Organizational Impact

Individual Impact | Organizational Impact

Typically, a careful NRRC systems approach will affect positive changes within an organization. The following sample remarks are offered from program managers and other staff members of Reach Up-Inc., a Head Start program based in St. Cloud, Minnesota. The organization has 105 employees serving three counties and a total of more than 650 families. The agency director and 17 of her program mangers received a full cycle of NRRC Resilience/Health Realization training in 18 months. The personal understanding phase of NRRC training has had tremendous impact on these individuals and the agency. With NRRC technical assistance, these managers began teaching the full group of 105 employees and piloted groups with Head Start parents. Early evaluation is very promising. These comments refer only to Reach Up organizational change with Resilience/Health Realization. Selected Reach Up staff members have agreed to affiliate with NRRC as facilitators.

Reach-Up Head Start: Voices of Change

"It’s such an advantage for so many of us to have had this training . . . our sense of humor has improved just a million times. I don’t think we were humorless before. They just seem to be more relaxed, and we just laugh . . . I mean we have fish hanging from the ceiling! We’ve never done anything like that before."

"I think a prime example is our secretary who had a bad car accident a couple of months ago, and when she came back to work she was just smiling, and she said ‘I feel that I’m given a second life.’ It was very frightening for her. But she can smile, and she actually joked about it. She told how she was able to stay healthy. They had to get the Jaws of Life to pull the car apart, and she was able to tell funny stories about what she was thinking during that time. Wasn’t that marvelous? Usually people would feel sorry for themselves, and we’d all be maybe even teary-eyed talking to her. And here she is smiling; she’s just so excited that she’s able to come back to work."

"I’ve never worked with a group of people who share feelings so beautifully. But the last couple of trainings we’ve had to sit at different tables and sit with other people. I have never been with such a large group of people that honestly and openly share such beautiful feelings together; you’re not embarrassed to share anything you’re feeling."

"We can rely on each other for support. It’s just wonderful to know that there are others feeling the same way that you feel. We have made a commitment that every Thursday, our management team will try to have lunch together just to touch base, so that we can keep track of each other. But we keep track of each other during the day too. We’ll stop by and visit and ask how they’re doing or check in with each other."

"I’ve changed my vocabulary when I work with the staff. I’m more supportive. I don’t know how to explain it—it just seems like the way I say it, you see lights go on a little more. They seem to calm down a little bit, and its easier for me to process with them and give them the emotional support that they need."

"We’re listening much better. I know that our listening skills have improved 100%. And we come from the same base too! We can say ‘Wasn’t that a separate reality though!’ ’’

"We’ve noticed changes in each other. We’re a lot less stressed out, and it’s easier for us to talk to each other."

"I think they sent me because I sit at the front desk, and a lot of my day is listening to people complain and grouse. They don’t even know they’re doing it. But I would sit there, and I would listen to all this, and some days I would go home just overwhelmed and depressed. Now I think the training has allowed me to be me; I never wanted to be that. Slowly, slowly, I’ve become, stronger, or more sure of myself. Now I make little suggestions, or some of it I ignore. I go home in a great state of mind now. Calm. Peaceful. It’s great."

"It really has impacted our director. Last week, when she was in the midst of meeting a deadline for a grant proposal, she had this big smile on her face, and normally she doesn’t smile around that time of the year. I said ‘I am so impressed—you are still smiling in the midst of this.’ So it’s been those kinds of tangible evidence of the impact of this training that we’ve seen here amongst us. It’s been great."

"I have a situation that happened with work just recently that was pretty upsetting. My first instinct was to get mad, and then I wanted to cry. Instead, I was surprised with myself. I just felt like ‘Oh, man, this is bad.’ I cried a little bit on the way home from work that day, and then I said ‘Okay, nobody’s dead, nobody’s hurt. I need to just go get into it again immediately.’ I’ve actually been able to laugh about it . . . joke, maybe a little sarcastically, about the situation and not have it make me angry every day. That was a really big thing for me."

"I can always think of how grateful I am that we work for an agency that somebody said we get paid to go to these classes and laugh. I mean, how marvelous that we have a director that buys into our health and for the agency to be healthy! The gratefulness for me is just overwhelming to know that I was able to do this as part of my job, and it should make such a difference in my life—in my working life and in my personal life and in my inner self."

"As director, I am entirely different now. I supervise with insight knowing each employee has health, resilience, and solutions."

— Reach-Up Inc., Head Start Program Managers and Staff Members
St. Cloud, Minnesota, Spring 2000