BC Centre For Ability With Josh Myers, Executive Director

Dive into the inspiring story of the BC Centre for Ability, a beacon of hope for individuals with disabilities. In this insightful episode, Douglas Nelson speaks with Josh Myers, the Executive Director of the BC Centre for Ability, about the organization’s journey from its origins in the 1960s to its current role in promoting inclusion and providing vital services. Josh details how the organization has adapted over the decades, including its expansion into new areas and its role in the Foundry Burnaby project, which aims to address mental health needs in the community. Don’t miss this episode highlighting the BC Centre for Ability’s crucial work and its positive impact on individuals with disabilities.

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BC Centre For Ability With Josh Myers, Executive Director

BC Centre For Ability

In this episode, we have Joshua Myers. He is the Executive Director of the BC Centre for Ability, an award-winning organization providing a full spectrum of services to children, youth, and adults with disabilities in their families across British Columbia. Josh is a social worker by training. He serves on a number of boards in his profession and our sector.

He was named one of Vancouver’s Top 40 Under 40 in 2020. He’s a husband and a dad. He also trains and competes internationally in the sport of triathlon transitioning to running the Boston Marathon. Josh has represented Canada at the Triathlon Age-Group World Championships in Abu Dhabi and Hamburg.

In our conversation, he talks about what it takes to be a leader and what it takes to come back to an organization where you worked as a service provider now coming back as the executive director. One of the things I want you to understand is Josh talks about the importance of leadership, and he does not use a single buzzword. He talks about the purpose of his organization, the purpose of his work as a leader, and the role the triathlon training plays in that leadership journey. It is a fascinating conversation with a fascinating leader. Please enjoy my conversation with Josh Myers.

 

Welcome to the show, Josh.

Thanks so much, Doug. I’m excited.

I’ve had the privilege of getting to know you and the great work that you are leading there at the BC Centre for Ability, but our readers may not be as familiar with your organization. Tell us a little bit about your organization and who you serve.

The BC Centre for Ability was founded in the ’60s just after the de-institutionalization movement of persons with disabilities, where the real emphasis at that point was getting folks with disabilities that historically had been, for all intents and purposes, locked away and separated from the community back into community living and fulfilling lives in the community. Our organization was started then by a group of families of kids with disabilities who even after deinstitutionalization felt like there was a lot of work that needed to be done in the community to help with inclusion. Also, to help change the narrative of kids with disabilities as kids that couldn’t to kids that could.

That’s how our organization was started. It was originally known as the Vancouver Neurological Society. We were located on Broadway in Vancouver, and then as our program started to grow, we started to serve more kids across the Lower Mainland and also a couple of provincial programs. We rebranded in the ’90s to the BC Centre for Ability. We’re now located on King’s Way. We have our own head office here. We also have a number of satellite offices, and we serve over 5,000 British Columbians with disabilities every year.

It is a remarkable story of growth within your organization to meet the needs of the community. One of the things that jumps out to anyone who comes into that great building you have there on King’s Way is that your organization lives the ethos of being mission-driven. Anyone that we speak with or had the chance to speak with, talks about how the organization is laser-focused on being there for a purpose. As a CEO, how do you keep that focus on being mission-driven? How do you keep that a part of every day for anyone that walks through those doors?

That’s a great question. For us, the community tells us where they need us to be helpful. We get that input directly from the people we serve in some ways because they’re always telling us, “This is how it’s going for us in the community. This is what inclusion does or doesn’t look like for me at school. This is what inclusion does or doesn’t look like for me when trying to find a job. This is what inclusion does or doesn’t look like for me in the community in general.”

We get a lot of input from the people we serve about how the services that we’re providing and others in the community are helpful but we also get a lot of input around where there needs to be some additional focus placed. That’s helpful. Our staff are also good at reminding us why it is that they work here and the difference that they’re making every single day. That alone is incredibly helpful. We also look at trends. We look at what’s going on around us. We look at how society and beliefs are changing.

This notion of inclusion is something we’ve been doing for years but has become at the forefront of a lot of conversations right now. Inclusion in all ways, but certainly in the work that we do around disability, specifically around things like school, human rights, the right for a child to get an equal education, be in the classroom, make friends, and not be separated or not be excluded from school. Also, the people that we serve who want to be working and want to be contributing their talents to the workforce have maybe historically been excluded from the job market.

I think as the environment around us is changing, we’re also able to adapt the services that we provide. Our mission’s always been to promote inclusion, but what inclusion promotion looks like in 2024 is a bit different than what inclusion promotion looks like in the sixties. It’s all important, but we are lucky in that as an organization, we are always reminded of where we’re going as inclusion progresses and what that means. Also, the people we serve remind us very often where they need us to be placing additional focus in terms of how we support them to live fulfilling lives in the community.

What inclusion promotion looks like in 2024 is different from what it looked like in the 60s. Click To Tweet

It’s remarkable and breathtaking in the scope as it relates to inclusion broadly. How do you and your colleagues in the organization make the hard choices around what services we’re going to be able to provide on a sustainable basis? Certainly, you’ve got an unquenchable demand for your services. How do you prioritize and itemize the services that you’re going to be able to provide?

I think for us, we know where we’re strong. We know that therapy services are a core group of the services that we were founded on. That’s providing physiotherapy services, occupational therapy, speech therapy, counseling, and some of those fundamental services that kids with disabilities and certainly, as you grow into adults require in order to be able to lead filling and meaningful lives as well. Our bread and butter is providing those kinds of services, and we know we do them well.

A lot of our staff are professors at the schools of therapy services. They do research, teach, and take students. They’re at the forefront of research and progression in those fields. We know that’s something we do well. We look at how can we do that and grow that, and then there are things that are adjacent to those therapy services. Counseling is an area that we’ve grown in because we know that as a family member of a child with a disability whether you were born with a disability or whether you’ve acquired one through our brain injury services or even as an adult.

What disability looks like when you’re 4, 5, or 6 does change in terms of your needs as a 25-year-old or 26-year-old. However, regardless of that, those who are caring for and supporting those with disabilities, or that the people with disabilities themselves often do at different points in time, want to speak to somebody about what this journey means. It’s different and it’s sometimes scary. There’s this opportunity for them to start to think about who am I as a person with a disability. What does this mean for me? What does my future look like? How do I tell people that I have, and come to terms with that?

One of the things that we’ve grown our support in is the counseling side. It’s helping to support families come to terms with a diagnosis or somebody with a disability start to come to terms around, “How does this impact my identity and the story I want to tell about myself?” Those are things that we’ve started to grow. Also, the other area that we’ve grown is in providing these services across the province.

As a Lower Mainland-based agency, we’ve been asked to support other underserved parts of the province in similar ways that we serve the Lower Mainland community. I think for us, where we’ve limited our scope of growth has been going way outside of that type of service provision. Where we have grown is doing what we were founded to do, but doing it beyond just Vancouver. Going into other Lower Mainland communities and even helping out across the province.

That’s where we’ve achieved growth in understanding what we do well and doing more of it elsewhere versus trying to be everything to everyone. Recognizing that we have lots of partners out there in the community who are good at what they do, and through partnerships, we can probably provide a fuller scope of support. However, what we don’t want to do is compromise the integrity and quality of the services that we know we’re good at by trying to do all kinds of things at the same time.

It sounds like a remarkable discipline would be required to keep a focus on that because of adjacency, “We do these counseling services. Maybe if we just added this.” As executive director, how do you approach keeping that tighter focus on those therapy services and counseling that you were talking about?

As soon as you go into employment, then you start talking about housing. As soon as you go into housing, maybe there’s food insecurity. The snowball can grow for sure. I think, for us, it’s about looking at who our partners are and the communities that we serve because we’ve been around for many years. We’ve also had the good fortune of developing strong community partners where we know we can lean on them to collectively provide for the community in a way that doesn’t have us necessarily feeling thirsty or hungry to get into spaces that we haven’t historically been in. It’s not to say we’re not innovative or thoughtful or wouldn’t consider expanding our scope, but I think because we have those strong relationships, it just feels right to strengthen those instead of try and move into those areas.

Strengthening is a challenge across our sector, particularly in organizations that are delivering health-related services as it relates to recruitment and retention of employees. I know that’s been one of the top areas of focus for you and your colleagues to make sure that you’re building a culture that prioritizes employee satisfaction and keeps them as employees. How have you approached that and how has it changed over the last couple of years?

For us, we know the professions that make up the bulk of the services that we provide are historically difficult-to-fill type positions like physiotherapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, early childhood educators, and social workers. These are in-demand professions and schools across the province and even across the nation are having a difficult time creating enough seats to graduate enough people to fill these roles and we do compete, if that’s the right word, with health authorities. More understood and known entities in our communities for those types of positions.

For us, it’s been about trying to create a culture here where you can do that great work, but there’s a uniqueness to working with our organization and working in the community than perhaps a traditional, let’s say, health authority or hospital-based job. Also, it’s not to say that those jobs aren’t important either, but for us, what we try and promote is you’re working with clients in the places that are the most meaningful to them.

If you’re a physiotherapist, one of the best places to assess how a child’s doing or properly understand a child’s priorities is to go to the playground with them where they spend most of their time or where being able to do the monkey bars like the rest of their friends. Also, that being so important to them is well understood when you’re there at that playground at their school and seeing what it is that they want to be doing, which is difficult to do when you invite them into a more clinical setting.

Also, you get to seek some of those dynamics. I think that there’s a uniqueness to the work that we do in the community that I think promotes a deeper level of connection between our staff and the people we work with. We have a lot of flexibility and autonomy in the work that we do here, a smaller organization. There’s an ability for folks to be able to put forward ideas and try different things. I think we have created a compelling reason to work here.

Once people are here, the relationships that they build with their colleagues are important. There’s a sense of shared accountability to our mission that people start to incorporate into the work that they do that I think is unique in a smaller health-oriented organization and maybe perhaps a larger health organization. We’ve developed some partnerships with UBC and others.

They allow us to bring students in and introduce the option of working in a community healthcare nonprofit to students in those early days when they’re contemplating their futures so that we are on the radar when they go to apply for their first job or even their second job or third job. They know who we are. They know the uniqueness of the services that we provide and what working in the community has to offer in terms of advantages.

It’s not hard to imagine why someone would want to come work at your organization and why they might stay. I’m curious. You mentioned the UBC connection and getting students to be a part of your organization as a part of their education. Have there been any other deliberate strategies that you and your colleagues on the leadership table have undertaken to make the BC Centre for Ability the place to be?

We have great ambassadors as staff and our staff are great out in the community talking about the work that we’re doing. In the health professions, that is an effective recruitment strategy. When you know someone who works somewhere, you’re more likely to go there or consider it at least seriously. That’s one thing. We’ve tried to do a lot of stuff around our center to try and promote working here as being a viable option.

We’re not too far from SkyTrain. We’ve got free parking. We offer flexible working arrangements and all of that stuff that I think a lot of people are starting to pick up on. One strategy that we did implement, which I think has worked well for us is the physiotherapy team here, let’s say in particular, created a physiotherapy student-led clinic. That’s essentially where final-year physiotherapy students can come and work here at the center under supervision.

It fulfills two things. One is it allows us to introduce physiotherapists to our organization and the community, working in the community, but it also allows us to serve more kids because we can put them through clinical services with a physiotherapy student instead of waiting on a waitlist. It allows us to increase our capacity to serve and also, introduces physiotherapy students to the organization and to providing services in a community-based organization.

Partnership With The Foundry

There are a lot of great purpose and education-related reasons to come join your organization. I think most of our readers, if they’re thinking about coming, all they heard was free parking. You mentioned partnerships in the community a couple of times already in our conversation, and there’s one in particular that I’m hoping you can share some news on. Tell us about that project or that partnership that you started with the Foundry and not just what you’re going to do, but how that project came to be.

We are so excited about Foundry Burnaby. Foundry, for those that don’t know, is a fairly well-known youth and young adult mental health substance use and public health program at this point that’s geared towards that population. It was 2016 when they launched their first few sites and they’ve grown since then by adding communities every couple of years. It’s been a few years since Foundry’s added a few new communities.

We found out in January that Burnaby was going to be one of the ten new communities announced to hopefully open in 2027, and that our organization was going to be the lead agency to make Foundry a reality for the community of Burnaby. We’re so excited about that. Burnaby as a city in the lower mainland is one of the last cities to have a Foundry resource, despite the fact that we know through the data that it’s probably a community that needs it, not the most, but has a high degree of need for that particular service based on population, growth, and things like that.

We’re excited about that. How that came to be was a group of community organizations recognizing the fact that there was this need and this gap. Seeing the fact that our youth and young adults were having to travel to different municipalities to get this important service. Also, recognizing that with investments in things like housing, transportation, and all these other infrastructure like schools, there was this real missing piece of how are we supporting youth and young adults mental health and being in this community.

Also, this desire for a number of us to sit down and say, “How do we get Foundry’s attention, draw that attention to this community, and be able to provide a compelling reason for why they should choose Burnaby as one of the next communities to bring Foundry to.” We’re proud. We’ve got partnerships with Fraser Health, and the Burnaby Division of Family Practice.

We’ve got partnerships with MOSAIC and other organizations that provide language services, immigration services to new Canadians, and refugee services. Also, traditional public health services, mental health services, and disability services like what we provide. A real cross-section of services that already exist in Burnaby are going to come together to deliver some of these under Foundry, but then also add a lot of much, much needed mental health substance use services as well to that community that currently doesn’t exist.

We had Steve Mathias on the show last season talking about Foundry, what it looks like, and how they partner with organizations like yours. It is a remarkable story to have that one front door for the community. I look forward to watching that partnership roll out in Burnaby with your organization and the lead there.

Role Of Philanthropy

One of the challenges we see a lot in our work, and not just in British Columbia, but across the country, is organizations that are providing these vital services are largely funded by the government, but the government doesn’t fund everything. There’s the margin of excellence. There’s the flexibility of funding that you need to lead an organization. I’m curious. What role does philanthropy play in the BC Centre for Ability and how do you talk to donors about their perception of the work that you and your colleagues do?

We have a long history of engaging the community and the community providing generously to the organization. The fact that we are in the building that we’re in on King’s Way. We moved here in 1993 because we undertook a pretty significant capital campaign, which allowed us to move to this building. We now own this building, which offers an unbelievable amount of financial flexibility to the organization to allow us to redirect some of those funds that would’ve otherwise been used toward getting this space back into programming to augment, as you say, the baseline funding that the government often provides.

We have that big example back in the ’90s and since then, we’ve grown our donor base. Those who contributed in the ’90s continue to support us because as they drive by our building every single day or once a week, they see this material thing that they worked so hard to help us acquire as an organization. I think that’s my responsibility as an executive director to recognize that I’m here at this point in time and it’s my job to remind our staff that maybe weren’t here back then the fact that we’re here because in large part of a group of community members that gave very generously of their time and financial resources to be able to make it so that we have the ability to continue to do this work in Vancouver.

The work that we try and involve our donors in is helping them understand where the gaps still lie and where their support is. We can implement innovative strategies and programmings to fill that gap with ultimately the goal of reflecting that back to our funders and asking them and demanding of them an opportunity to advocate for longer-term funding.

A great example is our outreach program. As I mentioned, as a Lower Mainland-based organization, we’re often asked to different parts of the province at different times in need to fill a gap. Whether it’s physiotherapists in a remote area, or the province who leave for whatever reason, leaving this gap in physiotherapy services where our staff would’ve gone up there and provided short-term support.

Our donors allowed us to do that work because when that physio leaves the City of Richmond, let’s say, to go to Haida Gwaii for a month, the kids in Richmond who need that support wouldn’t otherwise get it. We used that sort of donor support to help us be able to do some of those outreach services. That grew and grew over the last number of years so much so that we were in a position where we presented to the government this growing outreach program and the need that the province has not as a permanent solution.

People from Vancouver coming to different parts of the province provide that support, but just a recognition that this is a reality in a vast province that we work in where we’re always going to have gaps in skills in some of these areas. Also, how can we leverage the workforce of an urban center in the short term to fill those gaps?

We provided, a compelling enough case that they’ve now provided us stable funding to hire eight people permanently to form a pediatric outreach team, which we’ve launched. That’s a great example of the donor community coming together to allow us to try something somewhat experimentally to meet a temporary need. Where once we started doing that work and we recognized that the need was much greater, we could take that data, provide it to the government, and say, “With X amount of dollars, you can help us serve X number of children in these five communities.”

For the government, in my experience, and I don’t know Doug if you’ve had the same, but when you present them with the problem and a compelling solution, they’re much more willing to listen because you’ve done a lot of the work for them. At that point, it’s about, “How much is this going to cost? If the amount is palatable, then we’re willing to consider it,” which is exactly what happened to us. To give you a pretty concrete example of some of the support that the donate that our donors have provided to date, it’s not only temporary support, but it also allows us to show back to the government who is our stable funder what their investments might be able to help support in the long run.

I can only imagine how happy donors who supported that pilot or that innovation were when they heard that the government had stepped forward and was going to be providing that funding. That’s why many donors give just to find a new way to do something to support an organization looking for innovative ways to deliver services. To have that funded and then the government step in and provide those dollars is a complete win all around.

I think so and then those same donors because there’s never a shortage of needs. There’s another program that we might want to start or there’s another gap that we see where we might want to see if we could start something in a pilot phase similar to the outreach program. Also, they may be more willing to donate to that program as well because they know that our goal is not necessarily to have them as the sustainable funding source, but to use it as a way to prove not only a challenge but also a viable solution to that challenge.

They also know that our next step is inevitably gone be, “Let’s find sustainability for this if it’s working.” I think that also takes a bit of pressure off of donors because they donate to one program. I think for some of our donors, the risk you run perhaps is to create a funding mechanism by which every year the program hinges on them donating, which for some people that’s okay, but for others there’s a real pressure there that may prohibit some from donating even to begin with. I think for us to be able to demonstrate our commitment to if something’s working, we’re going go and search out more stable funding sources is one way that we take some pressure off of people that would want to donate.

There’s also the issue that I’m sure you’ve seen other colleagues. I won’t say you’ve fallen into this trap, but others may have in other parts of their organizations where donors fund 100% of a new program for a couple of years and then it’s 80%, and then it’s 60%, and then it’s 50% and you’re needing to divert core resources to make up that balance.

You then end up with a situation where this philanthropy is drawing away your ability to deliver your core services. It becomes one of those gifts that keeps on taking rather than providing that margin of excellence. You’ve done a good job of focusing on where philanthropy can have the biggest impact on the purpose and the services you’re providing without straying into the realm of having it drive the ultimate overall priorities of your organization.

Josh’s Leadership Journey

I want to switch and talk about you, which I was trying to be subtle with that transition because what I’ve learned about you so far is you don’t like to do that. We’re going to do it a little bit. One of the stories is when you get executive directors and CEOs in the sector sitting around a table talking about how you get into this sector and you’ll hear stories wide-ranging from, “I had no idea this was a job. I didn’t know, and then I just fell into it.”

People now younger than me, I won’t comment on your vintage, but that started from my first year of university, “I want to be this executive director of a social profit organization one day.” What drew you initially to this work of community service and social work, which was your academic background? What drew you to the work initially? Just start there and then I’ll follow up.

I come from a family of helpers. I come from a family of people who have occupied helping professions. I, myself, as a youth, benefited from counseling. I grew up with pretty debilitating anxiety, phobias, panic disorder, and things like that. At a very young age, I came to recognize the importance of having someone to talk to about that.

I developed a belief about myself that was quite limiting. I had an experience getting into university, which I never thought I would be able to do. I had to write a letter to the university, basically pleading with them to take me. I am not a great student. I got to university and I was able to redefine myself. Nobody knew who I was so I didn’t need to go there as the nervous guy that can’t get Cs.

I got to go there and almost reinvent myself. I started to do well in school. I started to take psychology because I was curious about some of the things that were going on for me personally or had been going on for me but also as I was doing that, I started to do well. I got pretty good grades and all of a sudden, this identity that I had created for myself until I was in my early twenties, I started to poke holes in a way that I thought was interesting and empowering.

I also got to a place where at the end of my Bachelor’s degree, I needed to make a decision about whether to go to grad school for Psychology. I had a mentor who pitched social work to me. I think because he understood the way my brain worked and it was more systems-focused instead of individual-focused. I was way more curious about how systems and structures lead people to experience the world in different ways versus issues being inherent to humans.

I did end up going into social work, and that was a career choice or an academic choice that aligned way more with how my brain understood problems in society and also opportunities in society. Once I got there, I knew I wanted to work in healthcare. I knew that was a passion of mine. I didn’t know social work could lead you down that way until I met with this mentor who was able to change my mind in that regard. Healthcare is the biggest employer of the social workers sector. I didn’t know that until I started.

I fell in love with the profession. I was lucky to have some great mentors and the rest is history in terms of how I became a social worker. How I went into healthcare is I started to do practicums and placements at Children’s Hospital in Halifax. I got to see the impact of that work on people in the healthcare setting.

In 2010, when it became time to decide where I wanted to live and be for a period of time, there was this organization called the BC Centre for Ability which had a vacancy in our brain injury rehab program. At the time, I was working at Halifax in a brain injury unit so there was a synergy there in terms of the types of people we would be serving. That’s why I made the move. I moved from Halifax to Vancouver in 2010 to take a job at the BC Centre for Ability. That was my first job in the Lower Mainland.

You left the BC Centre for Ability and then came back. How different was the organization when you came back to it?

It was different and the same, which is the opportunity I had in front of myself. I left to go to a large health authority, which was great. It was an amazing opportunity. I got to experience what it’s like to lead a large organization with lots of resources available to you. When I came back, I was excited to take what I learned while I was away for those five years or so and apply it here. I think there was an opportunity when I came back to accelerate and modernize the organization and I took advantage of that.

I never thought I would be an executive director per se coming out of university. I thought when I landed this identity as a social worker that it was going to be it. I found myself but again, I wouldn’t say self-limiting at that point, but I started to realize when I was going to school, I had redefined myself as an academic. As somebody who was smart and could offer something to the world and maybe a little bit more courageous as a young adult than perhaps I was as a teen, I started to take more calculated risks with my career.

I started to think more of myself. I started to think bigger about what my impact could be in a way that I never would’ve done as a teenager or a young adult. I never would’ve put myself in those scenarios. I think as I grew in my career, I started to see that the risks I was taking and how I was stretching myself into these roles were coming back to me in a way that was so fulfilling.

I started to think more and more of myself as somebody who did have something to offer as a leader from a leadership perspective and could come back to this organization and make a positive difference. That’s what I did, and I’m happy I did it. I think it came back at the right time and I’ve been able to make a pretty significant impact in the short time that I’ve been here. I’m excited to see what the next few years look like as well.

Take us back a little bit. When you come back to an organization, and we’ve had a couple of guests who have had a similar experience of being with an organization for a number of years, leaving, and then coming back as the leader of the organization. What was it like when you put your hand on the door that first day back and walked through and you said, “I’m Josh. I’m the boss.” It’s probably not how you phrased it.

It’s exactly how I phrased it. It was odd. I don’t know, Doug, in your career if this has happened to you, but I hadn’t been gone that long. It’d only been five years so a number of the staff that were here that were my colleagues were now people that reported to me. I do think that there was this transition period for me and probably for them where again, we had to redefine the relationship a bit. I think for me, it was very familiar. The place hadn’t changed all that much, but for other people, I think it was probably even more jarring to all of a sudden have their former colleague be the executive director.

I think that’s the interesting thing about leadership. As you grow as a leader, you still see yourself as yourself. You’re still who you are, but with other people, you have to be conscious of the perception that maybe others have as well. Also, the power and influence that you hold just by virtue of having that title. I think the biggest thing for me, is as familiar as it was for me, I had to honor and recognize the fact that this is a significant change for those who were here over that period of time.

As you grow as a leader, you remain true to yourself, but you must also be aware of how others perceive you and the power and influence that comes with your title. Click To Tweet

It’s because prior to me, the long-term had retired, and she had been here a very long time. Even though there’s a familiarity with the face, there was still this unknown of, “How would I lead? What would this organization look like? How would I make that transition?” and trying to redefine those relationships was maybe a bit challenging, but I think somewhat short-lived, I would say. We then had the pandemic about a year later, so that took all the focus off of that.

As a first-time executive director, what surprised you most about the role?

What surprises me most, I think is the impact. The sheer volume of decisions or influence you’re called upon to make on a daily basis and it’s never lost on me the significance of this job. Every decision you make, consultation, and coaching you provide people has an impact. It either has an impact on how they lead because they see how you lead, and there’s a trickledown effect there, or how you show up in the community as an ambassador for the organization and the perception that people have by virtue of connecting with you to the work that you do in your organization.

Also, just the day-to-day decisions you make and the difficult decisions. The organizational CEOs and EDs in this sector have to make every single day about resources, where to allocate them, things like wait lists, who to serve, and how to prioritize. For me, the thing that was the most surprising and perhaps the most challenging is just the volume of things that you have to weigh in on, decide on, and have an impact on a regular basis in a sector that is providing pretty significant services to vulnerable people.

However, I think having that awareness every single day is also incredibly important. As much as it’s a challenge or as much as it’s a big surprise, I think for me, if I ever lost the understanding of that as being a reality, I feel like I would probably be less effective in my role. I think it’s my understanding of that on a regular basis, that’s helpful for me in terms of how I lead. I think the other thing that was a bit interesting came from a large organization, I was a director at a health authority and I think there were 45 of us. There were 12 executive directors, 8 vice presidents, a CEO, and then a board.

There were lots of people that if things got tricky that I could bounce ideas off of. I could punt big issues too and be like, “I’m here to support you, but it’s all yours now.” As the ED, the ball’s in your court. The buck stops with you. There is this notion of that and also, sometimes how isolating or potentially isolating that can be as an executive director. I think for me, it’s been important to surround myself with other leaders in the sector to provide some of that support to each other because it can be pretty challenging and isolating to be grappling with all of these things. Also, doing that somewhat in isolation.

It’s lonely at the top as they say, but it is that awareness of the impact that keeps people fresh and vibrant in their roles. I have another theory about you, Josh if you’ll permit me for a second. How do leaders stay sharp? How do they stay at the top of their game? You’ve given some great answers. The subtext of a lot of what you said is the humility that you bring to your leadership and that servant role that you have, that helping role that you have in your approach to leadership.

I’m curious what the role of training for triathlon is in your leadership style. For our readers who don’t know, Josh has represented Canada at the Triathlon Age-Group World Championships going to Abu Dhabi and Hamburg. That’s intense training. I’m not going to be trite and ask you where you find the time. I’m interested in how the dedication required to be an internationally competitive triathlete lends itself or adds value to your role as executive director.

There are so many parallels that at least I see in terms of triathlon training and leadership. First of all, it’s an amazing outlet. I think the mental health, mental wellness, and physical wellness side notwithstanding, the discipline is huge. Being able to be pretty disciplined in your training and what you’re doing every single day. Having a plan, executing on that plan, evaluating how I did, seeing the progress over time, and balancing three different sports.

The way triathlon works is if you’re good at one and not great at the other two, you’re not going to be a very competitive athlete. You have to be maybe not excellent at all three, but you have to be good enough at all three to be competitive. I think it’s a good kind of metaphor for leadership. I can’t be an expert at cybersecurity, fundraising, HR, clinical operations, and all of those things. I have a leadership team that’s there, but I have to be good enough and pretty darn good at all of them, at least to know what I need to know to make sure that we’re doing what we need to be doing as an organization.

I think the triathlon is similar. I can’t focus all of my time running because there are these two other disciplines that require my time as well. You have to manage your time, your energy, and your efforts. You have to listen to your body and know when to push and know when to pull back. I see a lot of parallels. There are a lot of metaphors in there about leadership too and when to step in and step back. Also, how to evaluate where your efforts are going, where your energy’s going, what’s energy giving, what’s energy depleting, and how to prepare for a big race.

As an ED, it’s how to prepare for a big event or a big change. There’s a lot there that I draw from. It’s both an outlet, but it’s also something that I think makes me a better leader because there are a lot of things that I do as I approach triathlon that I do in my work that I think are quite effective. I don’t know if it’s a chicken and egg thing. I don’t know if I’m a pretty good triathlete because I have these characteristics as a leader and I bring them to triathlon or if I’m a good leader because I bring the triathlon characteristics to leadership. I’m not sure but there’s definitely, at least as I can see it, a parallel.

It’s remarkable to hear about those parallels. My wife is an ultra-marathon runner. I remember very vividly as she was training for 50 milers, someone asked her, “What do you do on those mornings when you don’t want to run?” She said, “I never run because I want to. I ran because I decided I’m going to do this.” It changes the question you have. It’s not a question of whether you do it or not. You just get out there and do it.

There are so many times when I’ll wake up in the pool, I tell people. I find myself halfway through a workout and I’ve come to terms, I’ve realized, “Here I am at the swimming pool.” It becomes so ingrained in your practice and your routine that you can wake up, make a coffee, get in the car, drive to the pool, stand in line, get changed, and jump in. It’s only when you’re halfway through your workout that you come to terms with the fact that you’re doing a workout.

I think that’s the other thing about that practice and that discipline if it becomes part of your routine, it becomes part of who you are. Sometimes you don’t have to make decisions about it. Your body has already made the decision because, by the time you realize you’re doing it, you’re halfway through your workout.

Looking Forward

That sounds dangerous to drive to the pool while you’re still asleep but I think the point comes through. Josh, as we come to the end of our conversation, I get to ask you my favorite question that we ask all of our guests. What are you looking forward to?

I’m looking forward to Foundry. I’m looking forward to expanding our impact in Burnaby, delivering on an aspect of service delivery that we know our clients will need and benefit from in that community. I’m looking forward to being able to, in partnership with our community shareholders, make that a reality for the community of Burnaby. I’m looking forward to continuing to grow our impact across the province.

I do have this very sort of fundamental belief that urban agencies maybe aren’t the solution and shouldn’t be the solution for serving rural remote hard to get to-places in this province but I do think by virtue of us having some of that capacity and capability, we do owe it to our partners in those communities to at least provide some assistance where assistance is required or where it’s at least invited. I look forward to continuing to increase our impact in partnership with those organizations in those communities.

I look forward to seeing where the area of inclusion for persons with disabilities goes. There are new acts, there’s new legislation both provincially and federally around accessibility. There’s an awakening, I think, of what it means to have both a visible and an invisible disability. I think there’s a real change in the perception of people with disabilities and not necessarily what they can’t do, but more importantly, what they can do.

There's a real change in the perception of people with disabilities, not necessarily focusing on what they can't do, but more importantly on what they can do. Click To Tweet

I think in an area where there’s a chronic labor shortage and there’s all kinds of demographic changes that are going to lead us to be challenged in terms of how we continue to support the communities to see people with disabilities and from an employment perspective as an opportunity to fill a lot of those gaps. We have incredibly talented people who, even though they go through the same path as their colleagues who don’t identify as having disabilities, have completely different outcomes and completely different experiences when it comes to employment.

I’m looking forward to those attitudes changing and people with disabilities becoming seen as leaders in our community and understanding the strengths that they have and that they bring, and less so about some of the challenges that they have because we all do have challenges. They’re not always as visible, but I think there’s a real shift in attitude right now for people with disabilities that I’m looking forward to seeing continue to evolve over time.

You have no small dreams and I really appreciate you sharing some of the magic behind the BC Centre for Ability. If members of our audience want to learn more, how can they learn more about your organization?

If you want to learn more about us, you can follow us on social media. All the socials are all up-to-date, so you please follow us. You can go to our website. You can always come by the center. I’d be happy, myself or a member of my leadership team, we’d be happy to give you a tour to sit down and talk about the work that we do. Absolutely anytime, we’re more than happy to do that. That’s how you can learn more about us. You can follow us on LinkedIn. I’m also on LinkedIn, as well, if you want to follow me personally and want to establish a relationship there. I’m more than happy to do it.

Josh, thank you so much for being on the show.

Thank you.

Important Links

• BC Centre for Ability
• Josh Myers – LinkedIn
• Foundry
• Steve Mathias – Past Episode
• LinkedIn – BC Centre for Ability

About Josh Myers

My role included:

– Program management
– Program development and evaluation
– Accreditation
– Clinical supervision
– Clinical work with children and families (counselling)
– Education and research
– Collaborating with key stakeholders in hospitals, health authorities and communities across BC