Latest / Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families / #363 Best Of - The Art of Coordination

Transcript

#363 Best Of - The Art of Coordination · Dr Justin Coulson's Happy Families

0:01
Speaker 1: Gooday.
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Speaker 2: This is doctor Justin Coulson, the author of six books
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Speaker 2: about raising happy families and the founder of Happy Families
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Speaker 2: dot com dot Au. Here with Kylie, my wife, podcast
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Speaker 2: co host and mum to our six daughters. Because at
0:18
Speaker 2: school holidays we are sharing with you podcast conversations that matter.
0:24
Speaker 2: We think that this one is going to be really important.
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Speaker 3: This episode is about how you and your partner can
0:28
Speaker 3: get on the same page and give yourselves and your
0:30
Speaker 3: family the best chance to thrive. We talk about our
0:33
Speaker 3: weekly couples meetings, our family weekly meeting and quarterly resets
0:38
Speaker 3: that we've found so valuable.
0:43
Speaker 1: It's the Happy Families podcast. It's the podcast for the
0:47
Speaker 1: time poor parent who just once answers.
0:50
Speaker 2: Now, we are pretty hardcore on only thinking one or
0:53
Speaker 2: two things maximum that we're going to work on this week.
0:56
Speaker 2: Too many things to work on is overwhelming and we
0:59
Speaker 2: make no progress.
1:00
Speaker 1: And now here's the stars of our show, my mum
1:03
Speaker 1: and dad.
1:04
Speaker 2: Hey, Kylie, we've had an email come through to podcasts
1:07
Speaker 2: at happy families dot com dot Au asking about the
1:11
Speaker 2: whole family meeting thing that we talk about a lot.
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Speaker 2: My name's Justin. By the way, Justin Colson have written
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Speaker 2: a bunch of books about raising happy families, and you, Kylie,
1:18
Speaker 2: are my wife and mum to our six kids. Every
1:22
Speaker 2: now and again we talk about how we coordinate stuff
1:24
Speaker 2: as a family. We've kind of got this thing where
1:26
Speaker 2: we talk to the kids pretty regularly, we talk to
1:28
Speaker 2: one another pretty regularly, and we even go away every
1:30
Speaker 2: now and again. And a listener has emailed us and said,
1:33
Speaker 2: what's the deal with the meetings? We want to be
1:35
Speaker 2: more organized, we want to be more on the same page.
1:37
Speaker 2: What are you doing? So we have three meetings, and
1:40
Speaker 2: I thought we should kind of talk about it. And
1:42
Speaker 2: I hope it doesn't sound overwhelming to people, because while
1:45
Speaker 2: I've been jotting down all the stuff we do, it's
1:46
Speaker 2: kind of like a we a bit over the top
1:49
Speaker 2: on this. I don't think we are, but it could
1:51
Speaker 2: feel like it if somebody doesn't do this sort of stuff.
1:54
Speaker 3: I think when you're first starting out, the idea of
1:56
Speaker 3: having three different kinds of meetings would be really, really overwhelming.
2:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh, and I didn't think about the meeting that
2:01
Speaker 2: we have about having the meetings.
2:04
Speaker 4: But over time, we didn't start with three meetings.
2:08
Speaker 3: We only started with one, and over time we recognized
2:12
Speaker 3: that we needed to include the children in the process.
2:15
Speaker 2: Durigor. We used to call it the meeting that we
2:18
Speaker 2: just had before we had kids.
2:20
Speaker 4: Our weekly couple's infantry.
2:22
Speaker 2: We called it a well, it was short shortened to WCI. Hey,
2:26
Speaker 2: we need to have our WCI. How do we come
2:28
Speaker 2: up with that?
2:29
Speaker 4: Well? That was all you're doing?
2:30
Speaker 3: It kind of was actually yes because the background, a
2:33
Speaker 3: little bit of background.
2:34
Speaker 4: I grew up with family meetings.
2:36
Speaker 3: We called them family counsels when I was growing up,
2:39
Speaker 3: and unfortunately my family wasn't too good with communication, and
2:42
Speaker 3: so we would end up all bearing our grievances about
2:46
Speaker 3: the week or the month or whatever was happening is
2:48
Speaker 3: a big family fight, and before you knew it, everybody
2:51
Speaker 3: was upset or angry at someone and it was just
2:54
Speaker 3: disastrous and there wasn't really a lot of positive that
2:57
Speaker 3: came out of it.
2:58
Speaker 4: So when you and I.
2:58
Speaker 3: Got married, we had this beautiful relationship. We really had
3:02
Speaker 3: an argument, if a disagreement.
3:04
Speaker 2: I think we had one disagreement in our first year
3:06
Speaker 2: of marriage. It was just bliss. And when that happened,
3:08
Speaker 2: We're like, what's going on?
3:10
Speaker 1: Oh no?
3:11
Speaker 3: But then we started having these weekly meetings and all
3:14
Speaker 3: of a sudden, every time we would sit down, I
3:17
Speaker 3: would end up fighting with you. Yeah, and you would
3:19
Speaker 3: look at me, like, where is this come from.
3:22
Speaker 2: We're just talking about what we could do this week, honey, Like,
3:25
Speaker 2: let's just go through the calendar. We don't have to
3:26
Speaker 2: get cranky at me.
3:28
Speaker 3: And if you haven't worked out. Justin is definitely someone
3:32
Speaker 3: who likes to improve. He doesn't like to just stay
3:35
Speaker 3: stagnant and just sit there. And so whenever we would
3:38
Speaker 3: sit down to have these meetings, inevitably he would want
3:41
Speaker 3: to know how we could be better.
3:42
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, And it wasn't like I'm saying, Kylie y.
3:46
Speaker 4: To clean the house better, Kylie.
3:47
Speaker 2: I wasn't saying that. I mean, it is true that
3:50
Speaker 2: I did notice that somethings hadn't been dusted and mentioned
3:52
Speaker 2: that once ors of wise, but it was more about
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Speaker 2: I really love what we're doing and I'm really happy
4:00
Speaker 2: with the life that we're living. It wasn't like we
4:03
Speaker 2: were doing everything wrong or anything wrong. It was just
4:06
Speaker 2: that I like things to continue to get better and
4:08
Speaker 2: better and better, and that's why we're having our Well, it.
4:11
Speaker 4: Has taken me twenty years to work that one out.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, it has and we still have our moments. You
4:16
Speaker 2: don't like it when I say I wonder what we
4:18
Speaker 2: could do to be better? You're like, can we just
4:19
Speaker 2: be happy with where we are? But I'm one of
4:21
Speaker 2: those continual improvement kind of guys. I just I always
4:23
Speaker 2: want to be better as a human. I want my
4:25
Speaker 2: family to function better. We want to we want to
4:28
Speaker 2: improve and get better and take on bigger challenges. So
4:31
Speaker 2: we from the very outset have had this weekly couple's meeting,
4:36
Speaker 2: and it's very different today to what it was twenty
4:39
Speaker 2: plus years ago. When we first started those meetings.
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Speaker 4: Yep, when we were inventorying, right, it was kind of
4:46
Speaker 4: that was your way of that was your.
4:48
Speaker 3: Way of creating detachment for me, so that when we
4:51
Speaker 3: sat down, I didn't feel like we were having this
4:53
Speaker 3: family meeting.
4:54
Speaker 4: That's how it came about.
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Speaker 2: Because I was like, I don't want you to get
4:57
Speaker 2: an emotion about this because it's not an emotional conversation.
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Speaker 2: There's no critics here. It's just a conversation like how
5:01
Speaker 2: are we going and how can we do stuff better?
5:03
Speaker 2: And you'd be like, no, you're telling me I'm not
5:05
Speaker 2: good enough. And it was pretty full on it was.
5:08
Speaker 2: So that's one of our meetings, and we'll go into
5:09
Speaker 2: some more detail about exactly what happens in that meeting
5:13
Speaker 2: in just a minute. The other meeting that we have
5:16
Speaker 2: on a weekly basis, well.
5:18
Speaker 3: That came about because we added to our family. So
5:20
Speaker 3: we started with just us. Yeah, yeah, but obviously as
5:23
Speaker 3: the children have come along, we recognize that we don't
5:25
Speaker 3: live in a dictatorship, that our children should have a
5:28
Speaker 3: voice as well, and so we created the family meeting
5:32
Speaker 3: that we have once a week with them.
5:33
Speaker 2: That we don't call a family council because that would
5:35
Speaker 2: bring up too much baggage for you, so we just
5:37
Speaker 2: call it a family meeting. Every now and again, we
5:39
Speaker 2: do actually have a kids counsel. We say, kids, you
5:41
Speaker 2: just go and figure out and come back to us
5:43
Speaker 2: and let us know what you've decided. That only works sometimes, though,
5:46
Speaker 2: because usually the big kids just dominate the little kids
5:48
Speaker 2: into submission and say we're going to do it this way,
5:50
Speaker 2: and the little kid's like, oh, this's on fair, but okay,
5:52
Speaker 2: So we've created this family meeting that we have. We
5:55
Speaker 2: have our couples meeting every week and once a quarter,
5:58
Speaker 2: that is every term, every school term, every three months.
6:01
Speaker 2: You and I go away and we have a couple's
6:04
Speaker 2: we call it a couple's immersion. We immerse ourselves in
6:07
Speaker 2: one another and in the stuff that we need to
6:11
Speaker 2: work out to make our family function well. And that
6:13
Speaker 2: couple's retreat or that couple's immersion is it's become our
6:16
Speaker 2: life saver, hasn't it?
6:18
Speaker 4: It really has? And let's be real.
6:20
Speaker 3: Sometimes it's not every quarter as we would like. It
6:23
Speaker 3: gets stretched out to four months or six months depending
6:26
Speaker 3: on our babysitter's Availabilityeah.
6:28
Speaker 2: That's right. I don't know if our mums are listening
6:30
Speaker 2: to this or not, but we haven't had one for
6:34
Speaker 2: this quarter where and we are feeling it, aren't We
6:37
Speaker 2: like this has been a really tough term to get
6:39
Speaker 2: through because we haven't had that immersion. So what we're
6:42
Speaker 2: going to do is take a quick break. Now that
6:43
Speaker 2: we've told you what the three are, there's a weekly
6:45
Speaker 2: couples meeting. What do we call that? Now? Do we
6:48
Speaker 2: even have a name? Do we still call?
6:50
Speaker 4: Haven't we just call it WCI.
6:51
Speaker 2: I haven't called it that for it feels like about
6:53
Speaker 2: a decade, but maybe we do, Maybe you do. Then
6:56
Speaker 2: we have our weekly family meeting, and we have our
6:59
Speaker 2: quarterly immersion. We'll tell you what happens in each of
7:01
Speaker 2: those right after break.
7:03
Speaker 1: It's their Happy Families podcast.
7:05
Speaker 5: Our Screens Creating Tension at Home, Tweens, teens and Screens
7:09
Speaker 5: is a webinar to guide families to healthy, safe superscreen solutions.
7:14
Speaker 5: Bye Today at Happy families dot com dot au slash.
7:18
Speaker 3: Shop, it's the Happy Families podcast, the podcast for the
7:21
Speaker 3: time poor parent who just wants answers now.
7:22
Speaker 4: And today we've been.
7:23
Speaker 3: Sharing some of our family meetings and the way we
7:27
Speaker 3: structure things so that we can all be on the
7:30
Speaker 3: same page.
7:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's about organizations central.
7:33
Speaker 3: Yeah, aligning our values, our principles, and our calendars.
7:37
Speaker 2: It's in response to somebody's email via podcast at happy
7:40
Speaker 2: families dot com dot you, how do you do these meetings?
7:43
Speaker 2: What goes on in these meetings? What meetings are you having?
7:45
Speaker 2: And it's also kind of tied in with a question
7:48
Speaker 2: that I get all the time, and that is how
7:49
Speaker 2: do I get my partner on the same page? And
7:52
Speaker 2: it's about having these meetings and talking about your values
7:54
Speaker 2: and the stuff that matters. Most ironically, even though we're
7:57
Speaker 2: having three meetings, we pretty much answer the same three
8:01
Speaker 2: questions in each meeting. It's just that the context changes.
8:04
Speaker 2: So the family responds to these three questions one way.
8:08
Speaker 2: You and I when we have our couple's meeting respond
8:10
Speaker 2: to it slightly differently, and then when we have our
8:13
Speaker 2: quarterly retreat, that's kind of like the big picture, but
8:15
Speaker 2: it's the same three questions, it's the same structure, and
8:18
Speaker 2: it's a game changer. Can I talk about where the
8:21
Speaker 2: quarterly immersion came from?
8:22
Speaker 4: Of course?
8:22
Speaker 2: Okay, So a few years ago, when I started running
8:25
Speaker 2: the business a little bit better than I had been previously,
8:28
Speaker 2: I realized that about every ninety days I needed to
8:30
Speaker 2: create some sort of a strategy to make sure that
8:32
Speaker 2: I knew what I was supposed to be doing so
8:34
Speaker 2: that I could pay my staff and help to pay
8:37
Speaker 2: for our mortgage and all that sort of stuff. And
8:39
Speaker 2: I found that those quarterly strategy sessions with my team
8:43
Speaker 2: really made a difference, and it helped me to reach
8:45
Speaker 2: more people and be more helpful to people. Like it
8:47
Speaker 2: was just it was a game changer, and I thought
8:49
Speaker 2: to myself, Wow, this strategy thing's amazing. The more I
8:52
Speaker 2: thought about it, though, the more I realized people actually
8:54
Speaker 2: put together business plans all the time, and they put
8:57
Speaker 2: together financial plans, and they put together holiday plans, and
9:00
Speaker 2: they put together like education plans for their children. People
9:04
Speaker 2: are always planning all this stuff, and yet we say
9:06
Speaker 2: that our family is the most important thing in our lives,
9:08
Speaker 2: and we don't put it together a plan for our family.
9:10
Speaker 2: And so I actually said to you, we're doing our
9:12
Speaker 2: family meetings every week, but I feel like we're just
9:14
Speaker 2: sort of spinning our wheels. And we're having our couples
9:17
Speaker 2: meetings every week, but I don't feel like we're kind
9:19
Speaker 2: of having the gains and the progress that are important
9:22
Speaker 2: to me because I'm a constant, improver kind of guy.
9:25
Speaker 2: So what do you think about going away every quarter
9:27
Speaker 2: every ninety days. If I'm going to do it for
9:28
Speaker 2: my business, my family's more important than that. What if
9:31
Speaker 2: we were to just disappear for two nights? And I
9:32
Speaker 2: know not everyone can do that, by the way, So
9:34
Speaker 2: sometimes I'll just take a day off work and we'll
9:36
Speaker 2: have our immersion at home that day while the kids
9:39
Speaker 2: are at school. That's as kind of like a poor
9:41
Speaker 2: cousin to it, but sometimes that's all you can do.
9:43
Speaker 2: And since we've started to do that once a quarter,
9:46
Speaker 2: we've changed the way our family feels. We've changed the
9:48
Speaker 2: dynamic because of the planning that goes into it. If
9:51
Speaker 2: you're going to spend all that time planning your holiday,
9:54
Speaker 2: I think that it's only reasonable that you'd spend all
9:55
Speaker 2: that time planning your family decisions, family values, family direction.
10:00
Speaker 3: Well, again, let's be a little bit real about this
10:03
Speaker 3: is actually really important for our marriage as well. The
10:05
Speaker 3: opportunity we get to have a couple of days away
10:08
Speaker 3: without distraction, without responsibility of children, to be together.
10:13
Speaker 2: You really like hugging me a lot. I'm not going
10:17
Speaker 2: to say anything else, but we do like that time away,
10:20
Speaker 2: don't we. It's good for a couple to have time
10:23
Speaker 2: away from everyone and everything. So the three questions that
10:26
Speaker 2: we ask ourselves at the quarterly immersion, at the weekly
10:31
Speaker 2: family meeting, and at the weekly couple's meeting.
10:34
Speaker 4: Are what's going well, what's not? And how can we improve?
10:40
Speaker 2: That's it. That's the entire structure. When we talk about
10:43
Speaker 2: what went well, we spend as much time on that
10:46
Speaker 2: as we can. We love hearing what the kids think
10:48
Speaker 2: about what's going well. Where do we feel like a
10:50
Speaker 2: couple relationships going well, has the family going and when
10:53
Speaker 2: we do the big one for the quarterly immersion that
10:57
Speaker 2: what's gone well over the last twelve weeks. That's a
10:59
Speaker 2: big conversation, like that's a that's an hour long conversation.
11:03
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I guess the focus changes significantly because when
11:06
Speaker 3: you and I sit down and we have a conversation
11:08
Speaker 3: about what's going well, we're actually talking about our own
11:11
Speaker 3: individual lives and we hold each other accountable to that.
11:14
Speaker 3: So we will talk about our exercise routines, or you know,
11:17
Speaker 3: whether or not we're getting enough sleep or diet, or.
11:20
Speaker 2: We talk about our spiritual practice. We talk about our
11:22
Speaker 2: life balance, whether or not I'm working too much, whether
11:24
Speaker 2: or not you're volunteering too much. Like, we work through
11:28
Speaker 2: all of that sort of stuff and talk about what's
11:30
Speaker 2: going well.
11:31
Speaker 4: That's right.
11:32
Speaker 3: And in that process we'll also, you know, align our
11:34
Speaker 3: calendars so we know what each one is doing and
11:37
Speaker 3: what each one is carrying. You know, we've each got
11:40
Speaker 3: different loads to carry, and so we can see as
11:42
Speaker 3: we go through that process, you can see where you
11:44
Speaker 3: might be able to alleviate some of my strain and
11:47
Speaker 3: vice versa. And so those things are really important when
11:51
Speaker 3: we go into the family situation, though, we're not talking
11:53
Speaker 3: about what you and I are doing well. We're actually
11:54
Speaker 3: talking about the family dynamics. What's gone well in our
11:57
Speaker 3: family this week?
11:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, how morning's going? Or is everyone happy with how
12:02
Speaker 2: meal time is? Or are we all getting to bet
12:05
Speaker 2: on time? What's happening on our weekend?
12:06
Speaker 4: Who's doing their chores? Are they getting done? You know? Well,
12:10
Speaker 4: do we need to have a change up of the
12:11
Speaker 4: chore chart? You know?
12:13
Speaker 3: All of those kinds of things come into play, and
12:16
Speaker 3: then when we get to have our quarterly get away,
12:18
Speaker 3: we're asking much deeper questions. We're looking at, you know,
12:21
Speaker 3: how is our family functioning? And not just looking at
12:24
Speaker 3: the day to day stuff. We're looking at the big picture.
12:26
Speaker 2: The really important thing is the last question, though, and
12:28
Speaker 2: that is what are we going to do from here?
12:30
Speaker 2: Because once we've identified where we're winning and where we're
12:33
Speaker 2: really struggling. Sometimes the struggle list is very, very long,
12:36
Speaker 2: and it's tempting to say, well, we need to fix
12:37
Speaker 2: this and this and this and this and this, and
12:38
Speaker 2: the list just is overwhelming. We are pretty hardcore on
12:42
Speaker 2: only picking one or two things maximum that we're going
12:45
Speaker 2: to work on this week or this quarter, and that's
12:48
Speaker 2: where we stop even though there's so many other things
12:50
Speaker 2: we could work on. Too many things to work on
12:53
Speaker 2: is overwhelming, and we make no progress. So that's kind
12:55
Speaker 2: of that's kind of it. I mean, there's a big
12:57
Speaker 2: agenda when we go away, and it's probably worth quickly
13:00
Speaker 2: mentioning some of the things that we talk about. And
13:01
Speaker 2: I don't think we can go through it all because
13:03
Speaker 2: while we're gone for two nights, we spend I reckon
13:06
Speaker 2: seventy five percent of that time talking about what's on
13:11
Speaker 2: the agenda. And the agenda is not just about cuddles.
13:14
Speaker 3: No, there are lots of different things, and it changes
13:16
Speaker 3: every time because our family dynamics are changing all the
13:19
Speaker 3: time every time. So we might talk about diet and exercise.
13:22
Speaker 3: We might talk about kids and technology. We might talk
13:24
Speaker 3: about discipline and routine. We might talk about reviewing our
13:27
Speaker 3: family principles and how we're doing with teaching our children
13:30
Speaker 3: and stelling those principles into their lives. We might talk
13:34
Speaker 3: about well we also finances.
13:37
Speaker 2: We go through that. We also pull out the calendar
13:39
Speaker 2: and say what are the major events that we need
13:41
Speaker 2: to schedule or that are coming up.
13:43
Speaker 4: We'll plan upcoming holidays.
13:44
Speaker 2: We talk about their extra curricular activities. I mean, there's
13:48
Speaker 2: so much stuff to go through in terms of planning
13:51
Speaker 2: how the family is going to function for the next
13:53
Speaker 2: twelve weeks, get all the stuff into the calendar that
13:55
Speaker 2: needs to be there. It's a pretty intensive couple of
13:58
Speaker 2: days away. There's been a couple of times where we've
14:01
Speaker 2: gone away and had all these conversations and you've been
14:02
Speaker 2: a bit cranky because there hasn't been time for cuddles
14:05
Speaker 2: because there's so much to talk about it.
14:07
Speaker 4: There is so much to talk about.
14:08
Speaker 3: And what happens in family life when we don't give
14:11
Speaker 3: ourselves that time and that distance in space to have
14:17
Speaker 3: these conversations is we have half finished conversations, you know,
14:21
Speaker 3: pillow talk as we're falling asleep, or you know, when
14:23
Speaker 3: we're waking up and we're trying to raise into one
14:25
Speaker 3: hundred and one things at a time, and so we
14:28
Speaker 3: never actually really get to make improvements or even decisions
14:32
Speaker 3: sometimes about what needs to happen because we're constantly on
14:35
Speaker 3: the go.
14:36
Speaker 2: So I don't know if this has been helpful for
14:38
Speaker 2: you or not, but hopefully it has. If you'd like
14:40
Speaker 2: to be more aligned, be more on the same page,
14:42
Speaker 2: you get your values more consistent with one another, or
14:45
Speaker 2: just be better at scheduling and getting the routine sorted
14:48
Speaker 2: out so everyone knows who's supposed to be where, when
14:50
Speaker 2: and how. Or just if improvement's your thing, you might
14:53
Speaker 2: find that this little planning system can be helpful for you.
14:56
Speaker 2: The weekly couple's Conversation, the family meet and once a
15:01
Speaker 2: quarter getting away for even if it's just a day,
15:04
Speaker 2: and talking about everything that needs to happen in the
15:08
Speaker 2: family to make it function well. We hope that this
15:11
Speaker 2: has been a helpful conversation for you and you've enjoyed
15:13
Speaker 2: the podcast. If you do love the podcast, we love
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15:31
Speaker 2: the work of Justin Ruland from Bridge Media. He's our
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Speaker 2: producer and Craig Bruce is the executive producer of the
15:36
Speaker 2: Happy Families podcast. If you'd like more and fo about
15:38
Speaker 2: making your family happier, you can find it at happy
15:41
Speaker 2: families dot com dot a