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[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][divider line_type=”Full Width Line” line_thickness=”1″ divider_color=”default” animate=”yes” delay=”50″][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” column_margin=”default” column_direction=”default” column_direction_tablet=”default” column_direction_phone=”default” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” row_border_radius=”none” row_border_radius_applies=”bg” overlay_strength=”0.3″ gradient_direction=”left_to_right” shape_divider_position=”bottom” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_tablet=”inherit” column_padding_phone=”inherit” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” column_link_target=”_self” gradient_direction=”left_to_right” overlay_strength=”0.3″ width=”1/1″ tablet_width_inherit=”default” tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_row_inner column_margin=”default” column_direction=”default” column_direction_tablet=”default” column_direction_phone=”default” text_align=”left”][vc_column_inner column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_tablet=”inherit” column_padding_phone=”inherit” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” column_link_target=”_self” gradient_direction=”left_to_right” overlay_strength=”0.3″ width=”1/1″ tablet_width_inherit=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_column_text]Craig A. DeLarge from The Digital Mental Health Project joins the program to discuss the work that his organization is doing to enable the responsible adoption of digital mental health technology. Craig shares the personal experiences that led him to be passionate about this work, and shares resources that are available to individuals and families who are dealing with mental health challenges. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row type=”full_width_background” full_screen_row_position=”middle” column_margin=”default” column_direction=”default” column_direction_tablet=”default” column_direction_phone=”default” scene_position=”center” top_padding=”0″ bottom_padding=”7%” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” row_border_radius=”none” row_border_radius_applies=”bg” class=”custom-p” overlay_strength=”0.3″ gradient_direction=”left_to_right” shape_divider_position=”bottom” bg_image_animation=”none” shape_type=””][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_tablet=”inherit” column_padding_phone=”inherit” column_padding_position=”left-right” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” column_link_target=”_self” gradient_direction=”left_to_right” overlay_strength=”0.3″ width=”1/1″ tablet_width_inherit=”default” tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid” bg_image_animation=”none”][toggles style=”default”][toggle color=”Default” title=”Episode Transcription”][vc_row_inner column_margin=”default” column_direction=”default” column_direction_tablet=”default” column_direction_phone=”default” text_align=”left”][vc_column_inner column_padding=”padding-3-percent” column_padding_tablet=”inherit” column_padding_phone=”inherit” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” column_link_target=”_self” gradient_direction=”left_to_right” overlay_strength=”0.3″ width=”1/1″ tablet_width_inherit=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_column_text]Speaker 1:
Welcome to Hidden Human, the podcast where we explore the stories behind the business leader. Get ready to hear insights from business leaders speaking candidly about how they became who they are today and the lessons they learned along the way. And now here’s your host, leadership coach and speaker, Kelly Meerbott.
Kelly Meerbott:
Welcome to the space where we reveal our personal humanity to reconnect with our shared humanity. Let’s begin our conversation with Craig DeLarge, digital health strategists and mental health advocate working with The Digital Mental Health Project. Welcome, Craig. I am so excited to talk to you because our first conversation, which was probably two weeks ago, I literally felt more connected with you than I have in a really, really long time with any other human. Thank you for taking your time to be with us today.
Craig DeLarge:
Very nice. Thanks for having me. It’s a privilege to be here.
Kelly Meerbott:
Craig, okay, if I was a six-year-old child and you were trying to explain to me in a way that I could understand what it is you do, how would you explain that to me?
Craig DeLarge:
And it’s interesting, I have a grandson who’s almost six so this will be good practice. What I would say is that I help people to use their Apple iPhones to feel better.
Kelly Meerbott:
And okay, so I’m pretending I’m your grandson. Okay, and what does he call you?
Craig DeLarge:
Granddad.
Kelly Meerbott:
Granddad. Okay. Granddad, well, but what is The Digital Mental Health Project? What does that mean?
Craig DeLarge:
What it means is that people need to learn how to use their iPhone in a way that helps them to feel and think and act better. Right now, many people don’t do such a good job when it comes to the use of their phone. And we believe at The Project that through education and research we can help people to do more of what is good for them when it comes to the use of their phone.
Kelly Meerbott:
Hmm. And Granddad, why did you create this? What happened that made you create something like this?
Craig DeLarge:
Granddad is a teacher. That’s something that has come through in all of the work that he’s done his entire life, and he very much believes that this is a gift that God has given him. And so you also know that in our family, we have had struggles at times, as well as in our broader community with feeling good and thinking well in ways that we can act well. And so when I take my gift of education and I think about how to use it in order to help more of those in our community to feel better and think better so that they can act well. The Project is about that, developing education to teach people how to use their technology, so that they can think and feel better, so that they can act well.
Kelly Meerbott:
And when you say “act well”, so I’m stepping back into Kelly and that was beautiful. I mean, I have so many questions and I feel like your grandson. I keep wanting to say why, why, why? Right, and that’s probably what he does to you.
Kelly Meerbott:
Craig, tell me how young were you when you realized that you were called to be a teacher? Usually it shows up between eight and 14.
Craig DeLarge:
I’ll tell you that the realization didn’t occur to me until my mid thirties.
Kelly Meerbott:
Really?
Craig DeLarge:
But that realization came about as a function of observing a continuous thread that ran through a reflection on my life. I began teaching for the first time in middle school, and it was teaching Sunday school and Bible study in church. That-
Kelly Meerbott:
Did somebody select you for that or did you volunteer?
Craig DeLarge:
… My father was a deacon, who later became a pastor. And so when you’re in a church and you’re part of the leadership’s family, you kind of get volunteered for these things.
Kelly Meerbott:
Yep.
Craig DeLarge:
And then you discover whether you’re really good at it or not. For instance, teaching Sunday school and Bible study was good; singing on the choir, not so much.
Craig DeLarge:
What that led to is, when I went to college, I wrote for the school newspaper, which is a form of teaching. And I also became a tutor as a part of work study. Then when I finished undergrad, a couple of years out of undergrad I’m doing my corporate day work at that time, working in healthcare, my college advisor called me up, took me out to dinner and told me to go to the dean of the continuing education school and apply to be a professor. And so at this time, I’m about 24 or 25, right?
Kelly Meerbott:
Okay. Craig, I’m going to stop you. You’re at dinner, right, and this person says this to you, what are the thoughts and emotions that are rising up as this kind of message is being communicated to you?
Craig DeLarge:
Oh, I think that is the typical response when a hero is called on a journey, which is, “You must be crazy. I’m not qualified.”
Kelly Meerbott:
Yep. I’ve had those moments many times.
Craig DeLarge:
Which is usually evidence that the calling is an appropriate one.
Kelly Meerbott:
Right. And my mind goes, “No, no, no, no, no, no. Nope, nope, nope, I don’t want that.” And then it’s like-
Craig DeLarge:
Absolutely, absolutely. This is a typical behavior when you look at hero cycle stories actually.
Craig DeLarge:
What he said to me was, he says, “I get it, Craig.” I gave him all these excuses, right? I’m too busy. I don’t have a master’s degree, let alone a PhD. I don’t have time, so forth and so on. Anyway, he and I had a high degree of trust because he had mentored me very well for two of my four years of undergrad. And so he said, “Craig, just trust me. This is something I see in you that you don’t see in yourself. I want you to go and teach one course. Use my name, they’ll give you the opportunity.”
Craig DeLarge:
And by the way, it was at my alma mater, Philadelphia Textile, what’s now Philadelphia University, recently purchased by Thomas Jefferson University. That’s another [crosstalk 00:07:17]. Anyway, I moved on what he asked me to do, regardless of what I believed about myself. I taught that one course. It was marketing research. I remember being petrified because they didn’t train me, and they gave me a textbook and said, “Go teach this.” Right? No materials, nothing, right?
Kelly Meerbott:
Nothing like baptism by fire, huh?
Craig DeLarge:
Yeah. But here’s the thing. One class led to another and that then became an 18-year career of teaching continuing education, marketing, communications and strategy in four different universities here in the Philadelphia area. Doing it evenings and weekends and touching very many lives.
Craig DeLarge:
And now, all the time I was still in my day jobs, right? But this is something that when I first started doing it, I needed to pay bills. Later on, it was something that felt very meaningful to me. Now, understand that on a parallel track in my work, which I’ve had a 30 year career in the pharmaceutical industry up until a few years ago largely as a marketer and a digital health innovator, I’ve always gravitated towards the role of coaching, mentoring, teaching, training, whether it’s doing research to develop programs, developing those programs or delivering those programs.
Craig DeLarge:
And when I am most enthused… A lot of people don’t realize that the Greek root of the word enthusiasm is enthous.
Kelly Meerbott:
Enthous, God within.
Craig DeLarge:
Yes. Or another way of saying is to be in a dance with God-
Kelly Meerbott:
Oh my gosh, are you kidding me?
Craig DeLarge:
Otherwise thought of as being in flow, right? When I am most in flow, enthous, in a dance with God, is when I am teaching.
Craig DeLarge:
After we had our mental health crisis in my family, I joined the board of a local chapter and did a lot of training and education within that. And even now as we speak, The Digital Mental Health Project is about what, education. And I’m looking into opportunities actually right now to what teaches a public school teacher. And so I always come back to my core talent around teaching education and training and within the spheres or the areas of, and this is two of my life mantras, improving health and developing leadership.
Kelly Meerbott:
You’re just unbelievable. You’re one of the other few people that knows about enthous. I mean, for me, it was the divine within. I’ve never heard dance with God, but to me that gave me chills. You’ve literally been dancing with God from age whatever.
Kelly Meerbott:
And I was laughing because I was raised Catholic. I was a Eucharistic minister. I was elector, but yeah, tone deaf when it came to the choir.
Kelly Meerbott:
But there was something I picked up on, you and I have talked about this offline, and I want you to tell me about that defining moment with your family member, where you had that mental health crisis. Because I think now more than ever, especially, and you and I have talked about this, not at length the way I would like to, but we’ve talked about the mental health crisis that’s going on right now during COVID-19 and how you and I are seeing it calm. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been studying and getting certified and getting myself ready because I really truly believe in my gut and in this dance with God that the next wave of this crisis is going to be a mental health one.
Craig DeLarge:
Yeah. I agree. You hear more and more people talking about after flattening the COVID-19 curve, we need to flatten the mental health curve.
Kelly Meerbott:
Yep. Tell us about that moment with your family member where you had that crisis because I think a lot of people in our audience and in our networks have probably had the same thing, probably not to the extent that you did but have experienced this. And I want to aluminate it because I really don’t feel like there’s any shame in it. And the only way you and I can break this stigma together is by talking about it.
Craig DeLarge:
Yeah. I’ll tell you that this for me, since I’ve had time to reflect on it because I’ve been involved in this space now for more than 20 years, has been more of a slow dawning and a process of illumination than it’s been an event. But let me describe it as succinctly as I can.
Craig DeLarge:
Working in the pharma industry, I had the occasion over a number of years to work on drugs that were being released and made available to the market for depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, bipolar. And I remember having this moment at one point in my career where I was talking with a colleague. He was talking to me about the challenges of mental health in the African American community. And I happen to be an African American male, so obviously that’s why this is relevant. He was asking me, “Why is it that the African American community is in such denial about mental health?”
Craig DeLarge:
And I was explaining to him that it’s a real challenge when you’re socialized and in a society that sees you as damaged to begin with, and then asks you to be open about further damage that even that general population feels to be stigmatized. And he said to me, “You make a fair point, Craig, but understand that your denial as a community is not helping you. I empathize that there is a hazard in coming out of that denial, but it’s still killing you by not coming out of that denial.”
Craig DeLarge:
That was a seed planted. I listened to that, but didn’t think very much about it afterwards, right? Some years later, not many, more than five, less than 10, this crisis that hit my family, which just in working to respond to that crisis, and I will admit as a family member, I spent too many years in denial about what was happening, it came back to me what this colleague of mine has said years before. And so at the same time that I began thinking about what to do for my family, I also begin to think about what to do for my community.
Craig DeLarge:
Immediate response is that we went to the National Alliance of Mental Illnesses Family-to-Family education program, a 12-week program that helps families acclimate themselves to how they can care for their loved ones that are mentally ill. And that was an absolute lifesaver. It gave us good education and made us a part of a supportive community. Shortly after that, I-
Kelly Meerbott:
Craig, let me slow you down for one second. That’s NAMI, right? NAMI.org, you can find that.
Craig DeLarge:
Exactly.
Kelly Meerbott:
Yeah. Okay, I just wanted to make sure that if anybody’s going through something that they’re able to access that. Before you continue, and I’m sorry for interrupting, but what was the cost on that? I just want to make sure that people can prepare themselves if they need to access this kind of program, which I’m sure many people do.
Craig DeLarge:
It’s free. Most everybody will have a local NAMI chapter wherever they live in the country, and NAMI offers it free. And we can put information about it in the show notes actually so people could follow up. But I can not recommend the program enough, and I continue actually to be a part of that community.
Craig DeLarge:
And I’m actually, as we speak, working on figuring out how it might be delivered online actually, as we know that it can be a challenge for family… Well, everything’s a challenge now with COVID-19 to be physically together, but often we’re realizing it’s a challenge for families in rural areas to be able to get access to these kinds of materials. And we’re realizing more and more that being online, while it’ll never be as good as being physically in the same place, is better than nothing at all.
Kelly Meerbott:
Well, yeah. And I think, going back to your point about the stigma and the African American community, I mean, I think there are stigmas in other communities as well.
Craig DeLarge:
For sure. For sure.
Kelly Meerbott:
And the access to be able to do it online, it’s kind of… Okay, this is a terrible analogy, but it’s all I can think of right now, is it’s the difference between going to confession face to face with a priest versus going behind the screen. You know what I mean? There’s some anonymity there that takes a little bit of the shame away and allows people to open up who may not have gone face to face because they were too ashamed.
Craig DeLarge:
It’s uncanny you would mention that because here’s the thing. We’re finding that one of the unanticipated advantages of using digital technology in the mental health area is that the anonymity that can be provided by some of the services actually is allowing more people to get education, training and support than if it were only available to them face to face.
Kelly Meerbott:
That’s unbelievable.
Craig DeLarge:
That’s pretty uncanny, right?
Kelly Meerbott:
Yeah. It’s-
Craig DeLarge:
By the way, that’s not to say that digital uses do not also facilitate face to face. It’s just in saying that there’s always a percentage of the population that if face to face is their only option they’re going to suffer. But if you give them another option, they can get started there and hopefully, eventually move to deeper forms of therapy that give them even more aid but at least gets them started.
Kelly Meerbott:
Yeah, and the story I’ve been telling people after our first discussion was what you told me about how The Digital Mental Health Project is affecting and improving the religious community. And I’d love for you to speak to that a little bit, because I think especially now since you and I have admitted that we’ve been dancing with God for a long time, I think people are returning to their faith and choosing faith over fear because there’s so much uncertainty nowadays. Tell us about the stories you were telling me about the rabbis and the priests and the pastors and the imams, and what’s happening to their congregation through the use of The Digital Mental Health Project.
Craig DeLarge:
Yes. I’m going to connect that dot even as I continue this storyline, right?
Kelly Meerbott:
Beautiful. Thank you.
Craig DeLarge:
We got educated with NAMI Family-to-Family. I then joined the board of a local chapter of NAMI, the Pennsylvania Main Line Chapter. The president of that chapter had a vision around how they could do a better job of supporting communities in the inner city. As you know, Main Line Philadelphia is right on City Line Avenue, which is the border with West Philadelphia. And they had been thinking about how do we take this information we have and do a better job of getting it used by neighborhoods that are right across the city limit.
Craig DeLarge:
For over 30 years now, I’ve been a member of one of the largest churches in Philadelphia. One of the things that we found when we headed into our crisis is that our church was not equipped to help us with this crisis. Now, they’ve helped us with many things over the years. But when it came to mental health, they just weren’t equipped. There’s stigma. There’s a lack of understanding, a lack of compassion, lack of empathy, overly simplistic explanations for what can be done about it.
Craig DeLarge:
We actually went to the head of counseling at the church and co-developed and prototyped a program that allowed us to bring doctors, people with lived experience of mental illness and their family members, and members of our NAMI chapter into the church to do training. We had a version of it that was for the pastors and counselors, and then we had another version of it that was much shorter and more simple that was for the congregation. It was very influential. Because almost overnight, we saw the pastor go from not talking about mental health at all, to actually pretty regularly talking about the importance of mental health from the pulpit right alongside physical health, which is theme that was already being talked about.
Craig DeLarge:
We had such success with this program that we began going to other churches in the Christian tradition, but we also began to reach out to Jewish and Muslim congregations. And what we found is that we underestimate the degree to which communities of faith are very important pieces of the puzzle, first, how they maintain their mental health and then how they recover if they run into instances of mental illness.
Craig DeLarge:
And so I’m very gratified to see that while it’s not enough yet, there are more and more communities of faith that are understanding their role within the whole mental health ecosystem, alongside doctors, social workers, educators, and law enforcement, right? I think of those as kind of the… And I should mention caregivers, and then there’s the person who is suffering. But one of ways that mental health distinguishes itself from physical health is you’re usually not talking about law enforcement, teachers, social workers in communities of faith, when you talk about physical health. But when we talk about mental health, we definitely have to include those other players in order to give support and bring about recovery.
Kelly Meerbott:
Yeah. Well, and I think what fascinated me was you were talking to me about how people who are shut in that usually only see the head of, whether it’s the pastor or the imam or the rabbi, now they’re being able to access their services and now they’re seeing people they haven’t seen in years. Or the other thing that really gave me chills and goosebumps was when you were saying that people who have moved away from the faith community, and whether it’s out of town or out of the country, are now being able to access their faith community that they were connected to, that they weren’t able to do before.
Kelly Meerbott:
I mean, in my mind, Craig, this is a whole new world and a whole new way for these faith communities to still stay connected even if they’re physically apart. And that was something else I wanted you to address was the misnaming of social distancing, which we can get to. But I’d really love for you to speak a little bit more about how members of the community that maybe weren’t able to go to the physical church or synagogue now can and what that’s doing for the community at large.
Craig DeLarge:
Yeah. Thank you for reminding me of that. Yes, I’ll take these in order. Very early on in this crisis, it occurred to me that the terminology social distancing is not quite correct. Because social connectedness, we’re capable of that as human beings whether we are physically in the same space or not. We’ve been doing that for centuries, first with letters, then with telephones and now with electronics, right? And so I actually wrote a blog post about this, that we should be calling this physical distancing, not social distancing, and we should be emphasizing and really retraining ourselves. And I think we are out of necessity, training ourselves in how to maintain social connection of mid-physical distance.
Craig DeLarge:
Now, one of the things I’ve been busying myself with as I’ve been sheltering in place and thinking about how I could still be of service is helping local congregations and leaders of mental health support groups to use Zoom as a way of alleviating isolation and helping people to stay connected, not as good as physically, but better than nothing as I said earlier.
Craig DeLarge:
And so, as I’ve been conducting these meetings, it’s been really fascinating to me to see, again, another unanticipated outcome of using the technology, is that you can be on, for instance, there’s a local Quaker meeting that I help out with this. And so people come into the Quaker meeting and you see everyone, what I call the panopticon, you can see all these faces at once, right? And then suddenly someone says, “Ms. Jones, you’re here. I haven’t seen you in months. How are you?” And then Ms. Jones, you can see from the video that she’s in a nursing home or she’s bedridden at her home and she’s not been able to get to the meeting or the church or the synagogue for a long period of time.
Craig DeLarge:
And when you go to church, we all know that in the program or somewhere in the church or temple, there will be a list of what we call the sick and shut in. We also know that hardly anybody goes to see the sick and shut in, but the pastors or the priests, right, or the rabbi or the imam. But what Zoom has allowed is people who were sick and shut in, disabled, or maybe at a long physical distance, members that have had to move to other parts of the country or the world who’ve gotten cut off from the congregation, it’s allowed them to be a part of gathering.
Craig DeLarge:
And it has been so magical for me to witness this unintended outcome. So much so that I believe that even when we get beyond this, and hopefully that will be sooner rather than later, we will move from physical meetings to what I call hybrid meetings, right? A hybrid meeting is one where we’ll physically come together, but we’ll get a big screen television, right, and we’ll have a Zoom connection, and we will allow people who could not get to the physical gathering to still participate.
Kelly Meerbott:
Which I just think… I mean, when you told me that, I thought, “Oh my God, what a great thing.” Because you think about, one of the things that I did, like you, and this is something you and I connected on, is how can I serve, how can I serve, how can I serve? Because I think both of us were born servant leaders with servant hearts. And one of the things I did was I adopted a grandparent, who’s in an assisted living facility, and we talk via Zoom.
Kelly Meerbott:
And what I love is, I was raised Italian Catholic so that means a multi-generational household. And my last grandmother, my Grammy, who was the head of our… She was the matriarch of our family, passed on January 1, 2016. I’ve really yearned for that kind of grandparent connection, and this unintended outcome, this benefit from this crisis, and let’s go to the root of that word. Greek for that is to sift. It’s really sifted some unnecessary things out of my life and brought in these beautiful things.
Kelly Meerbott:
And one of the things I loved about talking to you was, I’ve had my own mental health crisises, both personally, both professionally, and then as an observer within my family. And my grandparents were in their nineties, but they were still experiencing sundowners and dementia and Parkinson’s. And we’ve had clinical depression in our family, which is why I was just so drawn to the fact that this device that we know overall has been maybe demonized too much as an addiction can be transformed into something that could be a connection. Not only connecting me to you, but also connecting me to better mental health.
Craig DeLarge:
That is right. Can I share an analogy with you?
Kelly Meerbott:
I would love it. I love your analogies. You can share whatever you want, Craig, the floor is yours.
Craig DeLarge:
When we do our workshops, which we call Stress Tech, how to use digital technology to achieve healthy stress levels, we talk about the idea that technology is just a tool. Like hammer, you can break a window or you can build a house. The difference is about the intention and the skillfulness of the person who’s holding the hammer. And what it is, is that, and this is not unusual, it’s typical that when we get new technologies as human beings, we, out of a lack of skillfulness, will harm ourselves with them, until we learn and develop skill to make better use of them.
Craig DeLarge:
And so again, as you said earlier, you hear so much about how our smartphones are damaging us. We hear at The Digital Mental Health Project really want to have an impact on helping people to understand and learn how to use their smartphones to help their health, not damage there health.
Kelly Meerbott:
I love that. I really love that.
Craig DeLarge:
If you’re going to build the house of health versus breaking the window of health, you might say.
Kelly Meerbott:
And I hope you’ll allow me to be one of your carpenters. Because I mean, like I said, and I think I fall in love with people’s energy. And when I say love, I don’t mean romantic love. I mean-
Craig DeLarge:
I understand.
Kelly Meerbott:
… admiration and respect for people. And that was just clear for me because I mean mental health is so, so important. And I think one of the benefits that COVID-19 has done is it started a dialogue and started kind of chipping away at the stigma, which is really great.
Kelly Meerbott:
But going back to an earlier answer you gave me about behaving well and acting well and thinking well. You’ve had this beautiful career, starting with your dad, the deacon, and then just kind of evolving into this teaching education path into like working with pharma. You’ve experienced all kinds of leadership, I’m sure, good, bad and ugly.
Craig DeLarge:
Yes.
Kelly Meerbott:
From your opinion, Craig, and when we’re operating in an ideal state so that’s what I’m referring to, what are some of the behaviors in your opinion that define great leadership or what are the behaviors of great leaders? And do you have an example of that?
Craig DeLarge:
Oh yeah, certainly. I like to go back to the root, or I guess you’d call it the quintessential characteristic of leadership, which is influence, which again is a tool. You can break things with it, you can fix things with it. And so, there are no leaders without followers and you only get followers by being influential. Good leaders are those that can connect with people and convert those people into followers. You might say, that’s how you become a leader, but then there is, how do you maintain leadership, right?
Craig DeLarge:
And so, I think that when I’ve seen myself be a leader, my best as a leader, and those leaders that I most have valued and benefited from have those that have a sense of mission and purpose, right? We recognize we’ve got objectives to meet. It might be making money and being more efficient in these sorts of things, but what underlies that is a genuine concern for and desire to solve some problem. And very often that problem is couched in some personal, often tragic, life experience that inspires and enlivens that purpose and meaning for that person.
Craig DeLarge:
The next thing is often authenticity. In many ways, authenticity is anti-hypocrisy. Now, to be human is to be hypocritical. We can’t avoid it, but we can redeem it, right? Good leaders, one might say that the mark of a poor leader is when they’re a hypocrite, they’re in denial about it. The mark of a good leader is when they’re a hypocrite, their authenticity compels them to acknowledge it, learn from it and then move on to be better as a result of it.
Kelly Meerbott:
God, you’re so eloquent. One of the things I say to my clients when I’m working with them is mistakes can be forgiven coverups can’t.
Craig DeLarge:
Exactly.
Kelly Meerbott:
Yeah, which is exactly what you’re saying. And honestly, Craig, I could talk to you for hours and I hope you’ll come back on Hidden Human. But just to kind of like wrap up this piece of it, if anybody needs to reach out to you or reach The Digital Mental Health Project, how could they do that?
Craig DeLarge:
Okay. our website is at digitalmentalhealthproject.com. I’m also happy to get emails from people at craig@wiseworking.com.
Kelly Meerbott:
Okay.
Craig DeLarge:
We are very much moved and compelled to make a real impact around this idea of increasing literacy in the society when it comes to using technology to preserve mental health and achieve healthy stress levels. And so we’re happy to work with individuals and organizations, whoever can benefit from what we’re producing, and we hope to hear from people.
Kelly Meerbott:
Yeah. This is one of the reasons why I wanted you to be on Hidden Human so I could spread the word too, because I think it’s so important. But we usually wrap up with four rapid fire kind of fun questions. Are you up for that?
Craig DeLarge:
Shoot.
Kelly Meerbott:
Okay. what’s your favorite comfort food?
Craig DeLarge:
Cheese steak.
Kelly Meerbott:
Mm. Okay, I’m not going to put you on the spot and ask you who’s the best in Philly.
Craig DeLarge:
No, I can tell you. Dalessandro’s.
Kelly Meerbott:
Oh, okay. Where are they?
Craig DeLarge:
Roxborough, East Falls.
Kelly Meerbott:
All right. Okay, Dalessandro’s. Well, I’m going to have to try you. I haven’t tried you. Okay. What books are on your nightstand?
Craig DeLarge:
A book on my Nightstand right now is Charles Eisenstein’s Sacred Economics.
Kelly Meerbott:
Ooh, okay. What songs are in your playlist?
Craig DeLarge:
John Coltrane’s Love Supreme.
Kelly Meerbott:
Ooh, that’s a good one. I’m going to have to go back and listen to that one again. Thank you so much. Okay, last question. What are you most grateful for in this moment right now?
Craig DeLarge:
Community.
Kelly Meerbott:
Mm, mm, yeah. And then there’s one other question that’s been insisting in my mind, which is obviously God’s way of talking to me. If you had advice for your great, great, great, great, great grandchildren listening to this podcast years from now, what would you say to them?
Craig DeLarge:
Be of loving service.
Kelly Meerbott:
You’re such a gift. Thank you for being you. Thank you for being vulnerable and real. And to our listeners, it’s our intention, Craig’s and mine, and I hope he’s okay with me speaking for him, that this podcast inspires you to go out and connect and have authentic conversations to deepen those bonds in your life. Thank you so much and make it a great day.
Speaker 1:
You’ve been listening to Hidden Human, the stories behind the business leader. If you’ve enjoyed the episode, please subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. To learn more about Kelly and the services she provides, visit youloudandclear.com. Thanks so much for listening and we’ll be back soon with a new episode.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/toggle][/toggles][/vc_column][/vc_row]
