Circle Up & Get REAL Podcast

When you're with your peeps, you invite them to Circle Up. And when like-minded and like-hearted others come together, they hold space for each other to Get REAL: Radical, Energized, Authentic, & Learning-focused.It's time to Circle Up & Get REAL.

Circle Up & Get REAL Podcast is a education podcast hosted by Jodee Bock, with 100 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Jodee Bock hosts Circle Up & Get REAL Podcast, a education show with 100 episodes published.

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  Episode #324

  Getting REAL About Us, Them, and the Need to Be Right with Jodee

  Sep 25, 202623 minS7

  A Facebook meme about gas prices and the Keystone pipeline sent me looking for more information. But what caught my attention wasn't really the pipeline. It was the conversation underneath the meme—and the language people were using about "us" and "them." I began wondering: Who exactly is "they"? What makes someone part of "us"? And why can questioning a group's assumptions be interpreted as evidence that you belong to the other side? Then the inquiry became more personal. As I tried to correct what I saw happening in the conversation, I began to recognize that I might be demonstrating the very pattern I was pointing out. I became committed to being right. I created my own "them." And in my attempt to correct, I may have forgotten to connect. In this solo episode of Circle Up & Get REAL, I explore the relationship between belonging, certainty, curiosity, and our very human desire to know that we are on the right side. I also wonder whether we can create communities with a meaningful "us" that doesn't require someone else to become "them." And yes, there is also a meme involving moose heads, a man tied to the roof of a vehicle, and the sweeping conclusion that men cannot be left alone. We can practice discernment, notice our own patterns—and still laugh.

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  Episode #323

  Episode 323 - Getting REAL About Nonprofit Leadership with Kayla Deitch

  Sep 17, 202638 minS7

  What if serving a mission didn't require sacrificing yourself in the process? In this episode of Circle Up and Get REAL , I sit down with Kayla Deitch, the first full-time Executive Director of the North Dakota Association of Nonprofit Organizations — NDANO. Kayla stepped into a 30-year-old organization at a moment of change, with an opportunity to listen, build relationships, connect nonprofit leaders across North Dakota, and help imagine what the sector could become. And there is plenty to imagine. We talk about the realities many nonprofit leaders are facing: burnout, underpayment, isolation, uncertain funding, and the pressure to keep doing more with less. But we also talk about possibility. What happens when nonprofit leaders stop accepting scarcity as part of the job? What if fair compensation isn't selfish, but part of creating sustainable organizations? What if nonprofit leaders don't have to figure everything out alone? And what changes when organizations begin to see one another not as competitors for limited resources, but as potential collaborators? Kayla shares what she is learning during her first months in the role, why she is spending so much time listening to leaders across the state, how she is thinking about advocacy, and why she believes breaking down silos may be one of the most important things NDANO can do. We also explore the tension between running a nonprofit like a business and remembering that mission and impact can't always be captured on a spreadsheet. Along the way, we talk about authentic leadership, abundance, resilience, board development, AI, and the courage to be the person who sees possibilities other people might call naive. Maybe nonprofit leadership doesn't need more people willing to sacrifice themselves for the mission. Maybe it needs more people willing to create the conditions where both the mission — and the humans carrying it — can thrive.

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  Episode #322

  Episode 322 - Getting REAL About The Radical Promise with Steve Farber

  Sep 10, 20261h 1mS7

  What is your word worth? In this episode, I sit down with my longtime friend Steve Farber to talk about his newest book, The Radical Promise —and an idea that sounds remarkably simple: Do what you say you will do. But Steve's invitation goes much deeper than keeping the big promises we consciously make. What about the casual "I'll get back to you"? The introduction you said you'd make. The email you meant to send. The thing you told your team you'd take care of. Were those promises? Steve and I explore how credibility is built—or quietly eroded—in those seemingly insignificant moments. We talk about why leaders may be making commitments without realizing it, what it means to develop a more "contractual attitude" toward our words, and why consistently following through can make someone remarkably valuable in a world where people have grown accustomed to being disappointed. Steve also takes us behind the scenes of The Radical Promise : why he returned to the parable-style storytelling of his earlier books, how real people and experiences found their way into the story, and how leadership legends Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner became part of the narrative. We also talk about overcommitting, learning to say no, tracking the promises we make, and the connection between credibility, love, leadership, and the kinds of workplaces we create. And because Steve and I have known each other since 2004, there are a few stories along the way. Maybe the question isn't simply, "Do I keep my promises?" Maybe it's: Do I know when I've made one? Find out more about Steve's new book at www.theradicalpromise.com.

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  Episode #318

  Episode 321 - Getting REAL About Changing the Way You Look at Things with Jodee

  Sep 2, 202622 minS7

  Wayne Dyer famously said, 'When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.' But do they? Does the object itself change—or does a different perspective allow us to see something that was there all along? In this solo episode, Jodee moves from that question into her first full spoken explanation of Human Systems Development. Rather than treating an organization as a machine whose people and outcomes can be controlled, Human Systems Development asks us to see people, relationships, teams, cultures, and organizations as living systems. Every system is already producing outcomes consistent with the conditions that have emerged within it. We cannot plant corn and demand a carrot. We can, however, become more conscious of the ground we are tending. Jodee explores culture as something elusive but always present—much like electricity or energy. We may not be able to hold it in our hands, but we can feel its effects, and it always leaves clues. She introduces three parts of the Human Systems Development worldview: how we develop capacity, how we see the system, and how we work together over time. She also invites us to look through three lenses: individual, relational, and systemic. The goal is not to eliminate tension and uncertainty or engineer people into predetermined outcomes. It is to develop our shared capacity to navigate reality well, notice what our systems are producing, and tend the conditions in which people can contribute, learn, and become more fully who they are.

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  Episode #320

  Episode 320 - Getting REAL About Fine Lines with Jodee

  Aug 28, 202627 minS7

  Most meaningful decisions are not between right and wrong. Jodee explores the fine lines between being and doing, acceptance and resignation, conviction and certainty, and stewardship and control — and the discernment required to feel the difference. We often talk about decisions as though the choices are obvious: one way is right and the other is wrong. But many of the decisions that shape our lives happen somewhere less certain — between right and right, along fine lines that shift with our intention, energy, experience, and circumstances. In this solo episode, Jodee explores several of those distinctions: being and doing, patience and passivity, acceptance and resignation, conviction and certainty, surrender and giving up, and stewardship and control. From the outside, the behaviors can look almost identical. The difference often lives underneath them. Jodee reflects on a time when constant doing looked like dedication but was also connected to avoidance, resentment, and the identity she had built around being the person who would always stay late and take on more. She considers how acceptance can acknowledge reality without abandoning agency, how conviction can guide us without hardening into certainty, and why certainty closes the curiosity that dialogue requires. The episode offers discernment not as a way to find the one perfect answer, but as a capacity we can develop: integrating head, heart, gut, and the signals of the body before we decide. The question is not only, 'What am I doing?' It is also, 'What energy, intention, fear, or story is doing it through me?'

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