David Young  0:01  
You have to give space for people to learn and to make mistakes and fail fast and then learn fast and then move on to the next thing. And we made so much progress so fast this year. And I think in some regards, it might well have been that I did leave.

kevin edwards  0:17  
Welcome, everyone to the real leaders Podcast, where today impacts tomorrow. Departure creates opportunity, and leaders keep it real. And that excerpt was from David Young, the CEO of Participate Learning, who shares with you the lessons learned from deciding to hand over the reins, the importance of becoming bilingual, and how is family values manifest in their company's culture and customers? Enjoy. 

Okay, I'll do a little introduction and ask you the first question and go from there. Here we go, Kevin, come on, Kevin got to bring the energy today. All right, we go countdown in 5432 and one and welcome everyone to this episode of The Real ears podcast. I'm your host, Kevin Edwards. Joining us today is David Young, the CEO of participate. David, a pleasure having you back on the show today.

David Young  1:21  
Thanks, Kevin. Great to see you, again. Appreciate you having us on and keeping us involved.

kevin edwards  1:26  
And for our listeners out there who are devoted to the podcast, David was on episode 38. And, David, you really shared about the origin of participate, you know, be having your family being education. Was this a model that can be repeated? Sure it's been done in college, why not do a K through 12. The beauty and indifference bringing or having a finished exchange student after you have a finished exchange student, why not have one from Sweden. Culture attracts culture, why not want to work for a company where you can go to to a different location, being immersed in the culture and make a difference in someone lives. But David, someone told me the other day that this is a leadership podcast. So I think maybe we ought to talk about leadership today. What do you think? Yeah, that'd be great.

David Young  2:15  
Yeah, just to just to clarify since we last time we did spin off our digital division as participate in so our our traditional businesses now known as Participate Learning, so we'll we'll get that information to you but it's participatelearning.com now. So the other organization is pursuing a digital Education Strategy that's taking it in a different direction.

kevin edwards  2:36  
So then a lot has changed since we last spoke. Would you mind filling this in what what? Tell me what's changed in this past year?

David Young  2:43  
Yeah, so last time, we talked, I was sitting in Costa Rica and it was lovely, took my family down there to live effectively the mission that we pursue as an organization. I wanted my children to have a bilingual bicultural by literate educator experience and felt like that was critical to their future to, you know, have that experience to speak Spanish not only to take it, but to actually speak it. And as you may know, you know, being immersed in another culture and language is a is a pathway to proficiency. So we took that on as a family you know, one of the, it was kind of a big thing for my board to take on and for me to take on. So our CEO, Mark otter went with the new company. So I spun off, I went to Costa Rica for six months and we left the organization in the hands of relatively new leaders. And so, you know, one one thing I learned about leadership is some sometimes you you have to give people a chance to to, to learn you got to give them opportunities to to fail opportunities than to succeed And learn from mistakes. And I thought it was really remarkable that my board was willing to provide me that kind of time to rejuvenate, to refresh to get ready for the next 20 years of my career after already completing 25 years with the organization. So, so I thought that was really amazing for them to take that on. And then, you know, I'm really proud of my own willingness to hand sort of the reins to relatively new leaders and give them an opportunity to prove sort of their their skills learn on the job. And, and to come back and then welcome me back and to help me to reintegrate over the summer. And it turns out, you know, we just completed our finest year in 32 years of the organization's history led by, you know, youth youthful leaders that have so much potential and the ability I think, to take us to the next level, nationally, to the next level of impact on students, and ultimately to help us create our next 32 years.

kevin edwards  5:15  
Cool. Well, congratulations on that. It's that's pretty big. And I had no idea. I mean, the market regulator for me is leaving an organization better than you found it. I think he maybe even talked about that in the last episode, you know, if I were gone tomorrow with our company be able to sustain today. And, you know, tell me about that process, though. I mean, was it uneasy leaving something where you've been a part of for 25 years? What were some of the challenges?

David Young  5:40  
It was, it was, I think, quite uneasy for my board. They, you know, they're quite accustomed to me, I've been here a while. I love what we do. I'm passionate about it, you know, have have a great network and our footprint and so to know To allow me and afford me the opportunity to depart, you know, for a full six months and you know, it's not like I wasn't available and accessible but but we pretty much led the group youthful group behind me run with the show and they prove that they could do a lot of great things, a lot of new things, modern innovation, I think the lesson the lesson I learned as maybe a more mature leader these days. It's kind of hard for me to believe but anyway is the you know, they you have to give space for people to learn and to make mistakes and fail fast and then learn fast and then move on to the next thing and, and we made so much progress so fast this year. And I think in some regards, it might well have been that I did leave.

kevin edwards  6:56  
Interesting. So I'm just trying to think Hear, like, the growing pains were uneasy. What about this new leadership group, you know, strikes you the most in terms of their qualities of being a leader and what they're able to bring to this company. You mentioned innovation was one. What are a couple other things that they'd done differently that you never really expected that they could really pull out?

David Young  7:23  
data, data data, they are data driven. They are constantly surveying, their customer driven. They're looking for facts and acting on those facts. So there's very little in this group that is unproven. They don't make decisions without fully understanding our customers perspective. And having numbers to back it up. I think that's been added. really significant change here. Not always welcome across the board. Some of us, you know, still want to operate with our guts, but it's sometimes you have to do that too. But But data, you know, backed by gut, I think is even more effective. And so they've they've really brought that to the table. There technology capacity is, you know, the next generations, there's so much more agile. They have new ideas for management structure, and how we can create, you know, various communication vehicles. They're so collaborative. I mean, one of the craziest things we did. The day I left before I got on the plane. I told them, I wanted them to run a process through the time I was away until the time I got back to create our next strategy plan. We were here we were culminating a five year plan. Just Just last December and I wanted a new and ready for this month 2020. And so I put them in charge of running that strategic planning process. And I The only caveat I said is every single staff person has to be given an opportunity to participate in this process. All the board members, all the shareholders must be included, pass it off to them to run this amazing collaborative process which he put our next. Our next actually we've got a two year plan because everybody knows five years to split up. But they did such a brilliant job of pulling in all our staff, all our departments, all our shareholders, all our board members to be part of this process. And it was really, I think, for morale purposes, for earning their stripes for earning credibility internally and externally. I think it was a very good move and one that I I don't know if I would have done that when I was younger, I guess I've reached the point where I'm comfortable enough in my own skin to give, give that responsibility to them. Or maybe it's just really hard to do. And I was ready to do it myself, but but they really handled that really, super well. And I'm extraordinarily excited about our future. I think we've got bold plans that are achievable, that are meaningful and really could transform the next generation of students to be global citizens.

kevin edwards  10:31  
That's, that's really cool. When I think of data, a lot of people are scared with their own personal security and, and the objectiveness is what you like, and you know, to never go with you guys what kind of what you alluded to. But the one thing about data is that as people we are always changing, and you mentioned on the last podcast, the only constant is change. So how do you prepare for like a five year plan like that? And when change happens, what are some strategies to adapt and maybe Go wave avert from the plan.

David Young  11:03  
Well, you know, you can't wed yourself to a five year plan and expect it to, to go through, as written, right? Say, so there's constant check ins on progress, constant review of the the performance indicators, constant review of the objectives on the initiatives to ensure that they remain valid. And to so that's going to be, again, customer feedback and understanding external market conditions and what might affect that. I mean, for us, it'd be regulatory change, it could be a change in immigration policy. There could be changes in education, budgets, things of that nature. And so you constantly have to monitor those things and we spend a lot of time and effort and frankly, money You know, looking at Government Relations looking at, you know, our, our lobbying efforts to make sure that we're understanding policy that's coming down and that we never gets surprised. But But you can't have a five year strategy plan anymore given the pace of technology change, because, you know, obviously overnight, something that you did a couple of years ago can be completely outdated. We've had the, we've had that throughout our 30 years. I mean, I remember when we first got our minor photius four, we first got our plain paper fax machine and like the mid or late 90s. And I remember crying because I no longer had to receive applications from all over the world with that foil paper that you're probably too young to remember. I remember we used to have to book airline tickets through travel agents and go pick them up. You know, there's so many things that are changing and it's changing even faster now. So I would, I would say that any leader that's building building out a strategy plan to, to think beyond two years is, is probably just kind of getting a general framework in mind. But that you're, you know, by year, probably, probably the second year or even third year, you're having to kind of adjust on the fly.

kevin edwards  13:21  
David mentioned a lot about this new group coming in being very customer centric. If you've got any impact conference, obviously part of the religious impact awards, go to any impact conference, there's gonna be someone there, it's going to be talking about how do you measure impact. So in terms of your customers, and the impact that participate learning is trying to create, how do you measure that?

David Young  13:44  
Yeah, so we, we have some, some very obvious measures that our customers like so every school district and every school is looking for students to progress in math, science, and reading Fortunately for us, our our programs, our global education programs have significant impact in those areas. And so we're typically able to report to customers that if you adopt our programs, your reading and math scores are going to go up significantly with the impacted student groups. So that's one way. A second way is one of our programs delivers intense language study through what's called dual language immersion. As you know, 99% of US citizens that take language in our public schools never learn to speak that language. That was from an article in The Atlantic in 2016, called America's lacking language skills. And that article cites a 1% effectiveness rate and, you know, probably you had the same experience a lot of people listening three years of x language And I can't speak it why we continue to abide by that and think that's okay. I don't know if that were our math outcomes, if that were science outcomes, people would be up in arms. You know, we know what works and that's an immersion methodology and so are one of our flagship programs is to deliver immersion programs in public schools. And what we see out of that program is not only increased data, outcomes on math, science reading, but we also see these kids are have extraordinary proficiency in the language. So they're actually learning to speak Spanish or Mandarin or French it's case by big and we can measure that their scales to measure proficiency and for instance, after after six months in Costa Rica I was able to improve my level from advanced low to sorry, not advanced like from intermediate low to intermediate, high In six months of being sort of on the ground, the students in our programs should be advancing to a category of advanced low proficiency. Within these immersion programs by comparison, a program that would be a traditional sort of high school program, kids are never going to get out at the beginning levels. So that data is really valuable to schools and districts and notably to parents that want their kids to learn a language.

kevin edwards  16:31  
That's interesting thought people will be up in arms, if this are math or English or science, and that's so true.

David Young  16:37  
Well it's 5 billion. It's a $5 billion industry.

kevin edwards  16:41  
$5 billion industry?

David Young  16:43  
I mean, as a country we spent $5 billion trying to teach languages with a 1% effectiveness rate. 

kevin edwards  16:49  
I, I'm naive to say that as well because I took French for seven years and I couldn't speak I can't speak French. I mean, I'd have to I'd probably have to go to France and figure it out. But Yeah, it's pretty bad.

David Young  17:02  
That's, you know, that's kind of crazy, isn't it? Because I mean, your story, my story that is that is the US story on language learning.

kevin edwards  17:12  
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So for maybe for business owners who have, you know, center daughters in school right now, what if they want? Yeah, their kids want to be in business or they want to have a career. What language would you recommend that they learn?

David Young  17:32  
Yeah, I mean, it depends where you are in the US. I mean, in North Carolina, it's clear that Spanish is a real need and has real opportunities attached to it. I, I would think that's true in the States. There are places where I believe Mandarin is quite valued. And then I think on the west coast, the language potential could be much more varied and possibly in big cities as well. But, you know there there are a lot of sayings out there that if you can speak Mandarin, Spanish and English, you can communicate to probably 95% of the world. You could replace Spanish with French and say the same things in Mandarin French and English. So Mandarin plus English plus one other language gets you a vast majority of the world.

kevin edwards  18:27  
David, you mentioned immigration policy, how have new immigration policies affected your organization? How have they affected them? And then as well as when people reach the 12th grade your students are in from foreign countries, they're used to 12th grade. At least I know we've had some friends from God, either friend for Guatemala that needed to get a job within 90 days to stay in the country. How is immigration policy affect the participants learnings in what are some of the fears that a lot of the students have in terms of you know, getting deported back to the country?

David Young  19:02  
Yeah. So we we function within the cultural exchange umbrella of the US Department of State. And so from a, from a regulatory standpoint, things have been the same as they've always been. Some of our teachers have had some, some not so pleasant experiences of being asked why they are here, you know, or even told that they should go home. Very few though, relatively speaking. We've been a little surprise given the climate that we haven't seen more of that and maybe relief. And I think in general, our teachers have had very positive experiences. They are, you know, very high level educators. They're bilingual, typically quite sophisticated. So I think they, you know, they have very winning personalities and and, and are are highly valued in these programs because they play a specific role around linguistic expertise or cultural exchange expertise. So, I think, you know, we've been fortunate to not yet to have not seeing any negative impact. But you know, obviously we're we're keeping an eye on it and occasionally wary.

kevin edwards  20:27  
David, I think on our first podcast and correct me if I'm wrong, I think you told me that your parents were in education. And that means I don't know if you started participate learning with them. But they had some involvement in participate learning, is that correct?

David Young  20:44  
The concept of what used to be called visiting international faculty which became dissipate and then it's a learning it's complicated. Visiting international faculty was now sort of an outcropping of of cultural exchange program for professors that Ilan University in North Carolina where my father was president and so they were they were eager to host international professors as part of kind of the student experience and and the idea to bring international teachers k 12 really stem from not experience.

kevin edwards  21:20  
Okay guy and the reason I asked that is because our next edition coming out as families who lead in a big theme of that is generational leadership and that being passed down. Now, you mentioned that you know, this this process of leaving in the at the helm of the organization for six months was difficult. Did you stress at all having the family values in the company and how is the company able to sustain those those core values?

David Young  21:48  
Well, I mean, the company really is. It is our family. We we believe then that Global Citizenship is as simple as knowing someone from another place appreciating their culture, being able to step in their shoes and understand what their lives are like. It's all about empathy, all about appreciation and, and curiosity about the world. And it reflects my family's dedication to seeking travel experiences around the world seeking to learn other languages seeking to study regions of the world. I grew up with my siblings and I grew up with map wallpaper all over our rooms. That was, all of us were surrounded by maps, like all day long. And, you know, we memorize capitals, when we took trips, we were, you know, we were competing to see who could name you know, all the capitals of the world and had games around geography and culture and language. So this is kind of just who we are as a family and there's no doubt that this has been a family effort. You know, my brother was heavily involved myself. was at one point the director of recruitment for, for us My mother was our original accountant. The ideas came from my father's work at Ilan, and he's been chair of our board for 30 years now. So So we, when we go on holidays, we have to have a jar out to to prevent us from talking about, about the organization non stop, because my mother goes crazy. Well, just because we can easily get hung up to talking about nothing other than participate learning. So it's been a lot of fun. My family's very lucky, very fortunate. We believe that the opportunities we have had are deserved by all students. And that's what we're trying to do is extend it much more broadly to students that may never leave the country.

kevin edwards  23:50  
When you were, you know, taking this on 25 years ago, was it was it ever challenging with your parents to just you can't have a normal conscience Since it's always around the business, you know, how has your relationship changed with kind of tell our audience about your experience growing up with it with your parents heavily involved?

David Young  24:12  
Well, you know, after, after the initial couple of years, my you know, my brother and I really kind of took on mesh to the work. Eventually my brother went on to do some other things. And I had about a seven year period on my on my own with some some other new colleagues that I brought on. Before I was able to convince him to come back in the in the late 90s. But yeah, they pretty much you know, once we kind of got it up and running as a family project, and then things kind of seemed to emerge and take off. They pretty much let me run with it. When my brother came back, we developed the organization together for a number of years until 2005 when when he departed again. Since then, I've been to they both all my family remain on the board and involved. But, you know, I think as long as I don't drive the thing into the ground, they seem pretty happy. And so, so far have been able to bring on people that have similar beliefs have similar passions. Global Education is kind of one of these things where people get really into it. And when you love it, you truly love it. And so finding people that want to dedicate their careers to impacting students and giving them these experiences, you know, they're not a dime a dozen, but they're, but you know, when you find them, and when you find them, it's our culture and our mission and our passion for Global Education keeps people around for a while.

kevin edwards  25:53  
Well, it's nice the readme and the reason I asked that is because I found a lot of the the guests we've had on the show, especially these purpose driven companies. I think there's two routes like you, you, you found your purpose, you're surrounded by maps all day, it's in the family organization, you're you know, you're lucky to have that, obviously, you've said that, but you're lucky to have that purpose that you've been able to follow throughout your career. And you've been really, really talented at it, whereas others on the show will come on and they were in some other organization, whether it's investment banking, or finance or just some career that they made a lot of money, but they want to have this this this change. What do you hope for your children?

David Young  26:33  
Well, you know, it's early, they're 14 and 12. And still developing, I think, their interests. I hope that they'll appreciate, you know, the work we do here and I hope that they'll want to be what we call global citizens as well and really striving to make the world a better place to solve global challenges. Excellent may be for them, but more importantly, respecting people from all nations and people of different backgrounds. You know, I think that that's, that's critical for us to, one solve many of the challenges we face across the planet and saving the planet and then ultimately, to have peace. You know, we really need people to have a skill set that allows them to interact effectively, despite the background, so whoever it is they're working with or whoever it is there with in general, so, you know, I hope that they'll they'll feel like they are citizens of the world and that they have a role to play in, in helping us all to succeed. 

kevin edwards  27:53  
David, you mentioned that everyone that participates a part of the family. How is that family culture when you organization, would you say different from maybe a standard Corporation? And it's an example that maybe comes to your mind?

David Young  28:06  
You know, I've never worked anywhere else. So I'm not entirely sure I can guess, based on what I'm told here, you know, we really stress family. So we have, you know, we'll have a Thanksgiving dinner for staff will have, you know, will will, will have regular opportunities to interact. We bring all our families together regularly we celebrate our mission we we celebrate accomplishments, both personal and professional. We strive to be very, very family friendly with our policies, whether that's, you know, bereavement policies or taking care of an elderly parent or you know, different types of insurance and you know, that you might not necessarily see in standard organization. You know, we We've been named locally as a family friendly organization for a number of years. And I think that you may be aware we're also b-corp best for the world organization and a lot of what they look at it's how how we strive to ensure our employees are well cared for, you know what, what I believe is that there's a group of people in the world that want to use their careers to do good. And, you know, a lot of a lot of what we see in using business for force as a force for good also applies to people that want to use their careers as a force for good. And while that doesn't mean they'll take a significantly lower salary, and maybe that they're looking for kind of the whole experience, the whole compensation of the kinds of benefits they can get the kind of work life balance they can get. What's it going to mean for them I'm laying and I think we do a really good job with that and that it's meant quite high retention over the years and I think quite high satisfaction. And you know, at a time of 3.8% unemployment here in North Carolina, we we really aren't having any difficulty recruiting high levels of talent. I'm finding that a lot of people want to work here. And that that talent levels as high as ever been

kevin edwards  30:28  
high talent, high retention, good mark of a good leadership day. The last question for you today is What is your definition of a real leader?

David Young  30:39  
Well, you know, I gave a

kevin edwards  30:43  
you had a whole list last time.

David Young  30:44  
I gave a long answer last time. You know, this time I I think thinking about organizations, and the role they can play in in society, I think, I think for leaders to be thinking of how their organizations can align to helping them resolve global challenges and issues. And we talked about people being global citizens, but I think that organizations and leaders can also be global citizens and the sustainable development goals of the United Nations gives us all kind of a working list or a to do list of what it is we need to accomplish as humans. And I think businesses, organizations are well positioned to drive some of that work, if not all of that, and it just can't be left to NGOs and nonprofits. You know, altruistic for profits need to play a role in solving the world's challenges and that doesn't mean that you cannot be successful financially. You can you can do well through doing good. And and I think leaders that can focus on the big picture and the whole the the whole impact of their organization beyond just the profit line. Right. So what is the impact you have on your on your employees? What is the impact you have on the environment? Is is your work truly making the world a better place? Are you impacting the next generation? What opportunities are you giving your team to become leaders? Not just in title but in empowerment? How are they empowered to make a change in the world for the better? I think I think leaders that can can see see maybe that bigger picture, have an opportunity to emerge as I think the real leaders going forward.

kevin edwards  32:54  
Well, David, we appreciate you coming on the show today. Appreciate organizations and organizations similar to yours. Are you harnessing capitalism to sustain the planet? People in profits? for David Young, I'm Kevin Edwards asking you to go out there. Use your organization as a private servant to sustain that people, plant profit people. It's a force for good. And always, never forget. Keep it real. Next, David Young

Transcribed by https://otter.ai