Welcome to the Where Parents Talk podcast. We help grow better parents through science, evidence and the lived experience of other parents. Learn how to better navigate the mental and physical health of your tween teen or young adult through proven expert advice. Here's your host, Lianne Castelino.

Welcome to Where Parents Talk. My name is Lianne Castelino. Our guest today is an internationally recognized integral master coach and educator. Micheline Green has previously worked as a school counselor. She's also a leadership advisor with more than 25 years of experience guiding individuals and organizations through personal and professional transformation. Her work integrates neuroscience, adult development and peak performance research with expertise in conscious leadership and parenting. Micheline also trains coaches and is an author. Her book is called Leadership how to Soften Control and Strengthen Connection for Purpose Driven Women Mothering the Future Generation. Micheline is also a mother herself of three children. She joins us today from Comox, bc. Thank you so much for taking the time.

Hi Leanne. Thank you so much. Happy to be here.

You've done a lot. It is such an interesting background, to say the least. And I wonder what set you off on this journey to where you are today in terms of bringing all those different perspectives together to talk about leadership and parenting?

Yeah, good question. I'll try to keep it brief because, you know, our I have always said everything is leading you to something. I've worked a lot with young adults and it's really important that they know that no matter where they are, it's leading them somewhere. And so when I look back on my my biography, I grew up in a family of five kids, fellow Montrealer, grew up in Montreal. And you know, there was a lot of challenges in my childhood and some trauma that happened in my childhood which my parents could not see. They just were not able to see the struggles that I was going through at such a young age. And they didn't know how to handle my behaviors. And my parents are wonderful, amazing, incredible parents and yet they weren't able to see this at the time. And so my acting out caused, you know, a lot of problems in the family. It caused me leaving home at 16 with one backpack on my back and never lived with my parents again. And so this was, you know, just a path that I happen to be on. And it stemmed from this, you know, child sexual abuse that I endured from, from a neighbor. And so I think that was always leading me. And I went into, you know, studied social works, social sciences, was, was always really concerned about children and also then ended up as my first job in child Protect child protection up in Northern Ontario. So I was investigating, you know, emotional, physical, sexual abuse I had yet even not admitted to myself yet. And so, again, those things that show up in our lives, they're always leading us somewhere. Once I had my own children, and then I didn't want to be in that line of work anymore. It's not the kind of work you can let go of at the end of the day. And so I became a school counselor, got my master's in counseling. And it was through my own raising of my children that I quickly learned that what happened to me came to light. It wasn't something that I could have ever wanted, you know, until I had my daughter and see her at her own age, and then at that age of seven and realize, wow, there is no way I could have wanted that to happen. And that's when I started unpacking and unraveling my own, you know, childhood trauma, which led to, you know, eventually the end of our marriage. It was a. Not a healthy marriage at all. And. And so that then led me into. I mean, I was also an international athlete, so I've played rugby for the Canadian women's team. I've been to two World Cups, you know, so I was already someone who was driven by performance and achievement and perseverance and independence and all things that, you know, helped me survive leaving at home at 16 and getting me far in sport. So beautiful set of skills. But those sets of skills didn't translate to me being a parent. I needed a whole new set of skills to learn. And this is where the journey took me now, into understanding how do we as individuals create change, but also, how do we as organizations create change? Because I was also working in the school system, and I was watching, you know, parent teachers really struggling with a lot of children's behaviors, and I could see that it wasn't the child who was the problem. Although a lot of people wanted to blame the child, it wasn't the teacher who was the problem. Although a lot of people wanted to blame the teacher. I started recognizing it was within the relationship of these two people. And so I yet didn't know how to create change within myself. So that led me on a path of discovering coaching and then integral coaching, and then that moved me into leadership development and leadership growth. And then I circled back around to seeing and recognizing, oh, leadership skills that all executives now are spending lots of money to learn are the exact same skills that conscious mothering and conscious parenting are also learning. So these are the same set of skills and that's led me to writing this book.

So let's pick up on that point. Firstly, thank you for that context because there's going to be a lot of people who listen to and watch this podcast who can relate to that type of trauma that you experienced. But when you talk about the alignment or overlap between executive leadership skills and mothering skills, skills and parenting skills, what does that look like?

Yeah, well, that's the whole book. And the unpacking of that I would just say in the most simplest terms is, you know, leaders are, we've come to the end of this paradigm that leaders are the ones who know it all. We can always go to the leader. We can always rely on the leader, much like we could always rely on the father in the family. Very old paradigm, right? Father knows best. These have, these are collapsing. They, they aren't functioning for us. We've seen this happening for years. And leaders have this tremendous amount of pressure that they feel like they should know it all. They feel like they should be taking on all this responsibility. They feel like they're the ones who are, you know, at the helm of the ship. And yet what we're needing, both in the family and in organizations, is a leader who has relational leadership. Because we're not going to move forward with the, that one lone wolf anymore who's going to lead the pack. We are only going to move forward into our future that is so uncertain and unstable and anxious and ambiguous and we don't know what this crazy world is taking us. And that brings up a lot of fear. And when we move into, when we feel fear, we instantly go back to what we relied on in the past. So let me, let me just finish this piece around the leadership before I dive into that, because that could take us in a different direction is this paradigm of leadership and father knows best or leaders knows best, that's over. Because that's way too much pressure on one person. It's way too much pressure on one leader. And I watch mums. My, my clientele are high performing, visionary women leaders who are so capable. They are amazing at what they are handling, and yet they're still holding it all alone. And so this relational leadership that I'm talking about is this new threshold that we are standing upon to recognize that our identity that we've been holding as the, the leader who knows it all or the parent who knows it all is done. And now we have to build these new set of capacities to be able to walk into this future from a very different steadiness and Emotional relationship. Yeah.

So when you talk about relational leadership and you talk about finding steadiness amid chaos, what is at the core of that for parents? Because as you mentioned, we have never probably lived in a more uncertain time in human history in many ways. So what is going to lead us to a steady place through this chaos?

Yeah, well, I'll go back to the fear. That's what I think most of us are living in. It's like this emotional or weather system we're in is just fear. And when we feel fear, it's pretty automatic for us to go back to what we know. So I think every mother can relate to this. I raise my voice, hey, put your shoes away. They don't put their shoes away. I double down. I said, put your shoes away. You know, it doesn't work. What do we do? We triple down. We get a little closer, maybe get a little more intimidating, and we really let them know it's time to. So we just kind of repeat the same. The only skill we seem to have in that moment. And that's happening in our world too, with fear. Like, I'll just hold closer, I'll be further away from people. I won't get involved with people. You know, we're treating more and more fearful of others. And so when we're doubling down on skills that aren't working, we are needing a new set of skills. So in this uncertain world, our way of control has been I have to control the outside world. If only my kids would listen, then I would be calm. If only my team would do as I say, then we could move forward. It's all about managing external. But actually the first step is realizing that calm isn't something that we create by controlling the outside world. The world is louder and faster than ever before. Calm actually comes from learning how to regulate ourselves in the middle of the chaos. So when parents are developing the capacity within, inside of themselves to find that inner calm and that inner control and that inner peace, they become the stabilizing presence that their children can return to again and again and feel that. And now we're modeling that for our children, how to be that calm within the storm.

So how did it come to be then that that fear and control based piece to parenting that you alluded to is so embedded in many parenting styles today? And what becomes possible when, as you describe it, we have that calm within ourselves and we let it go in terms of how we. What is possible in that case, then?

Yeah, well, control feels very reassuring when we're afraid. And for generations Parenting has been framed as we have to manage behavior rather than seeing it as we're developing human beings. Children are not systems to be controlled. Right. They are. They are individuals learning how to become themselves. We can't command trust from a child. We can't force emotional safety, and we cannot manage another human being into becoming who they are meant to be. So by softening control, we're actually moving from managing behavior to guiding development. And this is where the relationship becomes far more powerful, because really, we're creating the environment. Just like the soil is holding the seed, the seed has the blueprint within it to grow. But the environment is going to help us shape that seed to grow. And so we have to make this switch within our minds, this mindset shift between managing behavior to guiding the development.

It would appear that for many years now, there seems to be a crisis of confidence when it comes to parenting out there in general. Many people afraid of getting it wrong. How would you characterize the shift that needs to happen in mindset to go from a lack of confidence as a parent, a fear of getting it wrong, over to a more grounded and confident approach to raising children?

Yeah, that's so, so true. I mean, I've been doing this work for 30 years now, working with parents and working with parents across all spectrums of life. And it is that inner resource that has been slowly chipped away in these. These 30 years that I've seen. You know, I myself had to consciously return to my own inner wisdom of what I can trust and rely upon now. I was a child who left home at 16, so I had to rely on myself quite young. And I got far. I went to got a master's degree, I played in the World Cups. You know, like, obviously there was something within me that had this resiliency, so I recognized that. But when it came to my children, I realized, you know, that waffling and that, like you said, lack of confidence arose. So again, I think we are have been, you know, looking outside of ourselves, always looking for the answers we have been culturally conditioned to look for. Father knows best, doctor knows best, the priest knows best, the leaders know best. That is a complete paradigm shift. No, actually, I know best for me, not for you, but for me. I know best for me, and I have to come back to that. So this is the inner wisdom that I talk about. I often call myself a wisdom partner because I do work with women leaders who are mothers for longer periods of time to really develop that inner wisdom. So there's a sense of deep groundedness and Centeredness. We are the. The center pole of this tent that we are holding up. And if that is weak, then that whole tent is going to be flapping and blowing in the wind. And so it's a return to the inner wisdom. It's a return to a sense of deep groundedness. It's a return to knowing. I consider that mothering is the oldest wisdom, leadership tradition on this planet. And we as mothers need to return to that deep inner knowledge. And that wisdom tradition gets passed on by word of mouth and by connection and by communication and by relationship from mother to. To. From grandmother to mother to mother to daughter and so on. And so this returning to inward, the inner life, as I said in the beginning, my parents could not see the struggle I was having. They could not match and meet for and meet me in what I needed, because the awareness of an inner life wasn't even present, so to speak. Now we have a lot more awareness about. We have a whole inner life, an inner ecosystem, and an inner universe. Really, what's out there is just as deep and wild and big as in here. And we need to return to that inner space within to be able to develop these capacities of emotional resiliency, of being able to have empathy, to be able to have these steady boundaries for our children and not waver and waffle, to be able to be both firm and loving, to be able to give our children the freedom of choice and the generosity of our heart. Right. There's so many capacities that we can develop with inside of ourselves, and it doesn't rely on the external environment. And I believe that when we as mothers and leaders return to that, the world is going to have a real axis shift.

You also believe that if we want conscious leaders tomorrow, we need to be mindful and we need to begin with how we raise children today. So what leadership qualities do you believe children most need to develop?

Yeah, children absolutely need adults who model emotional steadiness. They model curiosity, and they model humility. The world they're growing into requires adaptability and relational intelligence like we've never seen before. So what they absorb most deeply isn't what we tell them, but it's how we show up in that moment. So both for leaders and for children, it's how we show up. It's how we model who we are being, not as much as what we are doing.

You alluded to Father Knows Best, Doctors Know Best, all these sort of, you know, standards that we grew up with, pillars that many of us grew up with in terms of our parents and grandparents. So then what does healthy leadership look like within a family? Especially when you may have children who are pushing boundaries and trying to resist authority along the way?

Yeah, I mean, healthy leadership inside a family, it stays steady. Right. It doesn't collapse into permissiveness, which I think when we're working all day, we're exhausted. You know, it's so easy to just give in to a boundary that we would like old, so we don't collapse into permissiveness and it doesn't escalate into power struggles. You know, so often what a child is bringing, what they're communicating during their tantrums and defiance, it's rarely about the behavior that we see on the surface. So how do we hold the boundary? Calmly. And consistency while remembering that the relationship is always more important than winning this moment, getting our children too. So these tantrums or defiant acts, they're rarely about behavior that we're seeing on the surface. They're communicating feelings underneath. Because obviously children don't know how to communicate feelings. And guess what? Not many adults really know how to communicate feelings. So they're letting us know they're overwhelmed, they're frustrated, they're filled with fear, or they're just simply at the limit of where they are developed right now. So their nervous system is essentially saying, I can't manage this. I don't have skills for this. But these moments, they also reveal something about the parent too. So when our reactions are sharp, controlling, it's often the signal that we too have reached our own developmental limit. So parenting doesn't just expose the child's growing edge, it's exposing our growing edge. And these moments invite parents to recognize that where they are, they too are needing development with greater emotional capacity, with patience, with self awareness, with presence. So really, what in this way, parenting is, it's becomes a shared developmental journey where both the child and the parent are learning to grow into greater and greater capacity and maturity.

What does that transition look like for somebody listening to what you're saying, thinking that makes perfect sense. If I react and am mindful in that moment, maybe take a deep breath, step away, don't escalate the situation with an emotional child. What does that actually look like in practice for a parent? In other words, what is one common denominator, let's call it first step that a parent can take to get to the place that you're talking about.

Yeah, yeah. The thing is, obviously we all know, you know, we've all been taught, take a pause, take some deep breaths, count to 10. I mean, we've been told this for years. I don't know about you, but when I heard that for the umpteenth time, it's like, I wish I could do that, right? So it's, it's simple knowledge. It's the same with. I often say this, you know, it's the same with healthy eating. If we're overweight, we all know exercise more and eat more vegetables, but it doesn't work in the translation into the actual day to day. So, yes, that is the number one grounding tool. Notice your breath, feel your feet on the ground, and take a moment before you respond. This small reset helps our nervous system to shift from reaction and back to presence. But the thing that we got to remember here is this capacity. It doesn't happen automatically in the heat of the moment. It's something that we have to cultivate through regular practice. This is how we create change. As you know, I've been coaching for, you know, 16 years now as a master coach with clients all around the world. Regular practice, daily, small moments each day where we're cultivating a muscle memory by repeatedly returning to the body, building greater awareness and connection with ourselves, our internal world. Then we're gradually going to develop the inner steadiness that we can rely on when emotions run high. So over time, that practice strengthens our ability to pause, to choose our response, to lead the moment rather than be overtaken by it. This is building muscles. We have to build them every single day, slowly. Small, simple little practices where we can start developing a greater awareness of reality. Because these moments, when they strike us, they close down our awareness of reality. Our brain just goes, ooh, survival mode. And we just narrow in on, gotta get my kid to bed. I gotta get my kid to eat broccoli. And when we're able to hold our awareness, our conscious awareness, more open, we have access to more of reality. We can hold more of what's going on. So, yeah, I'll just leave it there. I could say so much more, but,.

Well, and sort of building on that point, take us through, if you could, Michelin, some of the sort of the key points as it relates to the neuroscience behind what you're talking about. And specifically, what of that inspired you to write this book and is in your latest book?

Yeah, yeah. So I, I don't dive deep into the neuroscience. I think we don't need to know. We just need to know that the neuroscience is there supporting this. And what I see is those moments of fear that our child is escalating. Our daughter Is on the floor screaming because she doesn't want to put her clothes on. And I'm supposed to be out the door in eight minutes. Oh, my God. Pressure mounting. We. Whether it's internal pressure and external pressure, we instantly, our brains, the thinking part of our brain, executive functioning, starts closing down. Now we're trapped in our emotional part of our brain, Often called the, you know, it's called the limbic system or the emotional state within us. Now, we are often reacting to something that's not really present. It's coming from our past. It's like that, that repeated pattern. That old record player starts playing again. And now we're falling into this trap of an emotional reaction to something that happened in our past. And what I can say for all the parents listening, it's the edge where our parents could not meet us. So let's say our daughter's on the floor crying and screaming, you know, not wanting to get dressed. Our parents couldn't meet us when we were in our emotional breakdown. They didn't have the skills. So guess what? We don't have the skills now. And so this process of building this capacity helps us to wire our brain together because our parents weren't able to do it for us. Because below the emotional state, we have a survival state. And that survival state really shuts us down. This is when we're moving into that fight, that flight, that freeze. Now, those are just the three common ones. There's research now that shows there's 12 autonomic nervous system reactions, you know, ones that are like, accommodating and placating. Right. These are also defense mechanisms that physiologically our brains are moving us into that response. Right? So this is a physiological reaction. There are a lot of parts of us which make up the wholeness of who we are that are reacting in these moments. And so that's why it's not as easy as just count to 10 and take 10 deep breaths. We have to kind of unpack all of these parts of ourselves that are in this shutdown into our survival state in these moments, to understand why we are reacting the way we are, to be able to recognize and rewire our own brain so that the executive functioning can be in charge in those moments. Now, again, I remember being this. As a mom, I'm sure many moms remember this. The emotion, the. The situation is done. You're sitting in your car, and you finally got your kids off to school, and you're going, I can't believe I did that again. I just screamed at my kids. I dropped them off in tears. They're going to have a terrible day. I feel like crap. Like, I feel so much guilt. And that's because we are just repeating that pattern. No matter. We deeply want to change. We deeply want to change. Our heart of hearts knows there's a better way. And yet the physiological response in those moments is so powerful. Until we learn how to unpack these parts, I call it detangling. It's like a yarn all tangled up. We've just got to slowly start pulling the threads to understand this more and more.

Something else that you talk about is sourcing from the future. How can parents go about not just preparing their children for the future, but preparing kids who are actually capable of shaping the future?

Yeah, I love that question. Thank you for that. My leadership parenting methodology that I outline in the book, it comes from three underlying principles. How do we parent and lead? From love, from abundance, and from unity. Because we are living in a world, the water we're all swimming in is fear, lack, and separation. So how can we actually start raising children? By modeling love, abundance, and unity. And unity is that peace about being able to be aware again, A leadership skill is metacognition. Can I think about how I'm thinking right? So. And can I think about what's happening in this moment and how it's going to affect the future? We parents don't often do that. You know, we're so caught in this moment, we're not realizing it's affecting the future. So parenting the to the future is that unity and connection between present to the future. So not only are we modeling love, abundance, and unity, but we're recognizing that how we are showing up in this moment is creating the future that we want our children to walk into. It's also the future we want our children to help shape. So we're in a leadership crisis. We know we need leaders with greater skills and capacities and ability to anchor into their own inner wisdom. It starts right here, right now, in our homes. This is why I believe that parenting parents are the most transformational, innovative leaders that we have because they are shaping the future.

What a powerful statement, for sure. And something that's certainly so important for people to be mindful of who do find it, that they are leading with fear and control. We're almost out of time, Ashleen. But I did want to ask you, as a parent of three adult children at this point, what perspective has time given you over all these years with all of the things that you've done, the breadth and scope of Your areas of expertise about what truly matters in parenting. What have you learned about that?

Yeah. Yeah. I would say that ultimately, children remember how it felt to grow up with you, the tone of the relationship. They remember that far more than the perfect decisions or the perfect behaviors or the perfect vacations or the perfect books you read or any of that stuff. How did it feel to be in this relationship with you? That is what they remember above all else. Because there really is no such thing as perfect parenting. And I know we are living in a world where it's all photographed, and there is a lot of pressure to make it look good. And a lot of the women that I work with, you know, they often admit, I want it to look good. I want. I want my kids to look good and my family to look good. And I understand that. I get it. And yet that in and of itself is putting additional pressure on us. So what I would love, you know, my shift. I've been through all of these same struggles. Everything that I have teaching and written about, I've been through it. I've been on my bed crying, not knowing how the heck I'm going to do this, feeling like I don't have the skills. But ultimately, the shifts that I have made through the. The learnings and the commitment, I mean, this is my passion, this is my life's work, is that parenting is leadership. It is the most powerful influence that you have. The most powerful influence that you have. It isn't control. It's your example of who you are being. It's your presence, it's your awareness, it's the abundance of your heart and your love, how you meet your child in that relationship. So if I could leave parents with just one idea, that parenting is the most profound leadership role we will ever have. Not because we control children's outcomes, but because it's how we shape the environment in which they are growing up in our presence, our awareness, our willingness to keep learning alongside of them, that matters more than getting it right. So when parents start seeing themselves as the leader in the relationship rather than just managing behaviors, the home becomes so much less about power struggles and so much more about growth. Growth for our child and growth for ourselves. And in this world, which is, like, so increasingly fast and noisy and uncertain, our children need our steadiness, our deep connection with ourselves, with nature, with humanity. Right? This is the skills and capacities we need now. And that quiet confidence that you brought up earlier, that someone is guiding us, someone holding this safe, strong integrity tent pole that holds the safety for the children. So children really don't need perfect parents. What they really need is the parents who are willing to grow both in consciousness and in wisdom.

So many powerful insights. Micheline Green, Coach, integral master coach, educator, former counselor, author. Thank you so much for your time and your perspective today.

It's a deep pleasure. Thank you, Leanne, so much.

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