Community Possibilities
Community Possibilities
Fostering Collaboration Through Facilitative Leadership: Meet Karie Terhark
Karie Terhark joins us in an enlightening conversation on community empowerment, revealing how her journey as a Technology of Participation (TOP) facilitator has transformed her approach to inclusivity and stakeholder engagement. Her experiences in youth development and working with drug-free communities have shaped her passion for creating spaces where every voice is heard.
Karie transitioned from a directive leader to a facilitative one, using ToP methods to turn conventional meetings into meaningful collaborations. By bringing together diverse groups, Karrie emphasizes the essence of patience and small victories in fostering sustainable community ownership. She shares the strategies that have helped her navigate challenges like turf guarding and resistance, ensuring each community member feels respected and valued.
Learn about the importance of preparation, strategic planning, and the role of environmental scanning in setting a unified organizational direction. Karie's insights into the art of facilitation inspire individuals to lead with authenticity, fostering an environment where communities can thrive. Tune in to learn how you can harness these facilitation techniques to create empowered, inclusive spaces in your community.
Bio
When Karie Terhark reflects on her career, she sees a journey shaped by her deep desire to foster connections and build strong, empowered communities. Her early work in youth development gave her firsthand insight into how vital it is to create spaces where every voice can be heard. This experience ignited her passion for facilitation, which led her to dedicate herself to helping organizations and communities collaborate and achieve their goals.
For Karie, facilitation isn’t just a job—it’s her way of driving meaningful change. Whether she’s working with a small group or facilitating a large-scale public forum, she’s committed to creating brave, inclusive spaces where diverse perspectives are not just welcomed but are valued and feel a sense of belonging. Her work in community engagement has been instrumental in helping people feel empowered to shape their environments positively.
Becoming a Certified Technology of Participation (ToP) Facilitator, and later a ToP® Mentor Trainer, has allowed Karie to not only hone her skills but also to share them with others. Her personal mission is clear: to Empowering individuals to lead through action, unlocking their potential to create lasting impact.
It’s not just what she does, but why she does it that drives her—helping others find their own voice and power through the art of facilitation.
Connect with Karie: https://www.karieterhark.com
Like what you heard? Please like and share wherever you get your podcasts!
Connect with Ann: Community Evaluation Solutions
How Ann can help:
· Support the evaluation capacity of your coalition or community-based organization.
· Help you create a strategic plan that doesn’t stress you and your group out, doesn’t take all year to design, and is actionable.
· Engage your group in equitable discussions about difficult conversations.
· Facilitate a workshop to plan for action and get your group moving.
· Create a workshop that energizes and excites your group for action.
· Speak at your conference or event.
Have a question or want to know more? Book a call with Ann .
Be sure and check out our updated resource page! Let us know what was helpful.
Music by Zach Price: Zachpricet@gmail.com
Hi everybody, Welcome back to Community Possibilities. When Karrie Terhart reflects on her career, she sees a journey shaped by her deep desire to foster connections and build strong, empowered communities. As you're going to learn in this episode, her early work in youth development gave her a first-hand insight into how vital it is to create spaces where every voice can be heard. Karie and I have a love for coalitions and community-based organizations in common. In fact, we have been both involved in drug-free communities in the past and it was through that experience that Karie found TOP Technology of Participation. She is now a certified Technology of Participation facilitator and a top mentor training. To Karie, facilitation isn't just a job. It's her way of driving meaningful change. Whether she's working with a small group or facilitating a large-scale public forum, she's committed to creating brave, inclusive spaces where diverse perspectives are not just welcomed but are valued and feel a sense of belonging. In fact, Karie was one of my top trainers and I am so happy that she said yes, get your notebook and a pencil ready, because this is going to be a master class in how to really excite your community organization to really focus on the change they want to see in their communities. I know you're going to enjoy this conversation. Please let us hear from you what's the one thing that you learned that you're going to take away from this episode, and don't forget to like, share and leave a review. Now let's talk to Keri, shall we? Hi, everybody, Welcome back to the show. I am super happy to introduce you to someone that I met a couple of years ago. Hey, Terhark. Hello, Good to see you.
Ann Price:you and I met because I drove from my home in Canton, Georgia, up to Asheville, beautiful town, yummy, yummy craft beer for people who are interested in craft beer. But you often teach technologies of participation facilitation up there. I do, yeah, and so I've taken three classes with you and your partners in crime. So I took the no, no, no, I did not take the first one with you, I take that back.
Ann Price:I took that one in Florida, the fundamentals class, oh, yep, Yep. And then, with you, I took the environmental assessment and strategic planning. Yes, yeah, and I got to tell you, , TOPS has really changed my whole practice and I've been doing work in communities for a long time. But that's how we met and I remember when you introduced yourself, if I'm correct me, if I'm wrong you said that you had been a director of a drug free community coalition and had worked in that space, and I'm like me too. Well, I wasn't a director, but I was. I've been the evaluator drug-free coalitions over the last I don't know 15 years probably. So anyway, it's just such a small world.
Karie Terhark:It's so funny because I teach this course and and my work in coalition. There's always at least two head nods that are like, yeah, me too, I do similar work, and so it's it's awesome to see that there's really a network of people across the country really working on this.
Ann Price:Yeah. So I want to talk about that a little bit because that's probably what really sparked my interest in working with community coalitions was that experience with those early coalitions and seeing some good leadership but could be better. Definitely a conflict within the group, definitely a lack of kind of equity in terms of who is in the room. Uh, all of all of those things, the struggles, the you know kind of the group dynamic processes, all of those things, and, oh my gosh, the meet and talk coalitions. Yes, has that been?
Karie Terhark:your experience, oh, my goodness, when I was asked to be our coalition director in our county and just a little bit of backstory about that. I live in the county in which I grew up in and my husband grew up here. We've raised our kids here. Our county is in rural Iowa. There's 11,000 people in our county. I worked at the pizza place. We know each other right. There's two high schools. There's one stoplight in our county. We've all met.
Karie Terhark:I've been here my whole life and I did youth coalition work. I actually did youth work in my church for a lot of years. Actually did youth work in my church for a lot of years. And so when our county was being mentored by a neighboring coalition, I was asked to come in and be the director and they were waiting to hear about their DFC and I thought how easy, right. Like I know everybody here, I've worked with kids. I love high school kids. This is going to be fantastic. Came in and found out that getting the whole county and stakeholders and community rallied around youth underage drinking and challenging the social norms of which I grew up in wasn't easy.
Ann Price:Imagine.
Karie Terhark:You know, I was like oh, wow, okay, and it challenged me as well, even thinking about the experiences that I had growing up and I understood the culture of our community and now my kids were now being raised in the same school district and wanting the best for them. But again, how am I really going to do that and find commonality around people that really didn't want to change because they were afraid of whatever that was going to look like? So, yeah, I think community coalition work. It sounds easy, it sounds fun, and then pretty soon you're holding meetings at lunchtime and everybody's coming to hear what did Carrie do this month?
Ann Price:Oh my gosh, that's not coalition work, right? So true. I say oh my gosh because I just had a flashback to the first coalition that I worked with and it was started by, you know, some wonderful leaders in the community. Their heart was in the right place. They hire someone who had grown up in the town, and I just remember those early meetings. It was like watching the US open, right. It was watching the tennis ball go from one side of the court to the other, right.
Ann Price:So I won't mention the name, but oh, something blah, blah, blah needs to get done in the coalition, and their heads would whip around to the other side of the room looking at the coalition director. Oh, so-and-so will do that. Yeah, exactly. And so we had to kind of backtrack a little bit and we had to learn about what a coalition really is and what does that really mean to collaborate and what processes and structures do we have to put in place? And oh, yeah, there's this thing called a public health approach to prevention, which DFCs in particular are grounded in. Right, that's what they're supposed to be doing. And wrapping community folks head around policy systems and environmental change. Did you guys have a hard time with that, or was it just the? Is it just the ones I work with?
Karie Terhark:have a hard time with that. Or was it just the? Is it just the ones I work with? No, I. It was really hard and I think I think what's even what's hard about it as well is that how we look at leaders and prevention that there isn't necessarily. It's in almost every place that I've met somebody fell into that job. Right, it wasn't something that I went to school for, I was looking how to do. It's something that it was like hey, you're a perfect person, you're really connected. This would be great.
Karie Terhark:And then there's so many great trainings around the SPF and CADCA and all of the things around, and they will all tell you the same thing engage your community in the work. And it just reminds me of that episode of Schitt's Creek when she's like fold in the cheese, what do you mean? How do I fold in the cheese? Well, you fold it in. Go engage your community. Well, how do I do that? Right? Well, go engage them. Yeah, but how Like? What is it? And just was finding like, okay, I get that and I'm I'm asking them for input, but they don't necessarily understand what we're we're needing to do, or or they're giving me suggestions or what they think, but there's just no buy-in of what their role is and what my role was, and and that's when top completely changed how I ran coalition meetings.
Ann Price:Yeah, gotcha, and that is exactly where I was going. Next is how did TOPS come into it? Before I do? Just to kind of explain for people who may not know about the Drug-Free Coalition, which was managed by SAMHSA for a long time. Now it sits with the CDC, but the SPF that Carrie mentioned is the Strategic Prevention Framework. Cadca is the training arm of the Drug-Free Coalition, so it's correct me if I'm wrong. It's like Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America. Oh my gosh, I got it right.
Ann Price:Good job, I know, I know, oh my gosh, I may have been through the Coalition Academy. Yes, I have too. So let's talk about how you got into TOPS. What is TOPS? And, yeah, I want to dig into all the things because I think that will really help my listeners, which is community leaders, coalition leaders, collaborative leaders at least that's who I hope is listening really change the way they do their work in communities. But let's first talk about that transition. How did that happen?
Karie Terhark:Yeah, so I was also part. Iowa is unique in that we have a statewide coalition of coalitions, so the coalitions and people doing prevention work across the state would come together every quarter and meet and collaborate and share ideas and and then try and work on state policy that would help and impact us all. And I was on the board for that and our director at the time had gone through the top training and was actually on the track to be a trainer herself and she recommended that all of us board go through it. And so I was like, yeah, sure, I'll do this. And I knew like it's a two-day training and by noon on the first day I was like light bulb, like I worked in HR previous to this.
Karie Terhark:It was like if I had these tools to work in HR, if I had these tools when I worked in the church with youth, it was fundamental to understanding communication and perspective and it really when I came back and started implementing the top training or the top facilitation tools into the coalition, I really started trying to shift my role from being the person who was in charge, the person of power, to the person that was holding the space for the community to solve their own problems and the framework itself allows that.
Karie Terhark:It allows for perspective. It moves me into a space of more of a neutral person where I'm asking more of the questions, and in our coalition, one of the things we would get hung up on all the time and I think this is probably similar in a lot of coalitions is that you have people have way different experiences. I had three people in our coalition who were in long-term recovery, and I had a principal from our high school that had never had a drop of alcohol in his entire life, and so what they thought prevention was what they thought was effective. What worked for them didn't work for everyone, right, and so they would just consistently butt heads all the time on what we needed to really do. Well, you need to just come down hard, or the school needs to do everything, or that's the parent's problem, right, and it was just like no, let's collectively have this discussion with all these stakeholders here to really uncover where we have some common ground and what we really can work towards.
Ann Price:So it sounds like the top training really helped you kind of move into the role of a facilitator versus a director or you know any anything else, that is more telling people what to do you know, man a manager, a director that kind of thing.
Ann Price:Right, yes, yes, yeah, and that's and that that's. I think that that changes really hard for a lot of people, cause I and it's not I, we were started off talking about the DOCs, and it's not just the DOCs. I've seen this in all sorts of kind of funded coalitions, where they feel like the director or maybe the backbone agency, it's their job to do all the work, whatever the work is that we have or have not decided to do, because a lot of times they have developed the work plan, they've developed the vision, all the things, and then the meetings become uh, what? When I say meet and talk, I mean that everybody goes around the room and talks about what their different agency is doing, but no work actually gets done in the meeting in In the meeting.
Karie Terhark:In the meeting and that was a frustration for me too I was like, you know, nobody wants to meet, just to meet. And you know, great, it's nice to have some networking time and have a lunch, but what is it? This is not helpful to me as a coalition director and it's definitely not helpful to me as a person to spend an hour of my time being like I don't know what we just did here, and so we used the top methods to create, you know, kind of come to consensus at first, have an understanding of what coalition work was, what was currently in our grant, understanding kind of our community data, understanding from the perspective of the stakeholder where they could influence some of those things or where they had impact in some of those areas, and then really started to come to collect, doing some consensus around what is it that we really want to focus in on for the next year as a collective? And you know so we would come to consensus around. You know that question what are the ways that we're going to? You know so we would come to consensus around. You know that question what are the ways that we're going to? You know, work on underage drinking in our community over the next, you know, six months. And then we broke out into teams or groups, committees, based on the substance that was we were working on within our DFC, and I had a format for them to work through, which was part of the format, part of the framework of top and having time to understand. You know, what have we done since last time that we've been together, what went well, what didn't go well, what now do we might need to change in our, our action plan or our timeframe, and then who's going to do what by when? And then, you know, coming back and just kind of having that same thing, and so we would have a quick little welcome hello. They'd break into their teams, they'd work on that. If they needed to make a phone call to the mayor, if they needed to do something that was their time to do it, do it while you're here. Do those small little steps.
Karie Terhark:And I think what's hard for coalition directors, especially when we've worked in the work or we've worked for an agency, is that we want things to happen really fast. Oh yeah, and, to be honest, I could have done all of that work very quickly and then it just would have been report out to the team every month. But you've got to go slow to go fast every month. But you've got to go slow to go fast and the community isn't going to have buy-in and create sustainability if they've never been part of the work.
Karie Terhark:And so things had to slow down and we had to celebrate small wins. We had to celebrate that the mayor called us back and he wants to meet with us and talk about, you know, this ordinance, or you know the fair board is interested in hearing some safety measures that we can bring to the fair. So we had to celebrate those things to keep momentum going. But again, there's so many things that that and we really think about why I'm. You're the person who's paid to do it. You're the person who's paid to do this, but it's coalition work, right? So if I'm doing the work, where's? Where's the coalition?
Karie Terhark:I don't need a bunch of cheerleaders walking around town cheering for me as I'm doing this stuff in the community.
Ann Price:Holding their pom poms, pom-poms, walking behind you, yay, carrie.
Karie Terhark:Good job.
Ann Price:Yeah, I'm reminded and I'll probably butcher it, but I have one of my coalitions always starts their meetings with an African proverb and you probably know it because it's almost exactly what you just said If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far or something like that I am butchering it Go as a group or something like that.
Ann Price:Yeah, go together. That's it. Yeah, I totally butchered that. I'll have to put that in the show notes to redeem myself. But what you really just described for everybody was kind of a masterclass. It's very similar to my process to the work. So guys go back and take notes, because Carrie just kind of walked you through how to turn your coalition around and she also described a working meeting. So your coalition meeting should be working meetings. So you went to this top training as a coalition leader and had this aha, light bulb moment and then you decided I think I'll be a top trainer. How did that happen? And then I want to get into this, maybe talk about some of the specific things that could really help kind of strengthen coalitions.
Karie Terhark:yeah, yeah I I loved coalition work. I I loved I I liked the youth stuff had youth coalitions. I've always enjoyed part of that. There were a lot of things in coalition work that just wasn't me. It wasn't the right fit for me. And as I really dug deep into understanding my why and the jobs that I've had in HR and I've worked in sales and it's always been skill building, there's just my passion is to build skills to empower others to change the world.
Karie Terhark:And as I went through that first top training when I knew that one, I was going to go back and change the way we were doing our coalition. The second thing that I knew was that when this cycle of funding ended and I needed to move on to the next thing, this is what it was going to be, because I felt like I could create a greater impact in teaching people how to use facilitation than I could doing in the work that I was doing in the coalition and I felt like there were other people more equipped in that space and that my calling was really at the skill building. So we used COLA. We completed year five. We used the top facilitation methods, both the focus conversation and a series of consensus workshops over a period of about six months.
Karie Terhark:Our meetings were really tailored to writing our next DFC, so we were using our conversations that we learned to uncover data and different things that were going on in our community and then building our consensus around what the coalition was willing to work together on. And at the end of about six months I had the narrative. Months I had the narrative they had told me. The coalition told me what they were willing to do and how it was going to impact the data, rather than me writing a DFC and then going around the community telling them what they needed to do. And so all I had to do was put the pieces together and to put it into a narrative and write it, and the coalition received their six through 10. And I moved on uh to train uh.
Ann Price:Top facilitation full-time awesome, um, and let me just say I like congratulate you so much for like recognizing oh, it's not me. It's not me, um, yeah, because I there are a lot of folks like I know I can, um, teach and I can facilitate. I do that very well. I don't think I'd be a very good coalition leader. Yeah Right, it definitely takes a certain personality. I'll always describe it as like Joan of Arc holding the flag and you know, that transformational leader that everybody wants to, you know, follow and get on board with, and that's just not me. So yay for you, for you know, knowing that about yourself, if we didn't say I think we did. But TOP stands for Technology of Participation. Do you want to talk about that a little bit? And you've mentioned a couple of the, the, the, the workshops, the strategies, and maybe we can dig into that a little bit. I don't without giving away the secret sauce, but wedding or giveaway the secret sauce. So a little bit about the top one that you do.
Karie Terhark:So the top TOP, top technology of participation is a series of facilitation tools that have been developed over time from people all across the world. So there's people all across the globe that are trained in using TAP facilitation methods. In the States, our home base is ICA, who own the methods the Institute of Cultural Affairs in Chicago and the facilitation methods really came from grassroots community level work. It's where it stemmed from, about bringing community together to understand their experiences and their perspectives and what did they need to do to work together. And it's all around two very important pillars. One is inclusive participation and profound respect. And as a leader, as a facilitative leader my job is to hold those pillars hold the space that people feel like they can participate, that everyone is participating, that I'm making sure that I'm creating a lot of opportunities for people to participate and that we're being respectful of what people are bringing to the table, understanding that we all walk through life differently.
Karie Terhark:My brother and I grew up in the same household and we have two totally different experiences, right and not that one of us is right and one of us is wrong. They're just different and what we have experienced, what we remember as we grow up, shapes what we think is possible shapes the decisions that we make. And when we come together and we are trying to collaborate and we don't understand somebody's experience, I don't understand that. So an example that I give in class is that we're walking down my neighborhood together, you and I, anne, and we all of a sudden smell fire and I breathe in that fire and I think, oh, that smells good, because I have a memory of sitting around a campfire with my dad, you know, or a fireplace with my dad on a you know Saturday afternoon, you know, just kind of that warm fall feeling. And you may have a different reaction because you've experienced a fire. And it's not that the fire is necessarily good or bad, it's that our experience and what we feel from that fire, that smell. So what I feel when I smell it is oh, that smells good, let's keep walking. Oh, that smells good, let's keep walking.
Karie Terhark:Yours is, oh, my gosh, there's fire, there's fear, we need to do something. So we have a different reaction. What we think is possible, what we're going to move to, is going to be different. But if I don't understand that you've had a different experience than I did, now I'm digging in my feet. That's not right. There's nothing to be afraid of. Why are you afraid? There's no big deal right, and so the process is slowing that down, and it's the way that our brain naturally processes information. But it's understanding what my brain is processing, where my experiences are coming from, but then it's also understanding from you that it's different. And when I understand that it's different for you, now I'm like okay, now I'm open to hearing more. Now I'm open to hearing.
Karie Terhark:Let's look at this from maybe a little bit more innovative space than what my one story was allowing me to see. And so the framework works in individual conversations. It works at a large scale level and it works. It fits perfectly into community work, because we're bringing together stakeholders who have competing priorities, who are competing for money, who have to stay in their lane and their silo, and yet we have to make collective community impact. How do we do that? Have to make collective community impact? How do we do that? So bring together places and conversations where people can uncover where our work overlaps and who is responsible for what, and what is it that we really can do together to make the change that we're all looking for?
Ann Price:Well, one of the things that I've seen in community coalitions or collaborators that are not functioning maybe as well as we would like them to and by that I mean kind of a lack of collaboration and turf guarding and bad history and all those kinds of things Do you ever see that kind of play out in the trainings that you've done, or is there just something about the methods that kind of neutralizes all of that? I'm curious about that yeah, I.
Karie Terhark:So part of when I, when I'm doing a public training and people are coming in to learn the tools, um, they come from all over, um, you know where.
Karie Terhark:When you come to a public training, a lot of them are going to be working in population health, but there's going to be a lot of people who may come from private industry or consulting or something else. So when you come to a course, you're going to have a mix of people, which is great because it brings a mix of perspective and it's exciting to learn and connect with people outside of the work that you do. When I come in as a facilitator to facilitate a group through a strategic plan or doing an environmental scan, again, I think it's part of the art of facilitation and how I'm the preparation that I do ahead of time and how the room is set up, on how we're welcoming people when they come in and just starting from the moment that we, that people walk in the room, we're setting an atmosphere of just a little bit more relaxed and and that people are open and wanting to speak and there's just different techniques that we use.
Karie Terhark:That gets people's voice in the room at a very low stakes place, without judgment, and it just starts to build upon that so sometimes you know we might have somebody who know you always have somebody who is, you know, resistant or you know the naysayer or whatever, and a lot of times it's just because they haven't felt heard. And the process itself gives people opportunities to be heard. And at the end, when we're getting to consensus, it doesn't mean that we're all super excited about what's going on and we're going to tattoo this on our arm. That's not what we're looking for. We're going to looking forward to say I've been heard, I understand the decision that we're making as a group and I'm going to support it.
Ann Price:Yeah, and that's so true. That's been my experience too, because everyone's voice is received in the room and welcomed in the room pretty much kind of immediately right, and then bringing it to the larger group, people who have historically not been listened to or marginalized or shut down whatever that looks like and I think pretty quickly feel like, oh, this is different, this is not the average.
Ann Price:You know community meeting that I'm being asked because I represent this group or this organization or whatever. I think that's very true and I think that's you know. That's part of that fundamentals class, yes, Is learning about the difference between you know, a facilitator and a consultant and a director. If I'm remembering my class, my class, You're doing great.
Ann Price:Oh, yay, Right. And then you know kind of building from that. So you mentioned a couple of workshops. So you mentioned consensus workshop. What other one did you mention? Environmental scanning, Environmental scanning. And then there was one other one, one of the basic ones. I'm blanking.
Karie Terhark:Oh, the strategic plan. Probably strategic planning.
Ann Price:Nope, nope, not that one, but anyway, all of those things. How do, how do the, how does the different like training work? Because like, I said I've had the fundamentals, I've had the environmental assessment, I had the strategic planning. So how? Because they all build on each other, we all build right they all build.
Karie Terhark:So the first one that you want to take is the fundamentals, because that's when you learn, just as you said, you learn what facilitation means, and sometimes we have to show up as the consultant, sometimes we have to show up as the director, sometimes we have to show up. As you know, whatever we understand that there's different types of leadership a trainer, for example, sometimes I'm training, sometimes I'm facilitating, sometimes I'm consulting, and we need to understand the difference in those and how to communicate, how we're showing up for groups in that space as a facilitator. So I might be as the director. I'm making decisions. I'm more the hierarchical leader into making the decisions on where we're going to meet, what are we going to talk about, right, those kinds of things. I'm making those decisions because I need to make sure that they're aligning with the purpose of our grant and the things that we need to get done and aligning with our action plan. But when I step into the meeting space, I'm the facilitator, and that then is I'm holding the space for the community to then unpack the purpose and the goal of what we're really doing. And you mentioned some great tactical things, and that is understanding when and how I welcome people into the room, when and how I break them into small groups, when and how, what power dynamics looks like. So sometimes I might set all the people in power at the same table and have them fight for airtime, because then it allows those people who voices are a lot of times not heard, to sit at a table and have a softer conversation and feel that their voice is being heard within that table, and then those tables can report out and then voices get lifted from all places, right? So, as a facilitator, the fundamentals is understanding your role and how you do that, and we give you three fundamental tools to use. And the first one is that focus conversation and how to hold that conversation, how it builds on the way that our brain processes information and the steps in that. From that. Then the next one is the consensus workshop. So then, how do we use that, that conversation framework to bring people to consensus and having them leave? I've been heard and I understand what we're doing and I'm supportive of of where we're moving forward. And then the last one is an action planning process that combines both that consensus workshop and that conversation into actionable things that we can do, that has accountability and assignments and dates on it that we all know what's going to be happening. So the fundamentals class is a lot in two days but it gives you that framework to help you start to move through any meeting or any conversation.
Karie Terhark:The environmental scanning course is a one-day course. It's 10 tools and I used all of these tools in coalition work, from going in and doing a community needs assessment, facilitating that when you're having stakeholders together, you're coming with large sets of data and now you have to kind of figure out and pull out what's in that data. And now you have to kind of figure out and pull out what's in that data. So it's based on the conversation but looking at different things. So there's different tools to identify the history of an organization and honoring the history of an organization and then from that history, looking at what do we need to know and or change to move forward? What does our history tell us about what we can predict in our future?
Karie Terhark:There's a trends analysis to help us understand the ingoing and outgoing trends and I love those tools because, again, this using the environmental scanning tools helps move a group from stuck in the way that we've always done things to understanding the need for change and changing together.
Karie Terhark:And if people are afraid of change, right, we know what's going to happen, right, everything always changes and we know what's going to happen. But there's this fear of the unknown and those tools help move a group into understanding why we need to change and what happens if we don't, and kind of gives a little bit more comfort and and saying that, okay, we, we understand what this change might look like. All helpful um as evaluation tools, as you know, any as assessment as we're getting ready to plan um. Or transition tools when we have a transition of a board, um staff, all of those to help move a group through change. And then getting to that strategic planning, which is that high level planning, not our yearly action plan, but that really high level understanding. You know what the purpose of this organization is and the direction that the organization is going over time.
Ann Price:Yeah, and what I like about the tools, especially with the strategic planning, because I may have told you this before, when I have worked in strategic planning, it's often at the tail end. They've hired a consultant, the organization has spent a lot of money and they're like I have no clue how to measure this. How do we implement this thing? How do we measure that? And when I took the training, I'm like I have no clue how to measure this. Like, how do we implement this thing? How do we measure that? And when I took the training, I'm like, oh yeah, people would A enjoy this, it would feel different, it would not be an onerous. This is gonna take the next three years of our life to do this five-year strategic plan and by that we're halfway done.
Ann Price:Right, it just feels and I think that's true of all of the tools it feels very like you're moving. Like you said. You're not, you're getting unstuck and you're moving and you're moving quickly and you're moving quickly together. Yes, yeah, because so many coalitions I see you know the director maybe has developed. You know they wrote the grant, they developed maybe a logic model or something similar by themselves in the room. They did the action plan. No wonder folks are not, you know, they haven't, you know, bought into the approach.
Karie Terhark:Yeah, and I love that you talked about your experience in that, because I remember you being in that course and there was a couple other people who worked in evaluation that were there with you as well, and that was your first question Like there's going to be evaluation tools in this right. What are the evaluation tools? I want to know that there's going to be something that we can measure when we're done with this action plan. And I think one thing that I've learned just in myself and my leadership journey is that I'm not great at everything. Right, like there are things that I really accelerate in and there's things that are really a struggle for me. And we bring that out in the strategic planning process because there's people who are going to shine in the vision.
Karie Terhark:When we create that large vision, that you know kind of visionary type thinker is going to shine in the vision. When we create that large vision, that you know kind of visionary type thinker is going to love that part. And we come back to our underlying contradictions, really digging into those root causes. But why, why, why, why, why aren't these things happening? And those critical thinkers thrive in that and that's their time, that you know they're saying, but why at every meeting, and now they get a chance to really dig in to understand what that looks like.
Karie Terhark:And then you have the people who are like I want to do something the doers and you start to go through that in your directions. And then you have the people who are like how are we going to evaluate this? What are the measures that we're going to use? And that comes in in the implementation. And so when you think about your groups and your coalitions and you have all of those thinkers around the table, there's an opportunity for somebody to step in and like this is my part, this is the part that I'm really going to shine and help the group think through. And then maybe something else. I'm just kind of like okay, I get it, I'm not thinking in that way, but now it's somebody else's and it just creates this collaborative space of understanding how we're going to work together and the importance of all of those areas of thinking that, not only for strategic planning but in all of our coalition work.
Ann Price:and all of our teamwork, that everybody has a place to step in and share. Yeah, awesome. And the ping you just heard was my battery going plug in my computer. I meant to do that, sorry, before we started everybody. So, carrie, what are your like favorite? You know these are in my like tools and I'm these are my babies and I love doing them with groups. Do you have any?
Karie Terhark:Oh, I have a lot. The consensus workshop is in everything that I do and again, it's it's, you know, having a question that's going to have multiple answers to it and it's what we agree to. You know, what are the, what are the pillars of our organization right, or the working agreements, or what are the areas that we're going to collaborate around X Y Z? And it really kind of helps give us that around X Y Z, and it really kind of helps give us that there's other tools, especially in the environmental scanning tool. I love the wave.
Ann Price:It's the trends analysis. It's a dance right.
Karie Terhark:It's a dance. It's so visual, it's beautiful. And again, all of these tools, they're interactive and you're part of it and you're seeing it develop as a group and you can just start to see the light bulbs go on and people really get excited about participating in them. And the wave is just again one of those tools for that trends that it's just like if we don't jump on the wave of this trend, we're going to be irrelevant and nobody really wants to do that.
Karie Terhark:We also need to stop doing some things that we don't know why we're doing them anymore. They're just not helping us be productive and so these things we need to kind of just let go for a while. I love that. And there's the strategic plan understanding, kind of the high level, where we are going as a group and I love to bring together stakeholders and do some alignment to understand like we you know, I've brought together multiple coalitions that are in the same region but have different funding but have different funding and for them to come together and do a workshop to understand like if we can all be moving in the same direction. We can, we can work in our silos, but we're going to still cross paths, collaborate or our work is still going to lift one another up to make greater impact than either one of us could do alone yeah, gotcha.
Ann Price:So now you're, you are going around the country doing training, correct? Yeah, so I do.
Karie Terhark:I do the top training. I also, uh, I do youth development training. Um, and yeah, so then I go and I facilitate groups. I get to be the outside person who gets to come in and guide groups through a facilitation.
Ann Price:So tell me a little bit more about the youth development training, because one of my pet peeves with whether it be substance abuse or mental health and aimed at youth is the youth are not at the table. You got a bunch of adults. You have a bunch of adults in the room coming up with slogans and things. Yeah, and it never works. It never works.
Karie Terhark:Yeah. So tell me about that work. Nothing about us without us right. And I love youth coalition work and I used the methods as I was learning them in my early coalition years and started implementing them in our youth and got to the point where our youth were really guiding their own meetings and they were coming up with their. We did a consensus workshop where they identified what the themes were for their messaging for the quarters and then an action plan on how they were going to get that done.
Karie Terhark:I spent two years in Eastern Kentucky working with high school youth. Each year was a different group of high school students and went out there once a month and walked them through learning how to facilitate. So the first one was really understanding themselves and we did an Illumina personality assessment to understand themselves and to really kind of start to uncover oh, you think differently than I do, you know and understanding that conflict and where some of those things come into play. And we talked about conflict. We talked about advocacy how to be an advocate and how to be an ally, creating space for them to work together and giving them those tools so that they could go back into their own school districts we had five school districts. So the kids didn't know each other even at the beginning of it and we did a workshop to kind of get them to know each other in that first beginning. And really the theme for the leadership was first connection. The leadership quality that I wanted them to have was connection First, connection with myself, to know who I am, to be confident in who I am, the ability to connect with another person and meet them where they are, knowing that they might be different than I am, and the ability to connect people to people and bring people together. In order to do that there needed to be some level of vulnerability and that sharing my story and who I am and where I come from. So people have a greater understanding and it takes courage to step and do that first.
Karie Terhark:And Eastern Kentucky is a really tough part of the country. You know, even from rural Iowa where I was, these kids are amazing and they're resilient and they've had some really tough things go on. You know it's a really hot point of the beginning of the opioid epidemic, the struggles that they have had growing up in. You know the Appalachian mountains is tough and the first activity that we did was called footprints and they had an opportunity to share their life in three sections, so it could be middle school, or elementary school, middle school, high school, it could be past, present, future, it could be.
Karie Terhark:My life was doing this until something happened and then it changed my trajectory and I said they could go as deep or as high level as they wanted, whatever they were comfortable sharing. They didn't know each other. And the first girl got up and just told this story about her parents' struggle with opioids, her struggle with mental health. She has been experienced homelessness that you know and just kicked it off in this space and it was hard to hear. And yet it was this transformational spot where she had the courage to be that vulnerable. Because then every student after that shared a deeper story and they found wow, I've never shared this story before because I never thought anybody was experiencing the same thing I was experiencing and now I feel connected to someone, and that the group just bonded very quickly and was able then to really help one another through the rest of the year. And that's not going to happen with every group, because you you got to have a level of courage to do that.
Karie Terhark:But they what they what they were able to accomplish and and understand conflict, understand their values and why right, why are certain things really really important to me and I'm really willing to fight about it? And then understanding why somebody is pushing back on me to say, okay, I understand now that your values maybe not be the same as mine or that your conflict style isn't the same as mine, and just teaching them the value of being a leader within themselves. So it was a great week, a great year, I should say.
Ann Price:Yeah, it sounds like it. Oh my gosh, I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall. You know just right, because I imagine I was on a panel last week with a colleague for a class and we were, you know. They were asking us questions about being a community psychologist and working in communities and somebody asked what is the best day of work I've ever had? And the story I told wasn't youth, but it was definitely working in communities. I was definitely using my TOPS, training, all of the things, and I remember calling my colleague who was on the panel with me at the end of the day going that was the best day of my career. It's just so exciting and empowering when you see a group like that and I bet if I asked you what is one of the best days of your career, you I believe in that training.
Ann Price:It really has been such a great value for me and I'm not kidding it really has upped the way that I work in communities. So you're doing that too. So you started your own venture. You left your former organization I think in is it 2023 where you started your consulting practice.
Karie Terhark:Yeah, I just hit a year.
Ann Price:Yes, so tell us about your consulting practice, what services you're offering, maybe how people can get in touch with you.
Karie Terhark:Yeah. So again, my passion, my training at heart is my passion at heart is training. That's just where I skill building and you talk about. We were just talking about youth, and my stronghold in youth is that empowerment is giving them the skills to solve their own problems, the skills to have authentic conversations and work and bring people together to work together. And so when I hear people say, oh, we're empowering youth, and then what are you doing? Well, we're bringing them to a coalition meeting and we tell them what to do. Well, that's not empowering you. Having them at the table is not empowerment. Having them lead and know what to do is empowerment, and I think it's the same for adults and I love.
Karie Terhark:For me, leadership is a choice. It's a choice in how I show up, it's a choice in my attitude and how I treat people, and I have to be able to lead myself before I can lead others. And for me, the top facilitation methods have taught me how to do that. They've been a vehicle for me to upskill myself so that I can walk into any conversation at home at the dinner table, to a room full of people and help lead a group of people through authentic conversation. And so training is just my passion.
Karie Terhark:I train top facilitation methods in about six or seven locations across the country. If I have a group that we don't want to travel but we have five or six people or more that we want to train, will come to you so that you're not traveling. We'll travel for that, and then I also. You know whatever you need for coalition work as far as having an outside person, but you offer those amazing skills and you are doing the top facilitation methods and I know that's kind of your wheelhouse. So I mean, I do a little bit of that, but I do it outside of coalitions too. So I do that for you know county government, you know economic development organizations.
Ann Price:So I work a lot outside of coalition work, right, yeah, because we have talked a lot about coalitions, but the skills are applicable no matter what your organization is. So I can totally see you coming in and helping an organization. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's awesome.
Karie Terhark:I mean I love that I also do some mentoring. So for people who have taken the top training and who are on a certification track or on, you know, need really embedding it in the work that they do and they need help thinking through a design. How do I use the tools?
Karie Terhark:once you understand the framework and how they work, the art of facilitation comes in and that's where you're creative and how you're using the tools along with other facilitation tools or other methods, or customizing them to the needs of the group that you're working with. I love thinking in that creative space, and so I help mentor people through planning a session that might be a little bit unconventional.
Ann Price:Well, good to know I may take you up on that last bit. So do you have a website? Where should people go to get in touch with you?
Karie Terhark:Yeah, it's my name karyterharkcom. And you can find me on LinkedIn. There as well, on Facebook, you can find KT Facilitation. So, yeah, I'd love to hear from people. I'd love to hear success stories, as people are working through coalitions and doing some awesome engagement and seeing things evolve. I want to hear about them.
Ann Price:So that's great. Okay, Carrie, I want to ask you my last question. When you look to the future, what community possibilities do you see?
Karie Terhark:You know, when I I was in an Uber a couple of years ago and the there was a, my driver was trying to talk about politics with me and I was like, no, I'm going to jump out of this car and stop, I can't do this. And he was talking about policy and he was talking about all these things that were going on in our country and I just said you know what, if you really want to change the world, go talk to your neighbor. Just said you know what, if you really want to change the world, go talk to your neighbor. You know work in your communities, grassroots.
Karie Terhark:You know what can you do to help your neighborhood, what can you do to help your community and your church? Have those conversations, understand that your truth, your life, is yours, but not everybody has walked in the same steps you've walked in. And so here, listen authentically, listen to somebody else's story and hear where they're coming from, because I think what we're missing a lot is that passion and compassion and empathy, but also understanding that no one's going to fix this for us and we can sit in our houses and wait for something to happen that 50% of us aren't going to like, or we can just shut off the TV and go into our community and say what do we need to do in our community to help one another thrive? So I think the more we can do that and facilitation is a great way to have a non-threatening space for those conversations to happen yeah, I think that being. I think that will be very transformational in our community.
Ann Price:All right, everybody go talk to your neighbor. That's right, go talk to your neighbor. Well, keri, thank you so much for joining me today. This was just gold, thank you.
Karie Terhark:Thank you for having me. I love talking. We always have great conversations. Thank you, thank you for having me. I love talking, always have great conversations. Thank you so much.
Ann Price:Hi everybody. Thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of Community Possibilities. Please like and share the episode. Share it with a community leader you know and love, or just someone who needs a little boost today. If you could take an extra minute or two and leave a review, that would be so helpful. Now I just want to remind you that my course, powerful Evidence Evaluation for Non-Evaluators, is live. We are offering a 50% discount as a pilot. Thank you to the first 10 folks who register for the course.
Ann Price:It is designed for nonprofit and community leaders who really want to build the evaluation capacity of their organization and maybe it's just not in the budget to hire an evaluator or consultant. No worries, this is going to get you started. Your organization is going to learn practical insights and strategies to collect, analyze and interpret and share evidence in ways that's really going to demonstrate the outcomes of your organization. And, of course, we wanted to inform your strategic decision making. Evaluation at its best is all about making the world a better place. It includes seven modules, including one bonus module where I really give you some tips and tricks on how to share data in a compelling way. It includes five plus hours of guided video content and a beautiful 80-page workbook that walks you through step-by-step the evaluation process. Please reach out to me if you have any questions, and thank you so much for enrolling in Powerful Evidence. It is meant just for you, my friend. See you next time. Thank you ©. Transcript Emily Beynon.