82: Crisis Leadership—Transforming Through Empathy and Resilience, with Martin Simms

What if a single moment could transform your entire approach to leadership? 

Join us for a powerful episode featuring Martin Simms, who shares his incredible journey through some of the most challenging crises, including Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Katrina. Martin's hands-on relief efforts to deliver essential goods to flood victims illustrate the vital role of community support and resilience during emergencies. His story is a testament to the impact of empathy and proactive leadership.

We also discuss the transformative power of social media and its ability to build community support for crucial initiatives. Hear how a viral post during Hurricane Harvey propelled Martin into a leadership role, where he spearheaded efforts to feed the homeless. This experience led to the creation of sports-oriented youth mental health programs. Martin's journey highlights the importance of modeling positive behaviors and fostering therapeutic environments for those in need.

Martin Simms is the founder of the Dope Coach Academy – Develop.
Organize. Process. Engage. Where ambitious coaches can take their skills to the next level and make a real difference in the lives of their athletes. Powered by The Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics in Sport.

Learn more about The Dope Coach Academy on its website or Instagram. And learn more about Martin on his Instagram or LinkedIn.

Go to https://betterhelp.com/resilience or click Notes on Resilience during sign up for 10% off your first month of therapy with my sponsor BetterHelp.

Chapters

• 0:00 Crisis Leadership
• 13:09 Harnessing Trauma to Help Others
• 20:51 Skills, Crisis Leadership, and Mental Health
• 30:04 Building Resilience in Organizations

Transcript

Martin Simms: 1:14

That's a perfect analogy for crisis leadership in terms of how, as a leader, can you calm the people that you're leading in a way, and you have to have some level of demonstrated skill set for them to feel calm, because they may not have the skill set, which is one of the reasons why they feel so anxious in the first place when crisis happens. Because crisis for a firefighter is different than a crisis for a mother. Like that, crisis is going to be looked at process completely different, because it could be the first time for this mother, and firefighters is a daily job.

Manya Chylinski: 1:54

Hello and welcome to Notes on Resilience. I'm your host, manya Chylinski. Today, we have another episode in our Crisis Leadership Series. I'm speaking to Martin Simms, who's the founder of the Dope Coach Academy, where he uses the neurosequential model to help youth deal with crises, trauma and mental health issues. We had a really wonderful conversation about leading in a crisis, about his experience in Hurricane Harvey and in the pandemic, and what we need to think about as we're dealing with a crisis. I think you're really going to enjoy this conversation. Hi, martin, I'm so glad we're finally getting a chance to do this episode. Thanks for being here.

Martin Simms: 2:49

Thanks for having me. Thanks so much, and we had a great podcast episode, or was it a webinar? Whatever we did with Ingrid Cochran, it was amazing. Was it Constance? And then Jesse.

Manya Chylinski: 3:03

Yes.

Martin Simms: 3:03

Yeah, that was amazing.

Manya Chylinski: 3:05

It was absolutely amazing and I'll let you and our listeners in on a little secret I am turning that webinar into a three podcast series. So, for our listeners, you're going to get to hear Martin again. So, for our listeners, you're going to get to hear Martin again. Oh, hey, Martin, before we dive into the topic, the question I like to start with if you could have dinner with any historical figure, who would it be and why?

Martin Simms: 3:34

It would always be Muhammad Ali. I felt like I was supposed to be him before he passed, but so I was named after Ali. My middle be Muhammad Ali. I felt like I was supposed to be him before he passed, so I was named after Ali. My middle name is Ali. I grew up just looking up to Muhammad Ali and you know the different stories that comes out about him, even before he passed, and so then I would buy his daughter's books. I think Muhammad Ali was the first big novel book that I ever read. I don't know how old I was, maybe 10 or 11, something like that. It was a big autobiography. I read it. Then the movies came out with Will Smith and different documentaries here and there. He's just somebody that was just so historical Then, even all the way to the Olympics in 96. Muhammad Ali would probably be absolutely. That would be who I would love to sit down and just pick his brain.

Manya Chylinski: 4:18

Oh, wow, yes, and I wish I could be, I wish I could make it happen and I wish I could listen in, because I know he's got amazing stories, all right, but let's get into we.

Manya Chylinski: 4:32

I've got you on to talk about crisis leadership and you have a little bit of a different take on this than some of our other guests who are talking a little bit more about you know, a crisis hits like an earthquake, or a crisis hits an organization and they need to reply. You deal with youth in crisis on a daily basis. So how do you define leading in a crisis?

Martin Simms: 5:05

So I've been in those situations. I was in Katrina when Katrina happened in Mississippi, when they had the situation in New Orleans. I also was in Hurricane Harvey when there was this flood in Houston, and so, yeah, I have honest to God, I think that was the catalyst for the work that.

Martin Simms: 5:21

I do right now in terms of the philanthropy work and things of that nature. So in Harvey, I left Houston to go to Lake Charles in order to avoid the storm, but I didn't have a car at the time, so I took a shuttle. I took a shuttle to the casino I'm not going to make that a long story but I had complimentary tickets to be at a LaBear's Hotel Casino in Lake Charles. I stayed there for a couple of days that's where I was at for the storm to pass, and then there was no shuttle to go back because I-10 was underwater. So, long story short, I ended up getting a U-Haul truck. A friend of mine had started doing some relief efforts by this time. Story short, I ended up getting a U-Haul truck. A friend of mine had started doing some relief efforts by this time. By the time, it was time for me to leave there.

Martin Simms: 6:00

Of course, houston was probably half of Houston was underwater completely. Half the homes had been submerged. So the U-Haul me going to get a U-Haul to gather supplies to drive back to Houston, versus taking the shuttle back was the beginning of it. And it took off because it went viral and people were sending me donations from everywhere, and so we just basically started a relief mission, okay, started with the U-Haul, and I want to say we probably over the course of six weeks with the U-Haul, we might have delivered maybe half a million dollars worth of goods to people who had lost everything. Wow, maybe half a million dollars worth of goods to people who had lost everything. So it was a great thing that started off and got a lot of support for the things that I do now, which is and I did it at the time as well, but I was in youth sports and so those kids that some of them had lost everything, or some of you know what I'm saying that was one of the things. And some of them didn't have much to lose in the first place, and so everybody lost things during Harvey. So it wasn't one of those socioeconomic things. Just depending on where the floods were and where the deepest water were, no matter what type of house you had, what type of income you had, you were affected by it. And so when the relief efforts start coming and the recovery efforts start coming and the restoration efforts start coming, well, that's distributed differently during those times and so the haves and the have nots still in a relief situation.

Martin Simms: 7:33

So, going into that, I think that was my first time actually embodying being a leader during a crisis, and I'm not saying I mean this was a major disaster, and so I did pick up on a lot of things because it was such an intense experience, and so there was a lot of patterns that I saw emerge and things that worked, things that probably would never work, things that I knew why they worked, because they had these structures in place versus us. Just hey, I got a great idea and I got a truck. You know what I mean. So I definitely recognize what structure could do, even in a crisis. Just things that you have prepared before you get into a crisis, right?

Martin Simms: 8:11

So a friend of mine had a 501c3. We didn't. They got far more help from different organizations or companies and things, and I never forget we were, which is one of the reasons why I started my 501c3. We were getting stuff from Walmart for donations that had been sent through, like various cash out demo donations People were sending via social media and things so. But a friend of mine had a 501c3 and they just gave us the whole order. Walmart did yeah, because they knew what we were doing. We were showing them videos from the day before see.

Martin Simms: 8:48

So that is like you start to pick up on things that can make a difference, even though you're I'm passionate about. I wasn't no more passionate about it than my friend was, but he had a 501c3 piece of paper where they could give him some relief and effort. So I thought that was amazing to see, in the middle of a crisis, what could make things go further. And then that's a bit of the strategy in that. But the rest of everything was I worked for FedEx for a long time, so I understood distribution. So when I got a U-Haul truck for it, I had no idea that this skill would ever be something meaningful. But it turned out to be something so meaningful that I don't think anyone else during that time would have been able to execute it without that knowledge that I had at the time.

Manya Chylinski: 9:35

It's so interesting that a crisis happens and you do what you do, what you need to do in the moment, and you took your skills and your friend and used it to help people. So that's to me the definition of crisis leadership, which is it was born in that moment. You saw what needed to be done and you did it. What do you think were the personal qualities or skills that made you able to do that in that moment?

Martin Simms: 10:09

You know, I had gone through Katrina before and if we remember how bad it got during Katrina, I think this time around I wasn't in a space and I was in a much more aware space of how these things work. I think I was maybe in my early 20s when Katrina happened. I probably was in my late 20s when Hurricane Harvey happened, so I had seen what not doing anything would lead to, and so, because it was a very similar storm, in terms of flooding, to Katrina, I kind of just sprang into action, and what happened was my initial action opened up everything. So I didn't think I would be out there for six weeks. It was just like, hey, look, this is the crisis that I'm in. The crisis I was in was I was in a hotel that I had to get out of. They was like hey, kyle, fema, fema can help you, because the following day was Labor Day, weekend and the entire hotel was booked. So it was like they didn't even have additional rooms for me to even stay there, so I had to get back home.

Martin Simms: 11:08

In my heart of hearts, what happened was I was like I have to do this anyway. I might as well help as many people along the way as I can. That's where the U-Haul thought came from and the deeper version of it was I know, if we don't do something, we can't wait for the government to do it immediately, because we saw what happened when Katrina happened and so I didn't wait. I just when I had the thought of the U-Haul, I was like, well, that's what we're going to do for at least me getting back to Houston and on the way, live I'm right by walmart. I can, these people can just donate and put things on the uholl truck and I go. Now, I had no idea it would be how it was meaning, like it went viral immediately.

Martin Simms: 11:49

Like the second time I opened my uholl truck, somebody that was on hbo at the time put it on their instagram and within I don't know, maybe a matter of 10 minutes, people was flooding my DM with like how do I help? How do I help? How do I help? Where should I send this? Where should I send it?

Martin Simms: 12:04

The first day I opened up my U-Haul it would have been the first day because I went out there the first night, but the first day I opened up my U-Haul I had a full U-Haul of far enough to only see it on the news. But as I took the water and I started dealing with the people in the world with the waters and you realize like we brought a truck full of water. They need so much more, like they lost everything, like they need the babies, need formula diapers, feminine products, so many different things In the immediate seat of trying to help you realize what else is needed. But from that point on I felt like I had tapped into something and the crisis and responding to the crisis, I feel like it just carried me through until I was. By the time those six weeks was up, I felt like I was living a completely different life and I was. It absolutely changed my life completely.

Manya Chylinski: 13:00

It does change you. I mean that kind of work and being able to see the impact that you were able to make directly with the individuals that you were working with. And then how did you take that experience and the skills that you learned into the rest of your life and the work that you're doing now?

Martin Simms: 13:21

Well, you know, because it was such a viral moment, then people would begin to. If I said we were going to do something, then people were pretty much like, oh, he would do it. So when I had to garner support for different community initiatives whether it's been something with my basketball team, whether it's been when we went out to feed the homeless whatever I was asking as an endeavor that I would be doing, we would have enough support to get it done, and so you know that kind of grew. So that turned into me being more open to asking, or more open to attempting to do something and expecting, somewhere along the way to help would come, and for the most part, for the vast majority of time, that's what takes place, and we're learning more and more how to do it, how to be more strategic and going about doing these things and even more intentional.

Martin Simms: 14:09

Where we are now is that that was hurricane harvey might have happened six or seven years ago at this point, 2017, so I've been seven years ago and so initially, it started a lot of the things that I'm doing. It coincidentally enough, the basketball team that I was working with. They dealt with harvey and I stayed with them until the beginning of the pandemic and then they knew again it's seven years ago, so they were just getting to high school during the pandemic, or they experienced starting high school during online, like everyone else. Yeah, no, so that was adjustment for them. And so then we tried to put the mental health program in for them during COVID early, early during the lockdown periods, and that was where we also saw like the deeper the crisis, the deeper the need for some of these mental health practices and the deeper it needs to be. You know trauma, informed and understand temperaments and understanding the rest and all those things, and so we're teaching them different strategies and techniques to ground themselves, do affirmations, meditations, breath work, all the type of things that they could take some level of control for their emotions and their reactions to things, even understanding. We're under duress. This is a new environment. Nobody has ever dealt with this before. There's a great deal of unpredictability and uncertainty that's in the air for not only the kids but their parents, for the politicians, business owners. Everything's shut down, people losing their jobs. There's a lot of things going on. And so once we created that environment for the kids and recognized that, hey, we don't have to be therapists to create a therapeutic environment for the ones that we love, and that was what we could do at the time.

Martin Simms: 15:58

And what happened was that thought, that idea, that endeavor that we set out to do during COVID.

Martin Simms: 16:05

It had far more reaching implications than any of us could ever see at that time, because the junior NBA, the youth version of the NBA they caught wind of it.

Martin Simms: 16:13

They nominated us for program of the year for how we handled the pandemic with our kids, and then that turned into a relationship with an education first, and then a relationship with the neuro-sequential model and Dr Perry and Megan Bartlett, and then that turned into me really, really, really getting a chance for like three years straight to be under their tutelage, of learning these models of healing trauma and how to deal with people during a crisis, what it's doing to the brain, what that's doing to the behaviors, how we can respond to that and engage with that in an understanding way, and to create the environments that are needed during crisis.

Martin Simms: 16:55

And so the whole journey is actually quite surreal for me, because I became a fan of Dr Fair the minute I was introduced to his work, and so I had foot all the way to culminate into like I'm actually in here and they actually know my name and they know how. You know that. That was really, really surreal, but it also was it felt very much like a calling, and so there was some parts of me that's like man, I can't believe I'm here, and then other parts of me like I'm absolutely where I'm supposed to be.

Manya Chylinski: 17:27

Martin, you have been in the right slash wrong place at the right slash wrong time right.

Manya Chylinski: 17:36

So these things happened to you I mean, the pandemic happened to all of us but you were in a position to take a leadership role for these youth that you were working with and really use your knowledge of crisis and trauma and recovery, and maybe without even knowing it before that, for Hurricane Harvey, you were in the place where you could help and you did. And that's an amazing thing for the folks that you've helped, and it must feel really good, too, to know that you've been able to help people during crises.

Martin Simms: 18:15

It's been spiritually fulfilling and it's been a confidence building process over time, because if at some point my intention was to be impacted and then I've been presented with opportunities to make some type of impact, I feel like for me my biggest internal driver is it doesn't matter how small or big the impact is, if it's a conversation on the side of the road when I might be in a rush and I might have to talk to somebody who looks like they need this.

Martin Simms: 18:46

That's as big as me putting on an event to raise money for something. That's as big as me going out to feed the homeless when we make it a big deal. And there's been times when nobody's seen the impact that I've tried to make, because it's just the things that I have in my trunk, right and you, I'm just now learning to capture things on on camera and to utilize it in the right way, because the fact of the matter is, I would do this, but you never saw me do it, or not. What I started to realize is people still need behaviors modeled for them at times, and so then I try to figure out the best ways where we can be like hey look, everybody did what I did, or some people duplicated this and it doesn't take much.

Martin Simms: 19:30

Uh, I wasn't well off when the hurricane happened. Like you could do it from where you are. Like some people have so many things that have happened to them that they're not in the position you're in. Even if we all went through kobe, it doesn't affect everybody the same. There are some subgroups and some groups. That is going to devastate more than others, particularly in the black community that's something that we generally are at the bottom of the barrel. When it comes to resources distributed if they're distributed in a way, and that comes from that's from health care all the way down to just some financial resources where we don't have to be on government assistance or things of that nature where those opportunities come from. And so me just having a great understanding of what life is lived like without resources and what the difference could be if said resources are available, are available and education and training is also provided with the resources, because you just need a mindset and a skillset.

Martin Simms: 20:32

I think they both go hand in hand. So if you are given a skillset without the proper mindset, you won't utilize it properly. Same thing, if you have a mindset, you don't have a skill set there, you can't move the things around it. You may need to move in order to create a better environment, so to speak.

Martin Simms: 20:51

So, um, I preach to my kids all the time and I use basketball as an analogy. I tell them skills equal freedom. You know I'm saying skills equal freedom like the more skills you have. I just had this conversation with my nephew the other day. I'm standing outside playing basketball at my sister's house and I'm dribbling the basketball I'm not playing the whole game, I'm just dribbling the basketball and then he wants to come do it and she's immediately like no, you can't do it, put the ball down, this, this, that and the third. And the reason being is because she feels like her stuff is going to be damaged by him doing it. She doesn't have that level of fear to when I'm doing it, because I have so much control over this. It doesn't make it feel like something's going to break.

Manya Chylinski: 21:31

Right.

Martin Simms: 21:31

So that's a perfect analogy for crisis leadership in terms of how, as a leader, can you calm the people that you're leading in a way, and you have to have some level of demonstrated skill set for them to feel calm, because they may not have the skill set, which is one of the reasons why they feel so anxious in the first place when crisis happens. Because crisis for a firefighter is different than a crisis for a mother, like that crisis is going to be looked at process completely different because it could be the first time for his mother and firefighters and daddy. John knows the protocol, he knows the procedures, he knows the communications, he knows all of those things, so he doesn't approach a fire in the same way to someone who does not have those skills approaches in the same way to someone who does not have those skills?

Manya Chylinski: 22:21

approaches Right, absolutely. And how have you been taking care of your own mental health as you're dealing with this crisis? What is it that's?

Martin Simms: 22:29

helped you. I'm pretty strong on boundaries, so if I'm tired or I can't do it or it's a no, then it's a, because I used to be one of those type of people that will go until I crashed and in a way I'm like that. But I just have a better understanding of my own energy levels. I can tell you when I'm like I don't have no more for today, and generally I'm like that period. I'm pretty good in the mornings. I can get way more done from 5 to 10 am than most people can get done all day, and if that's uninterrupted which is not in the last four years, I have a four-year-old.

Martin Simms: 23:03

He came during the first week of the second week of the lockdown. So that, yeah, the whole pandemic was. It was far more crisis than I can even tell you. I was going through a knee surgery and a newborn baby and a lockdown and a brain Wow, All at the same time. So, yeah, I got a crash course in crisis leadership during that period.

Manya Chylinski: 23:27

Yes, you did.

Martin Simms: 23:29

And now that things have kind of not felt so intense on a daily basis and the pandemic lockdowns and the you know travel ban, all the things that came along with that Now that things have kind of settled and people are getting back to normal, there's in-person gathering, things of that nature, since the kids have been able to go back to school. This recent graduating class would be the class that started high school. Now you're getting the people who have had that interruption going into the workforce, starting college and things of that nature. So it's interesting to see what we know, what the pandemic babies were doing. But a lot of people were at different inflection points in their lives during 2020 and 2021 that had to reset, do something, shift, start something else. I knew for a fact that when it started that people were going to have to like pivot, and I actually just doubled down on what I pivoted into in terms of this mental health situation and I thought that that would be the overall thing when it all was said and done. This is going to be needed regardless, like people are going to have to be able to get through this and then what after that. So I will say I had a little bit of foresight, but I had a little bit of time to think about it.

Martin Simms: 24:41

The lockdowns took me away from work. My wife was still pregnant, so it wasn't a baby running around. So for the first couple of weeks of lockdown I sat down and I was like, what can we do to make this better? And, coincidentally enough, dr Perry had a series he still has a series out of the YouTube series during the first couple of weeks of the lockdown of different things that would be happening as a collective, according to neuroscience, and I was into it every day. I literally was trying to figure out how to manage it, because she was nine months pregnant already when the lockdown started, so I really needed all the help that I could get. And because it helped me and I knew we was in such a crisis situation, I felt like it would help the kids.

Martin Simms: 25:25

When we started back playing basketball and it did. And again, it's been such a confidence-building thing because we're trying these things and we are seeing the differences in the outcomes, are seeing the differences in the reactions that the players are having. It's just been such a beautiful unfolding and now those kids are going into their junior year of college and so they are now advocates for it. I still got a couple of them still playing collegiately who will come back and mentor the high school kids that we're working with now, and so you can see that it just keeps compounding as we continue to go, that it just keeps compounding as we continue to go, and the momentum is just getting there to the point where the pandemic had a silver lining.

Martin Simms: 26:06

It made people focus on mental health a lot more than they did before, and so now it's a topic that's not brushed under the rug. People will actually try to listen and whether they get a little or a lot from you, I've studied it so much that I get to share something every time. I because it's kind of an embodied thing at this point so and I don't even want to say kind of, it is an absolutely embodied thing like my conversation will lead to some type of uh level of hey, I can do this, so I maybe could do that to improve my, my own space, because, at the end of the day, of everybody who needed a therapist when they got, one we don't have enough therapists to service that.

Martin Simms: 26:43

So we do have to figure out, like how you ask the question, like how do I, you know, take my self-care type things, and my biggest thing is I just know how to set pretty good boundaries at the end of the day, if I didn't, I would probably be taken over because of my heart wants to do, and wants to do, and wants to do. And so if I can understand what I'm in my capacity and I can recharge, I can do that tomorrow.

Manya Chylinski: 27:07

Yeah.

Martin Simms: 27:08

You don't make an important thing super urgent to me, especially if I know it's not urgent.

Manya Chylinski: 27:12

Yes, that is such an important skill understanding your boundaries and you've just given us a really great picture of why that's so important. And, Martin, we are at the end of our time and I could talk to you for about three more hours, if not more than that. But to wrap up, can you tell our listeners a little bit about you and your work and how they can reach you if they want to learn more?

Martin Simms: 27:39

Yeah, absolutely. I'm the founder of the Dopest Coach. Well, no, I'm the founder of the Dope Coach Academy and it's just at the dopestcoachcom that's the URL that we have it in. We want every coach that we come across to feel like they're the dopest coach that their player's ever had. Dope is an acronym, it's how I explain the neural sequential model by Dr Perry. I say is we have four sequences. The sequences are the development sequence, organizational sequence, the processing sequence and the engagement sequence of the brain. And I use those sequences.

Martin Simms: 28:13

At every chance that I get, I try to teach about them and we want to make it dope. The reason is sometimes neuroscience and sometimes some of these sciences can just get too school, like too wordy, too different, and it doesn't reach the people that it's supposed to reach. So we want to make it a cool thing to you know. We want to make it really, really dope to know exactly how to use your brain to heal your trauma, really really dope. To know exactly how to use your brain to heal your trauma, to process your stress, to manage your emotions, to increase your cognitive abilities and then to tap into that space where you reach into your flow state and you don't have to think about it and it just feels like you're in there.

Martin Simms: 28:53

And, like I alluded to earlier, after a while, the crisis, I was on a crisis wave, the things that the crisis was I was like on a crisis wave, like the things that the crisis was producing was producing something in myself to be able to respond to everything. And that's a certain state that I want everybody to experience, and I think everybody has experienced flow state in some way to where it might've been song, that was right, a conversation they were having just something to just take over and flow. And we can intentionally induce ourselves into those states if we really understand how our brains work and I just want to share that with anybody that wants to know about it. So you can find me at thedopestcoach. com On Instagram. You can follow me at thedopestcoachcom. Our personal Instagram is siponit S-I-P-O-N-I-T and it just means take it slow, don't take shots, just do it slow and then it hits you eventually.

Manya Chylinski: 29:44

So, anyway, that's great, martin. Thank you so much. We will put links to those in the show notes so people can find you more easily, and thank you so much for talking today about crisis leadership and what that's meant for you and the people that you've worked with.

Martin Simms: 30:05

Thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much.

Manya Chylinski: 30:08

Thank you for listening. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I did. So if you'd like to learn more about me, manya Chylinski, I work with organizations to help understand how to create environments where people can thrive after difficult life experiences, and I do this through talks and consulting. I'm a survivor of mass violence and I use my experience to help leaders learn of resiliency, compassion and trauma-sensitive leadership To build strategies to enable teams to thrive and be engaged amidst difficulty and turmoil. If this is something you want to learn more about, visit my website, www. manya Chylinski. com, or email me at manya at manyaChylinski. com, or stop by my social media on LinkedIn and Twitter. Thanks so much.