards something as well.

Brian

Are you suggesting that meeting with Families on Family issues at the time, they might be picking up or dropping off their kids from school is not going to work? Yes. That’s some of the stuff that I’ve noticed as well is you want to consult with Veterans- Everyone wants to talk to a Veteran in the days leading up to Remembrance Day.

I can’t tell you how many requests I get from we’ll call it the 4th to the 11th of November and then the absolute silence from like the 13th onward, and that’s some of the stuff I’m looking for too. You’re doing flavor of the day. How about April? How about some time where it actually shows me that you’re on the file, not just on the calendar?

Yes, if you’re looking for working Families, when our working Families is busy, so that’s kind of what we wanted to get into today. That’s our take on it. Certainly interested in hearing what other people have to say, but this has been authentic communication on Mind Beyond the Mission.

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We hope you enjoyed this episode of Mind Beyond the Mission.

Laryssa

If this conversation resonated with you or helped you in any way, I encourage you to subscribe to Mind Beyond the Mission wherever you listen to your podcasts, so you’ll be the first to know when our next episode comes out.

Brian

If you know someone who might relate to what we’ve shared or could find it helpful, please feel free to send it their way. We’re all on the same team.

Laryssa

Plus, we’d love to hear what other topics you’d be interested in us exploring in future episodes. Brian and I have a lot of ideas and subjects we plan to dive into, but you, the listener, have probably experienced or thought of topics that haven’t crossed our minds yet.

Brian

Please reach out if this is the case. We’re on social media at @atlasVeteransca on most platforms. Please feel free to tweet at us, send us a message, or leave a review on this episode and let us know what else you’d like to hear us talk about.

Laryssa

Brian, it’s always a pleasure having these important conversations with you. Looking forward to next time.

Brian

You bet. Laryssa, take it easy.