A Side of Hope

Side of Hope
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A SIDE OF HOPE PODCAST Stories of hope and grit: amplifying voices in human services If you are a human service professional, social worker or one in the making, you’re in the right place. We’re here to help you navigate the messiness of human services with inspiration, tools, and support.

  1. 5d ago

    Act Like You Own the Place (When You Don't)

    About This Episode What does leadership look like when you're not the CEO? When you don't own the organization, don't get the final say, and technically don't have your name on the building, yet you find yourself lying awake at night thinking about the culture, the people, the decisions, and what comes next? Melanie explores a leadership seat that doesn't get talked about nearly enough: the seat just below the top. She breaks down the difference between ownership, stewardship, and intrapreneurship, and shares her own journey of shifting from a burning goal to own an agency by 30 to realizing her real strength lies in building things inside existing organizations. If you've ever felt the weight of something you don't technically own, if you've noticed problems that weren't yours to solve and solved them anyway, if you've been the person trusted with more responsibility than authority, this episode is an invitation to get clear about what's genuinely yours to carry and what isn't. Melanie also speaks directly to the owners and CEOs listening: how to recognize the value of people in this seat, how to give them enough authority to match their responsibility, and why finding someone who feels genuine stewardship for what you've built is worth far more than another person checking boxes. In This Episode The "strange seat on the bus" that sits just below the topWhy Melanie walked away from her dream to own an agencyThe difference between ownership, stewardship, and intrapreneurshipThe shadow side of these strengths when commitment turns into overfunction and loyalty turns into silenceA practical three-bucket framework: own it, influence it, release itWhy caring deeply about work you don't personally own is not foolish and where the line between stewardship and self-sacrifice actually sitsA direct message to owners and CEOs about recognizing and protecting this kind of leadershipQuestions to ask yourself about where you've accepted owner-sized responsibility without owner-sized authority Key Takeaways You don't need your name on the building to care deeply, solve problems, and shape where an organization is headed. Influence and entrepreneurship happen inside existing structures.The most dangerous pattern: accepting responsibility without enough authority to meaningfully influence the outcome. Responsibility and authority can't stay completely disconnected forever.Stewardship and overidentification are different things. Stewardship says "I will care for this even though it doesn't belong to me." Overidentification says "everything that happens here is mine to carry." One is sustainable; the other burns people out.Your ambition doesn't have to point toward the top seat. Maybe you love the daily work more than the title. Maybe your impact is strongest in a seat you've intentionally chosen, not one you're passing through on the way up.If you're the owner or CEO: these people are rare. Find them, develop them, give them authority that matches their responsibility, let them disagree safely, and compensate them appropriately. Don't reward their ability to carry more by simply giving them more to carry.

    Act Like You Own the Place (When You Don't)

  2. Sep 14

    Connection Doesn't Happen by Accident: Here's Why It Matters for Your Work

    About Ginger Johnson Known as a "Chief Connecting Officer," Ginger Johnson has built a career around one core belief: everything we want in life is powered by connection. From firefighter to teacher to executive, Ginger's journey has shaped a deep understanding of what it takes to help people feel seen, valued, and part of something bigger. She's the author of Connectivity Canon: Why and How to Connect on Purpose, and offers keynote speaking, professional development programs, and Chief Connecting Officer certification. In This Episode Ginger challenges how we think about passion, purpose, connection, and hope. We explore why purpose might matter more than passion; why connection is something we do rather than something we have; and how the language we choose shapes the lives we create. Ginger also shares her own journey with hope—from skepticism to understanding it as thoughtful risk and a compounding force in our lives. Key Takeaways Purpose is the bedrock; passion can burn out like a comet. Remind yourself: why does this work matter deeply to me? Connection doesn't happen by accident. It's something we deliberately create through conversation and presence. Hope isn't luck. Hope is thoughtful risk—deciding where you're willing to go, what conversation you're willing to start. People aren't broken. When we see people as complete rather than problems to fix, we show up differently in every relationship. The language we use matters. Words like "balance," "client," and "broken" shape how we think about our work and our people. Connect with Ginger Visit gingerjohnson.com to explore her keynote speaking, professional development programs, and Chief Connecting Officer certification. Read Connectivity Canon at gingerjohnson.com/shop/connectivity-canon/ Connect directly: gingerjohnson.com/connect/ | ginger@gingerjohnson.com | 515.450.7757 Follow Ginger on LinkedIn and YouTube

    Connection Doesn't Happen by Accident: Here's Why It Matters for Your Work

  3. Sep 1

    What Expectation Bias Costs Us in Human Services

    What Expectation Bias Costs Us in Human Services A Side of Hope with Melanie Bazile In this episode, Melanie Bazile explores expectation bias, the tendency to perceive, interpret, and remember information in ways that confirm what we already expect to be true. Drawing on more than 30 years in human services, she unpacks how this shows up not just in daily life, but in the field itself, in referrals, diagnoses, and the labels attached to the people we serve. Melanie opens with her own story: a craving for Chipotle chips led her to drive past the restaurant three times because it didn't match the storefront she expected to see. It's a small moment, but it sets up the bigger idea. We don't always see what's actually there. We see what we've already decided is there. From there, she brings in a striking piece of research: a study in which participants were shown a fake scar on their face, sent out to have conversations with strangers, and reported feeling judged and treated differently, even after the scar had been secretly removed before they left the room. The expectation shaped the experience, whether or not the reality matched it. The episode's turning point is personal. Melanie shares the story of Tim, a young man she almost declined to serve based on a referral packet that painted him as someone she "couldn't possibly" work with. The person she actually met didn't match the file at all, and the disconnect became a lasting lesson in how labels can replace the person in front of us before we've even met them. She also names how expectation bias shows up in judgments about what's possible for the people human services professionals support, low expectations that limit opportunity, and unrealistically high ones that create their own kind of pressure. Both distort what she calls the real goal: accurate expectations, held with openness to what might still be possible. Melanie closes with four practical shifts pulled from person centered thinking: stay curious, actively look for evidence that contradicts your assumption, listen, and separate what you observed from the meaning you attached to it. In this episode: Why our brains are wired to notice what confirms existing beliefsThe scar study and what it reveals about expectation versus realityHow referral packets and diagnostic labels can replace the person we're meetingThe story of Tim, and what changed when Melanie stayed curiousFour person centered thinking tools to challenge expectation bias in practice 🎧 Connect with A Side of Hope: https://linktr.ee/sideofhopepodcast

    What Expectation Bias Costs Us in Human Services

  4. Aug 17

    Inclusion Isn't a Program. It's a Bridge You Build Toward the Rest of the World

    Human services has spent decades trying to build inclusion from our side. Lisa Drennan's 40 years in the field taught her the opposite: inclusion can only be built by the side of the bridge that isn't there yet, the YMCAs, the camps, the faith communities. Her work is teaching that side how to build it. Lisa Drennan is a nationally recognized speaker and inclusion advocate who has spent over 40 years helping individuals with disabilities experience deeper connection, belonging, and community. She challenges organizations to see inclusion not as an obligation, but as an opportunity. She founded MERGE Consulting, which helps YMCAs, camps, faith organizations, and libraries build genuinely inclusive spaces. Her path started in the 1980s at New England Village, a residential campus south of Boston, when the job title was simply "staff." Nearly 30 years later a YMCA posting for "Director of Inclusion," the first role of its kind in the country, led to the realization that shaped her career: inclusion has to be taught to the rest of the world, one relationship at a time. She founded MERGE in 2018. Lisa's framework runs access, inclusion, and belonging, in that order. Access means someone is genuinely invited in, not tucked into a special track on page nine of the brochure. Inclusion means being part of the class instead of the separate one running alongside it. Belonging is the goalpost, and it only shows up once the first two are in place. They also talk through the gap between being present and being valued. Lisa tells the story of an agency that described a Dunkin' Donuts drive-through trip as "getting out in the community." Her response: being physically present isn't the same as being part of something. Friendship gets its own section. Lisa tells the story of a boy she calls Kyle, asked to leave three camps before he came to a YMCA camp where Lisa was working. Kyle and another camper became friends over a shared love of Lego robotics and a specific way of eating a PB&J, cut into triangles, crusts off. That friendship led to Kyle's first birthday party invitation. They also get into language: why "wheelchair bound" and "high" or "low functioning" carry more weight than people realize, and why naming the actual support need fits better than labeling the person. Lisa closes with an invitation for every listener: an open mind and heart is 85% of the work. Topics covered: Why the community being included must build inclusion itselfThe access, inclusion, belonging frameworkSpecialized programming versus genuine inclusionFriendship as a measurable outcome of belongingHow DSPs can facilitate connection through shared interestsLanguage and how it shapes how we see peopleLisa's on-demand learning platform and Pathways to Friendship toolkit Lisa's on-demand learning platform launched the same week this episode was recorded. The first trainings are built for recreation and camp staff, with content for DSPs, agencies, self-advocates, and families coming later this year. Her first resource is a sensory kit guide. Guest: Lisa Drennan, Founder of MERGE ConsultingHost: Melanie Bazile Connect with Lisa and MERGE: Website: mergeconsulting.orgOn-Demand Learning Platform: mergeconsulting.org/on-demand-learningAbout MERGE and content library: available at mergeconsulting.org (add direct links when provided)Pathways to Friendship Toolkit, Building Friendships Between People With and Without Disabilities: Lisa co-authored the fifth toolkit in this Arc of Massachusetts series, for YMCA staff, camp counselors, faith organizations, and libraries More from A Side of Hope:linktr.ee/sideofhopepodcast

    Inclusion Isn't a Program. It's a Bridge You Build Toward the Rest of the World

  5. Aug 3

    Heart-Led, Head-Managed: Why Systems and Compassion Belong Together

    There's a word that makes a lot of people in human services flinch. Not burnout, not funding cuts. Sales. Melanie says it out loud in this episode, and she doesn't apologize for it. But the real tension she's sitting with is bigger than one word: how did 'corporate' become an insult in a field where the stakes are this high? And what tools have we walked away from because they felt like a betrayal of the work? Melanie isn't arguing that human services should become corporate America. She's asking a harder question: what if some of the structures we've rejected are actually the thing standing between our good intentions and the follow-through the people we serve actually need? She uses a specific example from her own department, a business certification tool called the Five Whys, originally a root cause analysis method from Lean Six Sigma, that she started applying with people receiving services, with her team, and in grant writing. If she'd written it off because of where it came from, she says, she would have lost a genuinely powerful tool. She also talks about being asked to write a business plan for the department she leads at Compass and discovering, mid-grumble, that the process forced her to get clear on something she hadn't wanted to admit: chasing every idea in the name of innovation had actually decreased her department's impact.

    Heart-Led, Head-Managed: Why Systems and Compassion Belong Together

  6. Jul 20

    Beyond the Diagnosis: How Cancer Taught Us to See Hope in Hard Places

    Most people, when they get a cancer diagnosis, think about survival. Lauren Huffmaster did too, until she realized that surviving and living are two very different things. Lauren Huffmaster is a metastatic breast cancer survivor and the founder of Adventure Therapy Foundation, where she's working to reimagine what the cancer experience can look like. Through her work as a speaker, author, and podcast host, Lauren invites others to find meaning, connection, and even joy in the midst of hardship. Melanie and Lauren first connected through a shared experience of moving through life with cancer, and that shared ground gives this conversation a depth that's hard to manufacture. Lauren opens with what it actually took to learn how to live with a diagnosis that never fully resolves, and how that process became the foundation for everything she now builds for others. Much of this conversation is about grief, and not in the way most of us have been trained to think about it. Lauren describes grief as something that layers through everyday life in ways people rarely stop to name: a future that no longer looks the way you imagined, an identity reorganized around a diagnosis, relationships that quietly shift or disappear. She calls these "pinpricks of grief," and makes the case that unacknowledged, they don't go away. They accumulate. Melanie draws that framework directly into the human services field, particularly for families of people with disabilities who carry years of unprocessed grief that the people supporting them rarely think to address. Lauren also introduces irrational optimism, kinship groups built around shared interests rather than shared diagnoses, and the story behind her children's book The Adventure Jar, written because cancer is never just one person's experience. Melanie closes with a reminder that lands for anyone doing this work: people are often grieving more than we can see, and presence, the genuine kind, is the work. Topics covered in this episode: Grief beyond loss of life: identity, future plans, and relationshipsWhat families of people with disabilities carry that often goes unaddressedIrrational optimism and why the stories we tell ourselves matterKinship groups and shared interest as a path out of isolationAsking for help when the need is long-termDreams, courage, and declaring what you believe in Guest: Lauren Huffmaster, Founder, Adventure Therapy FoundationHost: Melanie Basil Connect with Lauren: Adventure Therapy Foundation: https://adventuretherapyfoundation.orgPodcast — Adventure Found: https://adventurefound.org/podcast/Instagram: @Lauren Huffmaster | @adventuretherapyfoundation | @canceringcollective Lauren's Books: Cancering: Exploring the Seasons of Emotional Healing — https://www.amazon.com/Cancering-Exploring-Seasons-Emotional-Healing/dp/B0D6XCGMM320 Shades of Grief (contributing author) — https://www.amazon.com/20-Shades-Grief-Impacts-Experience/dp/1969864117Free Children's Book — The Adventure Jar:https://www.expose-mbc.com/free-mbc-childrens-book More from A Side of Hope:https://linktr.ee/sideofhopepodcast

    Beyond the Diagnosis: How Cancer Taught Us to See Hope in Hard Places

  7. Jul 6

    Staying When Everything Says Leave

    There are people in human services who have been showing up for years, not because it's easy, not because the system cooperates, not because anyone is watching. This episode is about what actually keeps them there. Melanie Basil is the Director of Innovation and Expansion at Compass and the host of A Side of Hope. With over 30 years in the human services field, she brings hard-won experience in direct support, leadership, and building systems that actually work for the people inside them. In this solo episode, Melanie gets personal about one of the most essential qualities in human services work: grit. Not the motivational poster version. The real kind, the kind that doesn't show up on any award or go viral, but keeps people in this field doing hard things for a long time. She opens with her own story of nearly failing lifeguard training as a young camp counselor who couldn't swim well, and what it meant to keep showing up anyway. From there, she connects that individual experience to what grit actually looks like in direct support work: walking alongside someone pursuing a driver's license when everyone else doubted it was possible, supporting families who are exhausted but still advocating, finding ways to serve people well in the middle of system barriers and shrinking resources. Drawing on researcher Angela Duckworth's work, Melanie defines grit as passion and perseverance for long-term goals, and she makes the case for why that definition hits differently in human services. Outcomes here don't happen overnight. Progress is often measured in inches, not miles. The long game requires something that raw talent and good intentions can't fully sustain. She also introduces the concept of "loaned grit," the idea that when the people we support lose hope, we hold it for them until they can hold it themselves. It's a reminder worth sitting with. Melanie closes with a direct challenge to listeners: grit should never mean running yourself into the ground. Healthy grit includes support, boundaries, and sustainability. Just because someone can keep going doesn't mean we should keep asking them to. Topics covered in this episode: The difference between grit, talent, and luckAngela Duckworth's research on grit as a predictor of successWhat grit looks like on the ground in direct support work"Loaned grit" and holding hope for someone elseThe GRIT acronym: Guts, Resilience, Initiative, and TenacityWhy grit without support can become burnoutHow Melanie uses grit as a lens in hiring and developing people Host: Melanie Basil, Director of Innovation and Expansion, Compass Referenced in this episode:Angela Duckworth — Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance (book and TED Talk)Simon Sinek — concept of the "infinite game"More from A Side of Hope:https://linktr.ee/sideofhopepodcast

    Staying When Everything Says Leave

  8. Jun 22

    The Whirlwind Isn't Going Away. Here's How to Lead Inside It.

    If you lead in human services, your day probably started with a plan. And then reality showed up. This episode is about building leadership structures that can hold up inside that reality, not in spite of it. Sunil Bhaskaran is a global community builder and the founder of Global Business Mastermind, where he helps entrepreneurs grow their reach and impact. With a network of over 200,000 business owners across the world, Sunil brings a perspective on systems, accountability, and intentional leadership that translates directly into the pressures human service leaders face every day. This episode is part of a mini series drawn from a longer conversation between Melanie and Sunil. If you've ever had a plan at the start of the day that was gone within the first hour, this one was made for you. Melanie and Sunil dig into the reality that overwhelm in human services isn't always about volume. A lot of it comes from invisibility: tasks that aren't named, tracked, or scheduled end up living in your nervous system instead of on a list. That low-level pressure doesn't clock out when you do.Sunil introduces the concept of workflows, not the assembly-line kind, but simple, reliable systems that let important things happen without depending on memory or heroics. In human services especially, where so much of the work is relational and urgent, having a clear path for things like onboarding new staff, responding to family concerns, or moving an incident report from discovery to follow-through isn't cold or bureaucratic. It protects people. Melanie gets honest about her own relationship with calendaring, including the irritation she felt when Compass leadership started blocking intentional deep work time and it suddenly became harder to get on their calendars. What she came to understand was that protecting capacity isn't selfish. It's how leaders stay present, creative, and emotionally available over the long run. Sunil's concept of "joyful calendaring" sounds unrealistic at first. Melanie thought so too. But the practice is more straightforward than it sounds: 15 minutes for triage in the morning, actual transition time between meetings, and stopping the habit of treating blank calendar space as open availability. The episode closes with a practical exercise around promises, naming them clearly, labeling which ones feel empowering versus burdensome, and rewriting the ones that are weighing you down into something more specific and manageable.Topics covered in this episode: Why overwhelm is often about invisibility, not just volumeWhat workflows actually are and why they matter in human servicesHow unclear systems push leaders toward "personal heroics" and poor boundariesMelanie's story of onboarding a new supervisor with no documented systems in placeThe "joyful calendar" concept and how to start practicing itProtecting capacity as a form of leadership stewardshipA practical exercise for naming and rewriting the promises you're carrying Connect with Sunil Bhaskaran:Website: https://sunilbhaskaran.comLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sunilbhaskaranspeaker/Book: More Money, More Time, Less Stress — https://www.amazon.com/More-Money-Time-Less-Stress/dp/1490408940Catch Sunil on the Compass Time Capsule Podcast — "The Early Guides Toward Greatness":Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3t4qrJ06oLI74WuctYcDuz?si=3Bvvgr7BTnGWvLn1C0rP9AApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-early-guides-toward-greatness/id1829765091?i=1000735311107Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/362abef2-ea9e-4302-b229-632803d85abf/episodes/9349a760-ab00-43c5-b1b7-f08834753f42/compass-time-capsule-the-early-guides-toward-greatnessBook referenced:The Four Disciplines of Execution by Chris McChesney, Sean Covey, and Jim Huling More from A Side of Hope:https://linktr.ee/sideofhopepodcast

    The Whirlwind Isn't Going Away. Here's How to Lead Inside It.
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A SIDE OF HOPE PODCAST Stories of hope and grit: amplifying voices in human services If you are a human service professional, social worker or one in the making, you’re in the right place. We’re here to help you navigate the messiness of human services with inspiration, tools, and support.

Information

  • Creator
    Side of Hope
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    34
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Side of Hope
  • Show Website
    A Side of Hope